The funnel that showed 0%

How the Swedish fitness store Gymshoppen went from a conversion funnel showing 0% to seeing that more than one in four product visitors clicks through to the partner.

The problem

The store, gathering gymkläder och träningsutrustning (gym wear and training equipment) from leading brands, set up a funnel from product page to affiliate click. It showed 0% conversion, even though partner reports showed clicks every day.

The cause was simple once found: every product page has its own URL.

• The funnel step only matched one exact URL
• Hundreds of product pages meant zero hits on the step
• The statistics looked dead while sales were alive

The solution

With wildcard matching in funnel steps, a single step covers all product pages:

The same pattern was reused for brand, category and campaign pages. Before saving a funnel, match testing shows which URLs a step actually catches, so an empty funnel never has to come down to a guessed path again.

Results

With the funnels in place, the store has:

• A true picture of the funnel - 28% of product sessions lead to an affiliate click
• Diagnosis before saving - Match testing shows immediately whether a step catches the intended pages
• Comparable page types - Product, brand and category pages can be compared as entries to the same goal

"We thought the funnel was broken. It was the measurement that was, with wildcards we finally see how customers actually move."

E-commerce manager, Gymshoppen