Multi-Channel Funnel Reporting - BEWARE!

Subtle measurement changes in Google Analytics reporting.

The Google Analytics team have finally given users access to the Multi-Channel Funnel data via the API (http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/introducing-multi-channel-funnels.html). We suspect that this will enable more businesses to start using this piece of functionality to its maximum.

So yippee so far so good!

However, we spotted something buried in the GA documentation (http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1319312&topic=1191164&ctx=topic) on multi-channel funnels which the majority of users won’t have spotted. It might have some users scratching their heads as to why report data doesn’t match up.

The change concerns direct entry visits to sites. On other Google Analytics reports if a visitor enters the site via organic search then returns “direct” to convert, the “direct” source is ignored. Instead the organic search gets the credit for conversion.

The subtle change is that on multi-channel funnel reports if a visitor converts after arriving via “direct” then the conversion is attributed to the “direct” channel.  In the example above the organic search visit would be classed as an assist interaction.

We don’t expect there to be a big percentage change in the conversion figures that are being reported currently but it will put a different perspective on how the user actually converts.

How do your reports look?