What is funnel optimization?

Funnel optimization is the process of improving the conversion rates at different stages of the customer journey or the customer acquisition funnel.

For a SaaS company, the marketing or sales funnel might consist of stages like awareness, acquisition, activation, adoption, and conversion to paid customers.

The aim of the funnel optimization process is to maximize the number of customers who progress to the final stage and reduce the time it takes.

How do you optimize a conversion funnel?

SaaS product, marketing, and customer success teams have more tools and strategies that they can use to engage customers at each stage of the funnel and help them progress.

Onboard customers to reduce the time to value

User onboarding allows users to discover the key product features and shows them how to use them to achieve their goals.

Thanks to interactive onboarding flows, users can start using the product and experience its value in less time. In other words, they reduce the time they need to activate.

Create personalized in-app marketing campaigns

One way to reduce the time to value and convert users into paying customers is through personalization.

When users first log into the product, they don’t need to know about all the features but only those relevant to their use cases. So don’t bombard them with unnecessary information and tailor the onboarding for each user persona.

It doesn’t stop at onboarding.

Your users are likely to progress through the funnel at a different pace. Take into account their current stage, and customize the digital marketing strategies accordingly.

For example, there’s no point triggering upsell messages when the user hasn’t fully adopted the product yet. Instead, give them a nudge to complete another task that will reinforce their habit and help them embed their product into their workflow.

Identify and remove friction points from the customer journey

In-app messages can help users overcome friction and convert to the next stage. For example, a contextual tooltip can help them discover the next step they need to take to complete a task.

However, to use them effectively, you must first track and analyze their progression along the user journey and identify the friction points.

This normally starts with funnel analysis to identify the stage where users face obstacles. Next, use heatmaps and session recordings to dive deeper and pinpoint the exact causes of friction.

Collect and act on feedback to increase the funnel conversion rate

Customer feedback is another way to identify friction.

For example, you could trigger them for all users who dropped out at a particular stage and ask about the issues they experienced and how you could rectify them.

In-app surveys can also help you optimize other aspects of the customer journey and user experience to boost conversions.

For instance, a CES survey can provide insights into potential usability issues that can stop users from fully realizing the product’s value.

What is a conversion funnel optimization tool used for?

A conversion funnel optimization tool is used to analyze, track, and improve the various stages of SaaS sales and marketing funnels.

Product, marketing, and customer success teams use them to:

• Monitor conversion rates and time to conversion
• Identify bottlenecks in the customer journey
• Analyze user behavior at different stages of the funnel
• Segment users based on their use cases, behavior, or funnel stage they’re at
• Carry out experiments and A/B tests
• And, create visual representations of the conversion funnel

The best funnel analytics tools for SaaS companies

Which analytics tool should you choose for funnel analysis and conversion rate optimization? Here’s a quick look at 10 solid product analytics solutions.

1. Userpilot

Userpilot is a product adoption platform with advanced analytics, feedback, and user engagement features.

Its functionality enables SaaS product teams to analyze customer behavior in detail, collect qualitative feedback, and use the insights to design personalized in-app experiences to improve conversions.

When it comes to analytics, Userpilot offers:

• Feature tagging
• Custom event tracking
• Heatmap analysis
• Trends analytics
• Onboarding flow analysis
• Funnel analytics

• Advanced A/B testing

• User segmentation

It gets even better! Userpilot is about to introduce more analytics features this year, including Retention analysis and AI-powered predictive analysis.

Userpilot offers 3 pricing plans:

• Starter – from $249/month
• Growth – from $499/month
• Enterprise – custom pricing

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is a comprehensive marketing, sales, and customer service platform that empowers businesses to attract, engage, and retain customers.

The platform offers a range of features that can help you optimize your sales and marketing funnel.

• Custom funnel reports to assess the effectiveness of your sales and marketing strategies
• Segmentation for in-depth analysis and targeted communication
• A/B testing – for emails and landing pages
• Integrations with analytics tools for more detailed customer journey tracking
• Email marketing and automation features to nurture leads and help them progress through the funnel
• Integrations with adoption tools like Userpilot for better user engagement
• Surveys for customer feedback collection (via email)

HubSpot offers a range of pricing plans, depending on which product you need.

The CRM Suite, which gives you access to most features, has 4 plans:

• Free tools
• Starter – from $18/month
• Professional – from $1,600/month
• Enterprise – from $5,000/month

3. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the best-known marketing tools.

Although originally it was only a web analytics tool, it now offers in-app event tracking functionality. This means that SaaS teams can use it to optimize their website conversions but also the user journey inside the product.

Its key analytics features for funnel optimization include:

• User segmentation
• Event tracking
• Funnel and paths analysis
• Custom reports and dashboards

One of the main appeals of Google Analytics, apart from the comprehensive insights that it offers, is that it’s free to use.

Unless you need more advanced features, like attribution analysis, you need to upgrade. To access it, you need to subscribe to Google 360 for a mere $12,500/month.

4. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is an advanced analytics platform that enables teams to track and analyze user behavior and engagement to make data-driven funnel optimization decisions.

The most relevant Mixpanel analytics features include:

• Customer event tracking
• User segmentation
• Flows and Funnels reports for granular user journey tracking
• Trend analytics
• Retention and cohort analysis
• Impact analysis – to assess how changes affect product performance
• Experiments
• Signal – to find correlations between actions

There are 3 Mixpanel plans:

• Free
• Growth – from $20/month
• Enterprise – from $833/month

5. Hotjar

Hotjar is a product experience analytics platform.

It offers a suite of website analytics and user feedback tools to help businesses gain granular qualitative insights into user interactions with the product and improve its usability and inclusiveness for better conversion rates.

Its main features include heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys.

Thanks to them, UX designers can better understand how users engage with individual aspects of the UI and where they face obstacles. For example, a session recording can reveal that users are clicking on an unclickable UI element or cannot find a key feature.

Addressing such issues improves user experience and allows users to progress easily to the next stage.

Hotjar pricing structure is built on 4 plans:

• Basic – free
• Plus – from $32/month
• Business – from $80/month
• Scale – from $171/month

6. Plerdy

Plerdy is a dedicated conversion optimization tool that comes highly recommended for SaaS teams seeking to optimize their sales funnels.

Apart from analytics tools like heatmaps, session replays, event tracking, funnel analysis, and A/B testing, it also offers dedicated e-commerce analytics, which equips businesses with the data and insights they need to enhance their online conversions and sales process.

There are 3 paid Plerdy plans available:

• Start – from $98/month
• Business – from $198/month
• Premium – $312/month

7. Woopra

Woopra is a customer journey analytics platform that provides granular tracking of user behavior, enabling businesses to better understand how users progress down the funnel.

What Woopra features can you use for funnel optimization?

The key feature is user journey tracking which allows you to map unique user paths across all touchpoints. This, combined with attribution analysis, which looks into the factors that drive conversions, enables teams to gain a comprehensive picture of where users can be facing friction that slows them down.

In addition, Woopra offers behavioral segmentation and cohort retention analysis.

Woopra offers 3 plans:

• Free
• Pro – $999/month
• Enterprise – custom pricing

8. Amplitude

Amplitude is another powerful standalone analytics application in our roundup. SaaS teams can use its functionality to track and analyze product usage at different stages of a customer’s journey to identify friction as well as ways to remove it.

The key Amplitude analytics features are:

• User segmentation and behavioral cohorts
• Custom event tracking
• Funnel analysis and visualization
• Pathfinder – to map out user paths inside the product
• Pathfinder Users – to gain insights into the paths taken by power users
• A/B testing

Users can choose from 3 Amplitude plans:

• Starter – free
• Plus – $49/ month
• Growth – custom pricing

9. Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is an analytics platform specializing in customer engagement and behavior analysis. It enables SaaS businesses to gather the insights that they need to create satisfying customer experiences and drive growth.

What funnel optimization features does Kissmetrics offer?

• Funnel analytics and visualization
• Path report – for detailed analysis of user actions leading to conversions
• User segmentation and cohort analysis
• Activity reports to track trends
• A/B testing
• Custom dashboards for easy tracking of key metrics

There are 3 main Kissmetrics pricing plans:

• Silver – from $199/month
• Gold – from $499/month
• Platinum – custom pricing

Kissmetrics also offers a Pay As You Go plan and charges $0.0025/event.

10. Heap

We’re closing the roundup of funnel optimization tools with yet another dedicated product analytics solution, Heap.

Heap is a comprehensive analytics product that allows you to automatically track all aspects of user behavior inside the product. Armed with such granular experiences, you can optimize the user experience at different touchpoints to improve conversions.

Key Heap analytics features include:

• Autocapture – to collect data about all user interactions without tagging
• Custom event tracking
• Segmentation
• Funnels
• Journeys – to visualize and analyze all the paths that users take inside the product
• Influence – to assess the impact of different conversion drivers

Heap comes with 4 different pricing plans: Free, Growth, Pro, and Premier. All the paid plans are available with custom pricing.

Conclusion

A robust funnel optimization tool is essential to improve the product experience at different stages of the customer journey.

By monitoring how many users advance down the funnel and how quickly, SaaS product teams can find and remove friction points that stop your website visitors from signing up, adopting the product, and converting it into paying customers.

If you want to see how Userpilot can help your team optimize your entire funnel, book the demo!