Startups struggle without Funnel Tracking. This post shows you how to fix it in early stages. You’ve launched your MVP, shipped a landing page, maybe even onboarded your first users. But when someone on the team asks, “Where are people dropping off?” or “Which campaigns are working?” — all eyes turn to analytics… and no one really knows. That’s a problem I see often — and it’s completely avoidable . As a digital analytics consultant, I’ve worked with dozens of early-stage companies. The most successful ones didn’t just move fast — they tracked smart  from day one. Let’s talk about why funnel tracking matters for startups, and the 5 key funnels  you should never launch without. First — What Happens When You Don’t Track Funnels Early? Here’s what I often see: Campaigns are running, but no one knows which ones convert. Users drop off at onboarding — and no one knows where. Revenue looks fine, but retention is a black hole. Different teams rely on different metrics, creating reporting chaos. Sound familiar? Skipping early funnel setup means missing insights when they matter most  — when your product is still shaping and evolving. 5 Funnels That Every Startup Needs to Track 1. Marketing Funnel (Ad → Click → Visit → Signup) This is your source of truth for acquisition. Track: Where traffic comes from (UTMs, referrals) Which landing pages convert Where drop-off happens (especially on mobile) Tool tip:  Use GA4 + Google Tag Manager with clean UTM tagging to keep campaign data reliable. 2. Signup Funnel This is where the first real friction lives. Track: CTA clicks Form field drop-offs Successful vs. failed submissions Pro tip:  Use custom events to track form_start , form_submit , and form_error  separately. 3. Activation Funnel This measures if users actually use  the product. Track time-to-first-key-action (your “Aha moment”) Monitor what % of users activate within 1st day/session Real example:  In one project, tracking showed 60% of new users never reached the main dashboard — a broken onboarding flow was the hidden culprit. 4. Conversion Funnel Whether it’s a subscription or one-time purchase, track: Clicks on upgrade or pricing buttons Drop-off on payment page Successful transactions (linked with Stripe or MMP) Tool tip:  Use events like begin_checkout , add_payment_info , and purchase  to cover the full flow. 5. Retention & Re-engagement Funnel Your early growth is meaningless if no one comes back. Track: Returning users (D1, D7, D30) Notification or email open → product re-entry Segment by acquisition source or behavior Bonus tip:  Use cohort analysis in GA4 or Mixpanel to measure real retention, not just vanity metrics. Not Sure Where to Start? Start Simple. You don’t need a 50-event schema on day one. But you do need to: Define your key actions Set up tools like GA4, GTM, or your MMP tool (e.g. Adjust, Appsflyer) early Test tracking before you launch campaigns And most importantly — document it.  Even a basic event dictionary can prevent chaos later. Final Thoughts Funnel tracking isn’t just about analytics. It’s about understanding your users  and giving your product the best chance to grow. If you’re an early-stage founder, product manager, or marketer — invest one day into funnel setup. It’ll save you weeks (or months) of guessing later. Need help designing a lightweight but scalable analytics stack? I’d love to connect.

Whether you’re launching a new website, scaling a product, or trying to diagnose a sudden drop in conversions, a tracking audit  is one of the most valuable things you can do. But what does a solid analytics audit actually include? In this post, I’ll share the exact process I follow  when auditing digital analytics implementations — especially across tools like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) , Google Tag Manager (GTM) , and Adobe Analytics . Let’s dive in. Why Audits Are Critical Even well-designed tracking systems can break silently: Developers forget to update tags. Product changes aren’t reflected in the event schema. Tools are added without thinking about data governance. As a result, companies end up with dirty data , missed insights, and poor decisions. A regular audit ensures your data is clean, complete, and trustworthy. Confirm the Tracking Plan Exists (and Matches Reality) Before anything else, check if there’s a tracking plan or event dictionary . This is your benchmark. It should answer: What events should be tracked? Which parameters/dimensions should be passed? What tools are capturing each event? What I look for: Updated documentation (GA4 or Adobe event naming, variable mappings) Alignment with business goals (Do we actually track purchases, form submits, scrolls, etc.?) Version control (is the current implementation in sync with the tracking doc?) Audit Google Tag Manager Setup GTM is often the engine room of digital tracking — but it can easily get messy. Checklist: Are containers properly published and versioned? Any unused or duplicate tags? Trigger logic: Is it precise, or firing multiple times? Are dataLayer pushes structured consistently? Are variables (form fields, click text, etc.) well named and scoped? Pro tip : Use Preview Mode and Tag Assistant to test in real time. Inspect GA4 Event and Parameter Coverage GA4’s flexibility is powerful — but risky if not controlled. What I look for in GA4: Key events are tracked (page_view, scroll, add_to_cart, purchase, etc.) Events use consistent naming  (no camelCase vs. snake_case confusion) Parameters are populated (e.g., product_id, value, page_location) Enhanced Measurement settings — are they active or custom overridden? Conversion events properly marked Filters or internal traffic exclusion rules I usually export the Events and Parameters reports, then compare with the tracking plan. Check Adobe Analytics Variables and Rules For Adobe Analytics, I focus on variable mapping and rule accuracy. Checklist: Are eVars , props , and events  correctly assigned and scoped? Rule-based classifications — are they accurate? Launch rules and data elements in Adobe Launch (or DTM) are firing as expected Are internal URL filters, bots, or custom dimensions set correctly? Since Adobe doesn’t have a live preview like GTM, I often use Adobe Experience Platform Debugger  for real-time validation. Validate Cross-Tool Data Consistency Even when GA4, GTM, and Adobe are all firing, data may not align. What I compare: Traffic volumes between tools (within acceptable variance) Event counts (e.g., purchases  GA4 vs. Adobe) Attribution data across platforms (meta vs. GA4 vs. MMP tools) Pro tip:  Create a Data QA dashboard  that monitors key funnel steps side-by-side across tools. Bonus: Don’t Forget These Often-Missed Checks GDPR/consent handling — Are events suppressed before consent? App vs. Web parity (if you're working in cross-platform environments) UTM tracking — Are UTMs passed cleanly to tools? Funnel integrity — Are there drop-off points due to missing events? Final Thoughts Auditing analytics isn’t just about checking if “tags are firing.” It’s about ensuring the entire data flow  — from click to conversion — is accurate, explainable, and actionable . I’ve worked with dozens of teams where a good audit turned confusion into clarity — and more importantly, enabled faster, better decisions. If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your tracking setup, I’m happy to help — feel free to connect or message me directly here on LinkedIn.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, data contains essential knowledge for successful marketing strategies. Adobe Analytics, with its robust features, gives marketers a chance to unlock actionable insights for making impactful decisions. In this blog post, we’ll unveil "The Ultimate Toolkit: 5 Adobe Analytics Reports for Data-Driven Marketers". These essential reports are designed to help you understand your audience, optimise your campaigns, and boost sales and revenue. Whether you're refining your customer journey, identifying your best-performing channels, or analysing your customers favourite products, these tools will ensure your marketing strategy is always on point. Harness Real Time Reports in Adobe Analytics for Instant Insights Real Time Reports  in Adobe Analytics provide immediate insights into user activity on your website or app as it happens. These reports are particularly useful for monitoring the performance of ongoing campaigns, identifying emerging trends, and responding quickly to events or issues. Real Time Reports in Adobe Analytics are needed to be configured under Admin/Report Suite Manager. You can create up to 3 Real Time Reports to collect data simultaneously. Use cases for Real Time Reports are Locations, Traffic Sources, Content, Events and Conversions. Adobe Analytics Traffic Reports: Monitor and Optimize Website Performance Traffic Reports enable you to monitor website performance and user engagement. Traffic Reports in Adobe Analytics consist of Key Metrics, Pages and Site Sections Reports. Key Metrics Report utilises visits,  Page Views and Unique Visitors as main KPI’s and outlines how much traffic you are gathering on your website. To review your websites trends you can take advantage of Page Views, Visits and Visitors reports, both of them make comparisons of your KPI’s in the current month so far with 4 weeks prior or 52 week prior periods. Pages Report  contains a list of your most popular pages with Page Views, You can easily add metrics like Time on Site(in seconds) or Bounce Rate by editing this report and use these as good indicators for your visitors engagement and interactions on specific pages. Site Sections Report  in Adobe Analytics provides insights into the performance and engagement levels of different sections or categories of your website. It is particularly useful for understanding how users interact with broad areas of your site, such as product categories, content hubs, or navigation sections. Acquisition Made Simple: Exploring Marketing Channel Reports in Adobe Analytics Marketing Channel Reports   under Acquisition in Adobe Analytics are used to evaluate the performance of different marketing channels and understand how users are arriving at your website or app. These reports help digital marketers assess the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and allocate resources to the most impactful channels. The Marketing Channel Report in Adobe Analytics uses Marketing Channel as dimension and compares 3 types of revenue as metric using Attribution: Revenue - 30 Days - First Touch Attribution, Revenue - 30 Days - Last Touch Attribution, Revenue - 30 Days Linear Attribution. The Channel Overlap  indicates the number of times a conversion was influenced by multiple marketing channels. Unlock Insights with Conversion Reports in Adobe Analytics Conversion Reports  in Adobe Analytics provide detailed insights into how effectively your website or app is turning visitors into customers or achieving other key business goals. The Product Performance Report contains an overview of your revenue over time, a scorecard on your revenue and conversion rate week over week, a fallout report of product view-add to cart- purchase and a product performance table with commerce events as metrics and Product ID as dimension. You can simply modify the report and use Product Name as dimension.  The Product Conversion Funnel Report  contains a funnel of  Carts, Checkouts and Order events. In addition to this you can find Revenue Averages like: Average Revenue per Product, Average Revenue per Cart, Average Revenue per Checkout, Average Revenue per Order,Average Revenue per Order and Average Revenue per Unit. The Categories Report  enables you to get an overview of your mostly visited product categories. Thereby you can determine which product lines are most popular for your customers. Adobe Analytics Audience Reports: Know Your Customers Better Adobe Analytics Audience Reports provide a wealth of insights into who your customers are, how they engage with your platform, and what drives their behavior. These reports allow you to segment your audience based on demographics, behavior, and preferences, giving you a deeper understanding of your customer base. Geo-Language  and Geo-Location Reports  in Adobe Analytics provide insights into where your users are located geographically and what languages they use. These reports are essential for understanding your audience's demographics, tailoring content to specific regions, and optimizing global marketing strategies. The Cohort Analysis Report  in Adobe Analytics is a powerful tool used to analyze and understand the behavior of groups of users, or "cohorts," over time. A cohort is typically defined as a group of users who share a common characteristic or action within a specified time frame, such as signing up on the same day or making their first purchase in a given week. The Cohort Analysis Report provides valuable insight on the retention and churn of your specified cohorts. You can simply define your cohort inclusion and return criteria by using metrics like Visits, Order.  In order to analyse the performance and behavior of a specific audience or condition, it is meaningful to apply segments, such as in the following example: The Return Frequency Report  in Adobe Analytics provides insights into how often visitors return to your website or app after their initial visit. It categorizes users based on the number of days or times they revisit, helping you understand user loyalty, engagement, and retention patterns. The right reports can turn your data into actionable insights, helping you make smarter decisions, optimize campaigns, and elevate your marketing strategy. By leveraging these five essential Adobe Analytics reports, you'll have the ultimate toolkit to drive growth and stay ahead in today's competitive landscape. At Risewise Digital, we empower businesses to harness the full potential of Adobe Analytics to make informed decisions and achieve exceptional results. Whether you're just getting started or looking to optimize your reporting strategies, our expertise in digital analytics can guide you every step of the way. To learn more about our services, contact us for personalized support in taking your marketing analytics to the next level. Let’s turn your data into actionable insights and measurable growth today!

This blog post contains in my opinion the top 5 GA build in reports every digital marketer should take advantage of in their daily business. Using these reports digital marketers can take actionable insights to enhance their business strategy. Realtime Reporting for Smarter Digital Business Decisions  GA4 real-time reports offer live insights into how users are interacting with your website or app at any given moment. These reports help digital marketers and analysts monitor and respond to activity as it happens. Realtime data is valuable and helps you to understand the  immediate behaviour of your visitors. Depending on your business, this data can enrich your knowledge by optimising live campaigns or content on your website or app. In the meantime it can also be an indicator of potential issues on your platform and can help IT teams to review the current traffic on your site or app.  GA4 realtime reports generally provide answers on your users current location, technological devices they are using, which pages they are currently viewing, what actions they do on your website or app, from which campaign source they are coming and how they interact with your digital business. Using these real-time insights, businesses can make faster, data-driven decisions, optimize user experiences on the fly, and respond to any unexpected surges in traffic or technical issues. Below you can find an overview of the key features in GA4 real-time reports: User Locations & Activity: GA4 contains a map view which is showing where active users interacting with your digital business are located geographically. This can  help your business to track activity in specific regions. It is also a great opportunity to review the reach of localized campaigns. User Snapshot & Demographics: Realtime reports contain user characteristics like device type, location, and demographics (when available), these information provide a brief summary on your active users. Pages & Screen Views: This feature allows you to see which pages (or app screens) users are viewing in real-time, showing which content is currently popular and driving engagement. Events & Conversions: With realtime reports you are able to monitor specific user interactions of your active users. These can be conversion events (e.g. lead form submission) , e-commerce events (e.g. purchase) or custom events (e.g. login, click)  Traffic Sources: GA4 shows which sources (organic, direct, referral, etc.) are driving real-time traffic, allowing you to see the impact of ongoing campaigns or social media posts as users engage with your site. 2. GA4 Traffic Acquisition: Discover How Customers Get to Your Site Traffic Acquisition report in GA4  provides insights into how users are arriving at your website or app. It indicates which channels, campaigns, and sources are driving traffic to your digital business. offering a deeper look into user acquisition pathways.  Traffic Acquisition report is essential for optimising digital marketing strategies. By understanding which sources drive the most valuable traffic, marketers can allocate budgets and resources more effectively, target high-performing channels, and improve campaign ROI.  Below you can find some of the insights provided in acquisition reports: Traffic Sources: Outline how users found your site or app.  Traffic sources are categorised by channels like Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, Social, and Referral. Using traffic sources you can identify which channels bring most of your visitors and which channels play a big role or attribute to final conversions. Thereby it is highly recommended to use your own custom channel grouping by specifying your channels to measure your incoming traffic.  User Acquisition vs. Session Acquisition: GA4 splits acquisition metrics into two views—User Acquisition (first-time interactions with the site) and Session Acquisition (acquisition for each session, including repeat visitors). This differentiation provides insights into the effectiveness of acquisition strategies for both new and returning users. Detailed Source and Medium Analysis: You can see the exact sources (like Google, Facebook, or direct) and mediums (e.g., organic, CPC, referral) driving traffic. This granular view helps in assessing the impact of specific campaigns, ads, or search engine optimization efforts. Campaign Performance: The Traffic Acquisition report allows you to analyse traffic from different marketing campaigns, whether they’re from Google Ads, email marketing, or social media. By tagging campaigns with UTM parameters, you can track each campaign’s impact on traffic and conversions in detail. 3. GA4 Engagement Reports: See What Customers Do on Your Website or App Engagement reports in GA4 provide insights into how users interact with your website or app. Using these reports you get a richer understanding of users behavior.  Here’s a look at the core components of engagement reports in GA4: Events : In GA4, user interactions are tracked as events. Events can be any kind of user interactions like clicks, impressions, form submissions, purchases, downloads.  Event tracking in GA4 can be implemented and customised according to your business strategy. Conversions : Conversions can be set up of specific events that are valuable KPI’s for your business, e.g. purchases, form submissions.The Engagement reports show how often these conversions happen, giving a clear picture of user actions that lead to business outcomes. Pages and Screens : This report shows which pages or app screens are mostly popular, including key metrics like views, engagement time, and engagement rate for each page or screen.  Engaged Sessions : This metric basically indicates the number of engaged sessions on your website or app. In  GA4 engaged sessions are defined as sessions where the user stays on the site or app for at least 10 seconds or views multiple pages or screens, or completes a conversion event.  Engagement Time : This metric tracks the total time users actively engage with your site or app. 4. GA4 Monetization: Identifying Your Most Favored Products in E-Commerce Monetization reports in GA4 provide businesses an overview of how users interact with products or services offered. Analysing these reports can reveal your customers' featured products generating most of your revenue. E-commerce purchases report in GA4  tracks users' entire shopping behavior journey (from viewing a product to adding it to the cart to completing a purchase). With these reports  campaign offers can be refined or user experience on the shopping journey pages can be improved. E-commerce purchases reports contains some of the below KPI’s: Revenue : Total revenue generated by purchases, which can be broken down by product. Items Purchased : The quantity of items sold. Product Performance : Data on individual products, such as product views, add-to-cart rates, purchase rates, and revenue by product. 5. Optimizing the Purchase Journey: How Well Do Customers Complete Purchases? The Purchase Journey report in GA4 provides valuable insights to  businesses  that analyse how effectively customers navigate the buying process. Using this report data-driven decisions can be made to streamline the purchase process, reduce cart abandonment, and improve overall conversion rates. Sdditionally it contains insights into user behavior that can inform website or app design improvements, to enchance overall customer satisfaction. Key components of the purchase journey report are: Funnel Analysis: The Purchase Journey report can illustrate a funnel view, showing how many users enter at each stage of the purchasing process (e.g., product view, cart addition, checkout initiation, purchase completion). This helps identify drop-off points where potential customers abandon the process. Time to Purchase: This metric tracks the time it takes for users to complete a purchase after their initial interaction. Understanding the average time to purchase can help in optimizing marketing strategies and reducing friction in the buying process. Today we have explored five crucial reports— Realtime reports, Traffic Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization, Purchase Journey. All these reports offer invaluable insights that can help you optimize your strategies, understand customer behavior, and ultimately drive better results for your business. At risewise.digital , we specialize in helping businesses harness the power of GA4 to turn data into actionable insights. If you're ready to take your digital marketing to the next level, reach out to us today for expert guidance and tailored solutions. Let’s unlock your success together!

In this blog post, you will hear about the main points to keep in mind for successfully tracking your customers shopping behaviour on your e-commerce website or app. Measurement Comes First Did you know that your digital marketing strategy needs to be aligned with your measurement plan for digital analytics? Digital Marketers often tend to forget the crucial steps in tracking user behaviour. Right at this point,  we need to involve technical marketers in our conversations to define and understand our approach for digital marketing.  We are living in a fast changing environment. Our day to day campaigns are launched quickly, but they would need more preparation and planning than you might think. Technical marketers have the ability to work cross functional with digital marketers, business strategists and IT developers. They are critically involved in shaping your company’s measurement strategy.  Before setting up a marketing campaign, lets focus on the following questions: What are the main goals of my campaign and which KPI’s do I want to measure? What is the first touchpoint of your campaign with your prospective customers or existing? Which steps need your visitors to pass in order to proceed and complete a conversion? Which types of data do you need to measure in each step of the customer journey from the first touchpoint to the final conversion? Full Funnel Tracking Reviewing your measurement plan enables you to take initiatives for building the best analytics tracking. Regarding users shopping behaviour analysis both Google Analytics as well as Adobe Analytics have integrations and setups to complete. GA4 Enhanced e-Commerce Tracking has defined  standardised event names and parameters developers need to implement in each step of the shopping behaviour. Those event names within dataLayers can be found clearly on Google Developer Sites . Once these events are implemented and all relevant item parameters are populated, Google Analytics enables its full usage for Digital Marketers with special reports like, Ecommerce purchases, Purchase Journey, Checkout Journey. Adobe Analytics also provides guidelines for Commerce Implementation . All reports can be built then in Adobe Analysis Workspace, based on the events used in the implementation. Critical Steps to consider in Product Performance Depending on the quality of your dataLayer, meaning the efficient implementation of enhanced e-commerce events with relevant item parameters, you will be able to review the full outcome of marketing campaigns on product level.  If you want to know, how well your specific products have performed within a special campaign period or over their lifetime on the market, you need to have standardised product information across all your shopping behaviour steps. In this case product name or SKU can be used as an identifier to analyse the entire shopping behaviour process. Additionally product categories can be used for hierarchical reporting of product lines. Product list names are also crucial to analyse the performance with CTR’s to your product detail pages. As final words on Shopping Behaviour Tracking, digital businesses can find out the true and efficient value of their digital marketing activities. It is critical not to underestimate the efficient planning and implementation phases of digital analytics on your website and app. Thus it is crucial to work with technical marketers as consultant stakeholders between marketing and IT teams. To conclude, understanding customer shopping behavior is not just about collecting data—it’s about harnessing that data to drive actionable insights. From click paths to product interactions, the right approach to shopping behavior tracking empowers e-commerce businesses to refine user experiences, increase conversions, and build customer loyalty. At risewise.digital , we specialize in transforming data into stories that speak to business growth. Our deep expertise in digital analytics, tailored specifically for e-commerce, helps brands unlock the full potential of their data. If you’re ready to elevate your approach to shopping behavior tracking and drive meaningful outcomes, connect with us today. Discover how we can help you make data-driven decisions that resonate with your customers and boost your bottom line.