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Guide 49 · Ecommerce · GA4 + Tag Manager

Read the Purchase journey funnel: session start to purchase, and where the funnel loses buyers

Checked 11 November 2026 · Verification: reference file checked in Python (figures recomputed from the worked example) · Steps traced to Google's developer docs and Analytics Help, opened 11 November 2026 · 5-minute read

The Purchase journey is a closed funnel with five steps — session start, view product, add to cart, begin checkout, purchase — built from the ecommerce events you already send.

Expected signal

After the events flow, Reports, then Life cycle, then Monetization, then Purchase journey shows all five steps. In the worked funnel below, 1,000 sessions become 41 purchases — 4.1 percent overall — for 2,954.05 in purchase revenue at 72.05 per order.

Download the reference: the purchase-journey-funnel reference (JSON) (775 bytes, MD5 155347b50ad2b98176c3a4e49cf62d07). It holds the event parameters, the worked example, and the recomputed figures.

What you need

  • The four ecommerce events the funnel is built from. Session start is automatic; view product needs view_item, add to cart needs add_to_cart, begin checkout needs begin_checkout, and purchase needs purchase. A missing event leaves its step empty.
  • One worked funnel to read against. The counts below are the worked example's inputs, labelled as such; the rates and the revenue are recomputed from them.

The trace

  1. Open the report in the Life cycle collection. In Analytics, click Reports on the left, then Life cycle, then Monetization, then Purchase journey. The report is a funnel report that counts the users who reach each step, from the start of a session onwards.
  2. Read the five steps in order. The steps are Session start, View product, Add to cart, Begin checkout, and Purchase. In the worked funnel, 1,000 sessions start, 420 view a product, 180 add to cart, 96 begin checkout, and 41 purchase. Each step is a count of users who reached it.
  3. Read the step rates, not just the counts. View product keeps 420 out of 1,000 sessions, or 42.0 percent. Add to cart keeps 180 out of 420, or 42.9 percent. Begin checkout keeps 96 out of 180, or 53.3 percent. Purchase keeps 41 out of 96, or 42.7 percent. The overall rate is 41 out of 1,000, or 4.1 percent. The weakest step in the worked funnel is the first one: more than half the sessions never view a product.
  4. Turn the final step into revenue. The 41 purchases at the worked order value of 72.05 come to 41 × 72.05 = 2,954.05 in purchase revenue. The funnel answers where buyers are lost; the revenue line answers what each lost step is worth.
  5. Break the funnel down to find where it loses one group. The report defaults to device category, and the dimension can change to country, region, city, and other demographics. A step that loses buyers on one device and not another points at the device, not at the shop.

Dead ends

DEAD END — A FUNNEL WITH ONLY SESSION START. A new property shows session start data only, because the ecommerce events are not collected automatically. The funnel cannot be fixed in the report; the events have to be implemented first, and the steps fill in after about 24 hours.

DEAD END — READING THE FUNNEL AS OPEN. Both journey reports are closed funnels by default: a user must pass through the earlier steps to count in a later one. A purchase that arrived without a recorded view_item does not count in the purchase step of the funnel, even though the order exists in the revenue reports.

DEAD END — CHANGING THE STEPS. The events in the Purchase journey report cannot be customized. A shop that wants a different step in the funnel has to build a funnel exploration instead; editing this report's steps is not possible.

End state

The Purchase journey reads as five counts — 1,000, 420, 180, 96, 41 — with step rates 42.0, 42.9, 53.3, and 42.7 percent, an overall rate of 4.1 percent, and 2,954.05 in purchase revenue at 72.05 per order. The funnel is fed by view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, and purchase; a missing event leaves its step empty.

Sources

Checked 11 November 2026. The report structure above is the one in Analytics Help and Google's ecommerce guide, both opened 11 November 2026. The worked funnel's counts are the example's stated inputs; the rates and revenue were recomputed in Python: 420 out of 1,000 is 42.0 percent, 180 out of 420 is 42.9 percent, 96 out of 180 is 53.3 percent, 41 out of 96 is 42.7 percent, 41 out of 1,000 is 4.1 percent, and 41 × 72.05 = 2,954.05. No step was run inside a live Analytics property, because that needs a Google sign-in and this site does not sign in as anyone.