Channel Journey
The full path a customer took before buying, not just the last click.
Most reporting gives all the credit for a sale to whatever the shopper touched last. Channel Journey shows the whole path instead: every marketing touch that led to an order, in the order it happened.
That matters because the last touch is often the least interesting one. Someone who found you through an Instagram ad, came back a week later from a newsletter, then typed your name into Google and bought was not won by Google.
Reading it
Each journey is one customer's route to one order. You will see the first touch, any touches in between, and the last one before they bought.
Patterns are what you are looking for. If your paid social almost never closes a sale but appears at the start of most journeys, that is a discovery channel, and judging it on last-click alone will have you turning off the thing that fills the top of your funnel.
Only marketing touches count
Someone browsing from your home page to a product page is not a marketing touch, and those steps are left out. If they were included, every journey would be dominated by the shopper walking around your own store.
Each order gets its own journey
A repeat customer's second order shows the touches that led to that order, not everything they have ever done. Without that, a loyal customer's first purchase would appear to have been influenced by things that happened months afterwards.
What it needs
The Aplon pixel, installed and collecting on your storefront, and campaign tags on your marketing links. Journeys can only contain touches we were able to see.
If a channel you know is working shows almost nothing here, the usual cause is untagged links rather than a lack of traffic.
Related
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