Funnel
The staged path from first look to purchase, drawn as a narrowing shape because people fall out at every step.
See it
What it is
A funnel is a set of ordered steps with a count at each one: 1000 saw the ad, 120 clicked, 40 started signup, 12 finished, 4 paid. Drawn as a shape it narrows, which is why the metaphor stuck. Totals do real work: they drive the forecast, the budget, and whether you have enough volume for any of these numbers to be trustworthy. The diagnostic number is the drop between two neighboring steps, because that is the one that tells you where next week goes.
Marketers split it into top (awareness, cold traffic), middle (consideration, comparison pages, lead magnets), and bottom (decision, checkout, sales call). Each stage answers a different question: the top wants a reason to care, the bottom wants pricing, a guarantee, and one obvious button.
Gotcha: real buyers do not walk a straight line. They bounce, return three weeks later on a different device, read a competitor comparison, then convert from a search for your brand name. The funnel is a counting tool, not a description of human behavior, and last-click reporting will cheerfully credit the wrong step.
Ask AI for it
Map the conversion funnel for [product]. List every stage from first touch to paid, and for each one give: the exact tracked event that marks it (ad impression, click, landing page view, signup started, signup completed, purchase), the question the visitor is asking at that moment, the asset that answers it, and the single metric to watch. Then flag the two steps most likely to leak, with one specific fix each. Output as a table ordered widest stage first, plus the step-to-step conversion rate I should be measuring.