According to Statista, the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 74.1%. 

That means that out of every 100 potential clients, 74 may abandon your shopping cart today. 

Now, calculate how much money you are losing each day in terms of lost potential sales. This abandonment can be minimized if you direct your efforts towards optimizing your checkout process.

In GA4, you can optimize your checkout process through the Checkout Journey report.

What is the Checkout Journey Report in GA4?

The ‘Checkout Journey’ report is one of the Monetization reports available in GA4.

Following are the other GA4 Monetization Reports:

1. Monetization Overview Report.
2. In-app purchases Report.
3. Publisher ads Report.
4. Promotions Report.
5. User Purchase Journey Report.
6. Order Coupon Report.
7. Item list Report.

Through the Checkout Journey report in GA4, you can determine how users moved from one step of your checkout funnel to the next and at which step they entered or exited the checkout funnel.

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How to view the GA4 Checkout Journey report?

To view this report, follow the steps below:

Step-1: Login to your GA4 property and then click on the ‘Reports’ menu:

Step-2: Navigate to the ‘Checkout Journey’ report under ‘Monetization’:

You should now see a report like the one below:

From the ‘Checkout Journey’ report above, we can conclude that only 22% of users moved from the ‘Begin checkout’ stage to the ‘Add shipping’ stage. The remaining 78% of users dropped off the checkout funnel.

If we could increase the number of users that moved from the ‘Begin checkout’ stage to the ‘Add shipping’ stage, we could increase the probability of generating more sales on the website.

Now, the problem is we don’t know exactly which users proceeded to the ‘Add shipping ’ page from the ‘Begin checkout’ page and which didn’t. 

We don’t know how the users arrived on the website and why they abandoned the checkout. We have got a lot of questions to ask:

• Were they the users from organic search?
• Were they the users from paid search?
• Were they the users from social media?
• Did they use a desktop, tablet or mobile device to visit the website?
• Why did they visit the website?
• Why did they abandon the checkout?

Without segmenting the checkout funnel, you won’t be able to understand the reason for the drop-off from one checkout step to the next and how that drop-off can be reduced or eliminated. 

You can segment the checkout funnel by using the comparison feature:

Segment your checkout funnel by using the following custom segments:

1. Organic search traffic
2. Tablet and desktop traffic
3. Paid search traffic
4. Social media traffic
5. Direct traffic
6. Site search traffic
7. Referral traffic
8. Email traffic
9. Mobile traffic
10. Products
11. Product categories

Following is an example of a checkout funnel segmented by ‘Organic Search Traffic’:

You can also determine the reason for drop-offs from one checkout step to the next through ‘voice of customers’ analysis tools like:

• Heat map analysis.
• Session recordings.
• Usability testing.
• Online and offline surveys.
• A/B testing.
• Online and offline market research, etc.

The following could be the technical reasons for drop-offs from one checkout step to the next:

• Website errors (especially slow-loading pages).
• Data collection issues.
• Data integration issues.
• Cross-browser compatibility issues.
• Cross-device compatibility issues.

The Checkout Journey Report displays both the count and percentage of users who initiated the checkout process on your website/app and navigated through each of the subsequent steps in the checkout funnel.

Use the ‘Checkout Journey’ report to determine the biggest drop-offs from one step of the checkout funnel to the next.

These drop-offs can help to explain which part of the checkout funnel needs urgent attention.

For example, suppose there’s a significant decline in user activity between the “Begin Checkout” and “Add Shipping” stages:

In that case, you should investigate potential problems in the shipping phase, like hidden shipping fees.

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Important points about the Checkout Journey report in GA4

#1 You will be able to use the ‘Checkout Journey’ report in GA4 only when you have set up ecommerce tracking in your GA4 property.

#2 To see data in the report, you must implement the following ecommerce events: ‘begin_checkout‘, ‘add_shipping_info‘, ‘add_payment_info‘ and ‘purchase‘.

#3 The ‘Checkout Journey’ report employs a closed funnel approach, which means it only includes data for users who successfully navigate through each step of the purchase funnel. 

The users are only tallied in the specific steps they complete in the designated order. 

If a user skips a step, they are considered to have exited the funnel and are not included in the subsequent steps’ count.

Checkout Behavior Analysis report not showing the data?

If you are using a closed funnel in GA4, make sure that you are tracking each step of the funnel. Otherwise, your report won’t produce accurate visualization.

For example, the ‘Checkout Journey’ monetization report employ a closed funnel approach, which means it only includes data for users who successfully navigate through each step of the checkout funnel.

If a user skips a step, they are considered to have exited the checkout funnel and are not included in the subsequent steps’ count.

Similarly, if you skip tracking a particular step, it is equivalent to users skipping a step.

So, they are considered to have exited the checkout funnel and are not included in the subsequent steps’ count.

For example, if you are tracking ‘begin_checkout’ and ‘purchase’ events but not ‘add_shipping’ and ‘add_payment’ events, then you may not see any progression in your ‘Checkout Journey’ after ‘begin_checkout’.

Remember, if you skip tracking a particular step in a closed funnel, it is equivalent to users skipping a step.

Click on the link ‘View funnel steps’ to open a read-only view of the steps that make up the checkout funnel:

Note: The ‘Checkout Journey’ report does not allow for customisation of the funnel. However, you can create a custom funnel report if you wish to examine a different funnel.

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The data table of the Checkout Journey Report

The bottom part of the ‘Checkout Journey’ report contains a data table which provides information for each step in the checkout funnel for each device category: