Funnel Steps:How Many Should a Funnel Have? Five or Six
Funnel steps: five or six is the answer. More feels precise but adds noise, splits your small volume and adds upkeep. Here is how to choose yours well.
Funnel steps: how many should a funnel have? Five or six. More feels precise and is worse: every extra step adds noise, splits your small volume into groups too small to read, and adds upkeep. Decompose one step later, only once you know it is the problem.
Funnel steps: how many should a funnel have? Fewer than you want
Five or six funnel steps. That is the answer. The rest of this post is why you will not believe it.
You will want twelve. Of course you will. You know your business in loving detail, and every little moment feels like it matters. The pricing page visit. The second email open. The scroll past the testimonials. It all feels like a step.
It is not. It is detail, and detail is not the same as a decision.
A funnel is a model of a decision. A model that copies every wrinkle of reality is not a model, it is a mess with a title. Five or six well-chosen steps describe almost any purchase decision at the resolution you can actually act on. Note the last four words. Act on. Not admire.
What funnel steps actually are
Before you count them, be clear about what you are counting.
Each step is a state the person reaches, in order. Arrived. Understood what this is. Gave me their email. Completed setup. Used it once. Paid. Those are states. They are not pages.
That distinction fixes half the argument about the number. Steps written as pages multiply every time you redesign the site. Steps written as states stay put. Reorganise your navigation and a state-based funnel does not notice.
The other rule is order. If someone can reach step four without step two, then step two is not a step in this funnel. It is a side path. Including it makes your drop-off numbers meaningless. If you want the full treatment of that, how to define a funnel for a small business goes through it.
So the first cut is not about volume at all. It is about honesty. Delete anything that is not a state, and anything that is not strictly in sequence. You may be down to six before you have thought about the cost of keeping them.
Free guide · 20 pagesStop guessing where it leaks.The Funnel Playbook: where you are losing people and how to find out.Get the free guide →Why more funnel steps hurt a one-person business
Three things go wrong as the count climbs. All three bite harder when you are alone.
Noise. Each step is another place where a number can wobble for no reason. With a handful of steps you can see the wobble and ignore it. With twelve, something is always moving, and you chase it.
Volume. You do not have a large audience. Split it across many steps and then across segments and every group becomes too small to read. A rate calculated from a few people is a rumour. You cannot make decisions from rumours, though you will try.
Maintenance. Every step is something you have to track, name, check and keep working. When you redesign a page, you break one. When you add a tool, you break another. The funnel stops being an instrument and starts being a second job.
That last one is the killer for a solo operator. You do not have an analyst. You have Sunday evening. Anything you cannot keep alive on Sunday evening will die.
Too few, right, too many
You can go wrong in both directions, so here is the honest comparison.
| Number of steps | What you gain | What it costs you | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two or three | Very easy to maintain and to read | One step hides several. A big loss has nowhere to show up, so you cannot locate it | Too coarse to diagnose anything. Fine for a first look. |
| Five or six funnel steps | Enough resolution to point at a leak. Few enough to keep alive | A little coarseness inside any one step | The default. Start here. |
| Eight to ten | A finer picture, in theory | Small groups, more noise, more upkeep | Only if you have the volume and a reason. Most solo funnels do not. |
| Twelve or more | A feeling of control | Everything above, multiplied | A reporting project, not a funnel. |
Notice the first row. Too few is a real failure too. If your whole funnel is "visited" and "paid", you know you are losing people and you cannot say where. It is the Sunday anxiety again, now with a chart.
The sweet spot sits where a drop can be located but the groups are still big enough to trust.
When one step is secretly three
Sometimes a step really is complicated inside. Setup might involve five separate actions and you suspect that is where people stall.
The temptation is to split it into five funnel steps on day one. Resist.
First, find out if that step is even the problem. Rank your steps by absolute loss, meaning drop-off multiplied by volume, and weight by how cheap the fix is. How to fix the biggest funnel drop-off explains how. If setup is where the largest cheap loss lives, then and only then decompose it.
The principle is simple. Zoom in on the step that has earned the attention. Leave the others at low resolution. A funnel that is detailed everywhere is detailed nowhere useful.
If the step is complex, you can also decompose it for a short stretch, learn what you needed, and fold it back. Detail does not have to be permanent. You are allowed to look closely and then stop looking closely.
Free assessmentHow trapped are you, really?Take the Corporate Suffocation Index, the free solopreneur readiness assessment.Take the assessment →A quick way to choose your six
Do this on paper, in one sitting.
- Write the last step first. The outcome nearest the money. Everything else is built backwards from it.
- Write the first step. Usually arrived.
- Fill the middle with the moments a person decides something. Not the moments they merely do something. Deciding is a state. Clicking is not.
- Cross out anything someone can skip. If they can reach the end without it, it is not in this funnel.
- Count. More than six? Cross out the least decisive ones until you are there.
Then stop. You are not done forever. You are done enough to start measuring, and measuring is how you find out which step deserves a closer look. How you wire those up is covered in how to track a funnel with events.
One funnel is enough to begin with. One well-defined funnel you actually look at beats six nobody maintains. Add a second only when the first has changed a decision.
The pull to add a step
It will come back. Three weeks in, something odd happens and you think: if only I had a step for that.
Ask one question before you add it. What decision would this step change? If the answer is "I would just like to know", the step is curiosity, not instrumentation. Curiosity is allowed. It does not need a permanent place in the funnel.
If the answer is "I would work on a different page", then you have a real candidate. Even then, try it for a short stretch and see whether it earns its keep. A step that never changes what you do is a step you are paying to maintain for nothing.
Think of the funnel like the dashboard in a car. You want the speed, the fuel and the warning lights. You do not want a gauge for every bolt in the engine. More gauges do not make you a better driver. They make you stare at the dashboard instead of the road.
The road, for you, is the work that moves a step. A slightly blunt funnel that gets you to that work on Monday beats a perfect one you are still configuring in March.
Free guide · 20 pagesStop guessing where it leaks.The Funnel Playbook: where you are losing people and how to find out.Get the free guide →The pattern behind it
Every argument for more steps is really an argument for more comfort. A longer funnel feels thorough. It feels like you have left nothing to chance.
But the point of the funnel is a decision. Which step do I work on this month? If you can answer that with six steps, adding six more does not make the answer better. It makes the question harder to ask.
So pick six funnel steps. Look at it for a month. Let the data tell you where to zoom. That is not laziness. It is how a person with limited evenings and a business to grow gets a clear answer without building a reporting department.
Free assessmentHow trapped are you, really?Take the Corporate Suffocation Index, the free solopreneur readiness assessment.Take the assessment →Frequently asked questions
Are five or six funnel steps really enough?
For almost any purchase decision, yes, at the resolution you can act on. If one step turns out to be the problem and is complex inside, break that one open later. You do not need the detail before you know where the problem is.
Can a funnel have too few steps?
Yes. With only two or three, a single step hides several, so a big loss has nowhere to show up. You know people are leaving but not where. That is hardly better than having no funnel.
Should every page on my site be a step?
No. Steps are states a person reaches, not pages they saw. Pages change when you redesign. States hold. Write your steps as what the person has done or decided, and let the pages be whatever they need to be.
Do I need a separate funnel for each product?
Start with one, the one that ends nearest the money. One funnel you really look at is worth more than several you do not. Add another only after the first has changed a decision you made.
The full method, with the checklists, is in The Funnel Playbook, a free 20-page playbook.
How trapped are you, really?
Take the Corporate Suffocation Index, the free solopreneur readiness assessment.