Google Analytics Goal Funnel - Later Steps Match 1st Step

Question

I'm setting up a goal funnel in Google Analytics. I want to monitor the path through these pages:

/ticketing

/ticketing/tours

/ticketing/payment

/ticketing/confirmation (final step in goal)

The problem is that when someone enters /ticketing/payment, they also match the first step, and Google Analytics backfills it. So my funnel looks as though everyone as made it through each step.

I need a way to match just /ticketing or, if it has URL parameters on it, /ticketing?...

I read an old blog article that I should use negative lookbacks, but then read that Google Analytics no longer supports them.

I've set up my funnel steps as:

1. /ticketing/$|/ticketing$|/ticketing/\\?|/ticketing\\?
2. /ticketing/tours|/ticketing/tours/
3. /ticketing/payment

Would this work?

Answer 1

Just FYI, lookbacks technically work with GA Custom Reports (but not officially supported, so it might just stop 'working' one day), but back to your original question, you can just modify your steps with regex to something like this:

\/ticketing($|\?.*)
\/ticketing\/tours.*
\/ticketing\/payment.*
\/ticketing\/confirmation.*

(note that I'm using full regex, hence escaping backslashes)

Answer 2

Backfilling is expected behaviour as per documentation :

The Funnel Visualization report backfills any skipped steps between the step at which the user entered the funnel and the step at which the user exited the funnel.

No amount of regex magic will solve that problem. You can set the first step as required step, but later steps will still be backfilled (also if a user loads a page twice this will be recorded as an exit).

The simplest solution IMO is to use flow reports instead of funnels. They do not backfill and also report if people navigate back.