Join tables based on events occurring in sequence in a funnel.
The goal of funneljoin is to make it easy to analyze behavior funnels. For example, maybe you’re interested in finding the people who visit a page and then register. Or you want all the times people click on an item and add it to their cart within 2 days. These can all be answered quickly with funneljoin’s
after_join()or
funnel_start()and
funnel_step(). As funneljoin uses dplyr, it can also work with remote tables, but has only been tried on postgres.
For more examples of how to use funneljoin, check out the vignette, which shows different types of joins and the optional arguments, or this blog post, which showcases how to use funneljoin analyze questions and answers on StackOverflow.
You can install this package from GitHub with remotes:
library(remotes) install_github("datacamp/funneljoin")
library(dplyr) library(funneljoin)
We’ll take a look at two tables that come with the package,
landedand
registered. Each has a column
user_idand
timestamp.
Let’s say we wanted to get the first time people landed and the first time afterward they registered. We would
after_inner_join()with a
first-firstaftertype:
landed %>% after_inner_join(registered, by_user = "user_id", by_time = "timestamp", type = "first-firstafter", suffix = c("_landed", "_registered")) #> # A tibble: 5 x 3 #> user_id timestamp_landed timestamp_registered #> #> 1 1 2018-07-01 2018-07-02 #> 2 4 2018-07-01 2018-07-02 #> 3 3 2018-07-02 2018-07-02 #> 4 6 2018-07-07 2018-07-10 #> 5 5 2018-07-10 2018-07-11
The first two arguments are the tables we’re joining, with the first table being the events that happen first. We then specify:
by_time: the time columns in each table. This would typically be a datetime or a date column. These columns are used to filter for time y being after or the same as time x.
by_user:the user or identity columns in each table. These must be identical for a pair of rows to match.
type: the type of funnel used to distinguish between event pairs, such as “first-first”, “last-first”, “any-firstafter”.
suffix(optional): just like dplyr’s join functions, this specifies what should be appended to the names of columns that are in both tables.
typecan be any combination of
first,
last,
any, and
lastbeforewith
first,
last,
any, and
firstafter. Some common ones you may use include:
If your time and user columns have different names, you can work with that too:
landed % rename(landed_at = timestamp, user_id_x = user_id)registered % rename(registered_at = timestamp, user_id_y = user_id)
landed %>% after_inner_join(registered, by_user = c("user_id_x" = "user_id_y"), by_time = c("landed_at" = "registered_at"), type = "first-first") #> # A tibble: 4 x 3 #> user_id_x landed_at registered_at #>
#> 1 1 2018-07-01 2018-07-02
#> 2 3 2018-07-02 2018-07-02
#> 3 6 2018-07-07 2018-07-10
#> 4 5 2018-07-10 2018-07-11
Sometimes you have all the data you need in one table. For example, let’s look at this table of user activity on a website.
activityWe can use
funnel_start()andfunnel_step()to make an activity funnel.funnel_start()takes five arguments:
tbl: The table of events.
moment_type: The first moment, or event, in the funnel.
moment: The name of the column that indicates the
moment_type.
tstamp: The name of the column with the timestamps of the moment.
user: The name of the column indicating the user who did the moment.
activity %>% funnel_start(moment_type = "landing", moment = "event", tstamp = "timestamp", user = "user_id") #> # A tibble: 4 x 2 #> user_id timestamp_landing #> #> 1 1 2019-07-01 #> 2 2 2019-08-01 #> 3 3 2019-05-01 #> 4 4 2019-06-13
funnel_start()returns a table with the user_ids and a column with the name of your timestamp column,
_, and the moment type. This table also includes metadata.
To add more moments to the funnel, you use
funnel_step(). Since you’ve indicated in
funnel_start()what columns to use for each part, now you only need to have the
moment_typeand the
typeof
after_join()(e.g. “first-first”, “first-any”).
activity %>% funnel_start(moment_type = "landing", moment = "event", tstamp = "timestamp", user = "user_id") %>% funnel_step(moment_type = "registration", type = "first-firstafter") #> # A tibble: 4 x 3 #> user_id timestamp_landing timestamp_registration #> #> 1 3 2019-05-01 2019-06-01 #> 2 4 2019-06-13 #> 3 1 2019-07-01 2019-07-02 #> 4 2 2019-08-01 2019-08-15
You can continue stacking on
funnel_step()with more moments.
activity %>% funnel_start(moment_type = "landing", moment = "event", tstamp = "timestamp", user = "user_id") %>% funnel_step(moment_type = "registration", type = "first-firstafter") %>% funnel_step(moment_type = "purchase", type = "first-any") #> # A tibble: 5 x 4 #> user_id timestamp_landing timestamp_registration timestamp_purchase #> #> 1 3 2019-05-01 2019-06-01 2019-06-04 #> 2 1 2019-07-01 2019-07-02 2019-07-07 #> 3 1 2019-07-01 2019-07-02 2019-07-10 #> 4 2 2019-08-01 2019-08-15 #> 5 4 2019-06-13
If you use a
typethat allows multiple moments of one type for a user, like “first-any”, you will get more rows per user rather than more columns. For example, user 1 had two purchases, so she now has two rows. The
timestamp_landingand
timestamp_registrationis the same for both rows, but they have a different
timestamp_purchase.
Finally, you can use the
summarize_funnel()to understand how many and what percentage of people make it through to each next step of the funnel. We can also switch to
funnel_steps()to shorten our code a bit: we give it a character vector of
moment_typesin order and the
typefor each step.
activity %>% funnel_start(moment_type = "landing", moment = "event", tstamp = "timestamp", user = "user_id") %>% funnel_steps(moment_types = c("registration", "purchase"), type = "first-firstafter") %>% summarize_funnel() #> # A tibble: 3 x 4 #> moment_type nb_step pct_cumulative pct_step #> #> 1 landing 4 1 NA #> 2 registration 3 0.75 0.75 #> 3 purchase 2 0.5 0.667
nb_stepis how many users made it to each step,
pct_cumulativeis what percent that is out of the original step, and
pct_stepis what percentage that is out of those who made it to the previous step. So in our case, 2 people had a purchase, which is 50% of the people who landed but 66% of those who registered.
If you find any bugs or have a feature request or question, please create an issue. If you’d like to add a feature, tests, or other functionality, please also make an issue first and let’s discuss!
funneljoin was developed at DataCamp by Anthony Baker, David Robinson, and Emily Robinson. It is now maintained by the DataCamp engineering team.