Which metric would indicate how users engaged with multiple channels before converting?

The metric that best indicates how users engaged with multiple channels before converting is multi-channel funnels. This feature in Google Analytics provides insights into the various paths users take across different channels, such as social media, email, organic search, and paid advertising, leading up to a conversion. It allows marketers to see the full customer journey, revealing how different marketing efforts contribute to the conversion process over time.

By analyzing multi-channel funnels, businesses can identify which channels are important touchpoints in the conversion path, how these channels work together, and the contribution of each channel to the overall conversion. This information is valuable for optimizing marketing strategies and budgets by understanding the role of each touchpoint in the customer journey, ultimately leading to better decision-making regarding resource allocation across channels.

In contrast, single channel attribution focuses exclusively on one specific channel's performance, without considering the interactions that occurred through other channels. First-click and last interaction attribution both attribute the entire credit for a conversion to a single event (the first or last one, respectively), ignoring the influence of other channels that may have played a significant role in the user’s path to conversion. Therefore, only multi-channel funnels provide the comprehensive view needed to assess engagement across multiple channels leading up to a conversion.