An Important Distinction Between Conversions and Funnels

This may be why your getting contradictory data when viewing the Conversions report v. the Funnel Visualization report.

clipped from www.google.com The goal conversions on the goal conversions report shows all visitors that have hit the conversion page of a goal regardless of their entrance path. The funnel visualization page's goal conversion number shows all visitors that have successfully passed through all required steps in the goal funnel before hitting the goal conversion page. If you have selected the Step Required checkbox on the goal settings page then a visitor is required to visit this first step's URI before they will be counted towards a goal conversion on the funnel viz page. See this Help Center article for more info about the Required Step check box: https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=72714&hl=en_US .