As a sales term, conversion funnels or sales funnels are a set of stages that occur during the buyer’s journey. Conversion funnels are a vital tool for every business owner in order to ease buyers through their journey and bring them closer to conversion at every stage of the journey.
Conversion funnels illustrate how potential customers are guided through the purchase process. The purpose of this is to distinguish potential customers from buyers who are ready to buy.
Conversion Guide Parts
Using the conversion guide, marketing and sales teams can customize marketing tactics to target specific customers and increase conversions.
Three parts make up the conversion funnel:
- Upper funnel top of the funnel: When a potential buyer is just beginning their journey by researching the product and researching what the product offers. In this stage of the process, the prospect may research various brands and try to figure out which brand will be able to address the pain points they are experiencing.
- Middle funnel or middle of the funnel: At this stage, buyers have a better understanding of brands and which brands are popular. A buyer might have signed up for a newsletter or requested to be contacted by a company in the middle of the funnel. Additionally, during this stage, customers are most likely to have built up expectations based on catchy product descriptions, deciding which companies offer the best quality products and the best value.
- Lower funnel or bottom of the funnel: Lower funnel customers have determined which brands they prefer and are looking for information to close the deal. It could be customer reviews or social media content that gives buyers a sense of what their product looks and feels like. For example, you could narrow down your favorite brands on Amazon and then look at customer reviews.
Conversion Funnel Levels
It is the primary purpose of the conversion funnel to guide buyers through different stages of the sales process in order for them to convert into customers.
The conversion funnel can be divided into four stages. From the top funnel all the way down to the bottom funnel, buyers convert or buy. “Awareness,” “interest,” “desire,” and “action” are the four distinct stages.
Awareness
Awareness is the first step in the conversion funnel. In order to achieve this, you must make customers aware that your products exist. It can be accomplished by raising awareness about your brand or products, for example, by posting images on social media. During the awareness stage, the data will show you which sources generate the most traffic, so you can determine which sources are most effective and what strategies are most effective to drive quality traffic.
Interest
The next step after building interest in your website and increasing traffic is to generate interest in your offerings. Producing and posting engaging content is one of the best ways to build interest, regardless of what you sell. You may also want to consider discounting, offering deals, and offering loyalty programs to generate more interest in your offerings.
Desire
One of the most influential ways for a brand to convert customers is through building trust. Customers are more likely to spend money on your products if they trust you and your brand. Building trust and desire can turn your potential customers into highly qualified leads by helping them learn more about your brand and products.
Prospects who convert into highly qualified leads need nurturing to convert into customers. In addition to providing personalized marketing content, email campaigns are an excellent way to guide prospects down the sales funnel.
Action
Action is the most important level of the e-commerce conversion funnel — the moment when your customer converts and purchases your product or service. In this stage, you need to keep an eye on whether your customers convert, for example, if your customers keep abandoning their carts, likely, your lead nurturing is not optimized.
Optimizing Your Conversion Funnel for E-commerce
In order to optimize your e-commerce conversion funnel the easy way, it should be divided into three parts: upper, middle, and lower. A brand’s upper funnel is designed to attract new visitors, its middle funnel converts prospects into qualified leads, and its lower funnel nurtures customers.
Conversion funnel optimization:
- Upper funnel optimization: Driving high-quality traffic to your store is one of the easiest and most effective ways to optimize the upper funnel. Suppose you only ship domestically within the United States, it would be pointless to drive international traffic to your store. Additionally, you can optimize your website traffic by evaluating your search engine optimization, paid search, and creating engaging content like blog posts and videos. Memes and carousel posts on social media are powerful ways to engage your audience.
- Middle funnel optimization: Middle funnels are about demonstrating how your products can solve prospects’ problems. The level of loyalty and trust you earn from your customers can determine whether they make a one-time purchase or become repeat buyers. Understanding your customer’s state of mind is essential at this stage. Once you have that information, you can employ various tools and techniques in order to earn their trust. Among the tools you can use are case studies, reviews, forums, price comparisons, and engaging content. Making sure that your content connects emotionally with your audience is one of the best ways to optimize the middle funnel. You can build brand experiences by generating emotional connections with your customers, which will make them feel good about themselves and make them feel like they are an important part of your company.
- Lower funnel optimization: As prospects move further down your e-commerce conversion funnel, you should do all you can to guide them toward conversion and, later, retain them as loyal customers. Using loyalty programs, targeted offers, and email campaigns will help you retain more customers. The way to do this is by sending your customer an email after they make a purchase offering a future discount.
Metrics to Track in Conversion Funnels
The most important currency in the world of marketing and sales is data. With the right data, you will be able to gain more leads, convert more sales and reshape your entire brand. When evaluating crucial data for your business, you should look for some key performance indicators (KPIs).
Traffic
The most important thing you need to do is keep track of how many visitors your website/store has as well as from which sources they come. You can use this information to determine where to invest your time and money – for instance, if paid search is bringing you a lot of quality visitors, you should invest in it.
Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate tells you how many visitors leave your website after viewing just a single page. Increasing the visual appeal of your site and incentivizing visitors to visit other pages are great ways to reduce bounce rates. For example, if you’re offering 20% off t-shirts, you’d have 20% off t-shirt banners or website copy on your home page to direct your customers to other pages.
Sales
Data from your sales is an important metric because it shows you which products are selling and who is buying them. It is generally expected that your sales data will show a steady incline as sales increase. Your conversion funnel should be focused on the action level if sales have been inconsistent.
Conclusion
In marketing and sales, the conversion funnel helps teams visualize where a customer is in the buyer’s journey. It is also possible to utilize the data from the conversion funnel to improve customer retention in addition to tailoring strategies to increase conversions.
Optimizing your conversion funnel can have a big impact on the number of sales you generate. There is no doubt that working with a professional is one of the best ways to optimize an e-commerce conversion funnel. Visit the Fiverr marketplace today to hire an e-commerce marketer for your company and get started now.
