Ecommerce Sales Funnel Strategies: Step-by-Step Guide

When visitors come to your ecommerce store, you want them to shop and spend a lot of money. That’s very normal. However, what happens if they don’t? Consumers are busy people. They’re always looking for information on the internet, so they may not act quickly immediately. For example, visitors may browse your site but leave right away.

Therefore, it is not easy to get a customer on the first visit. However, you may include them in your ecommerce conversion funnel. Begin the process of turning them from potential buyers. You’re probably wondering if conversion funnels are the answer to your conversion rate problems. So let’s follow this article carefully.

In this blog, ArrowTheme will mention the Ecommerce Sales Funnel: Strategies to build and optimize with proven examples. So let’s be ready to start right now. 

What Is An Ecommerce Sales Funnel?

In e-commerce, an Ecommerce sales funnel shows the path your clients take from first discovering your brand to making a purchase. Customer retention, upselling, cross-selling, and subscription-based models are all included. 

Every business has a unique Ecommerce sales funnel based on how customers interact with their websites. The stages are similar, as I’ll explain below, but the details differ based on your product and target audience.

For example, some businesses have shorter conversion funnels. Because pricing is less of a barrier when selling low-cost goods. Therefore, they can convert visitors faster.

The Importance Of Ecommerce Sales Funnel

You can optimize each stage to boost sales even if you know what your Ecommerce sales funnel looks like. Because you know which factors have the most impact on conversions. After that, you can focus on those factors and optimize your funnel.

For example, your study shows that social media, particularly Facebook, has a significant impact on conversions. Your huge followers are interested in your postings on discounts and special offers. Therefore, when you have that information, you can use it to improve your Facebook activity and encourage your website visitors. And then they will become your Facebook followers.

Moreover, you may take advantage of an existing website and bring users into your social sphere by posting a visible CTA for Facebook.

What Is The Average Ecommerce Conversion Rate?

Creating an Ecommerce sales funnel for your ecommerce website will show you the map of the buyer’s journey. As a result, you can determine what you need to do at each stage. 

According to Smart Insights, 43.8 % of your site visitors view a product page on average. However, only about 15% will add a product to their shopping carts. Moreover, you might look at the bottom of the Ecommerce sales funnel which is just over 3% as a problem, but I prefer to think of it as a missed opportunity.

Businesses may improve their product pages to persuade visitors to add items to their carts based on standard Ecommerce conversion rates. They can also optimize the checkout process. Therefore, more customers are buying the items in their shopping carts.

Ecommerce Conversion Funnel Stages

There are four stages in a common Ecommerce sales funnel. The customer makes decisions based on their perceptions of your brand, product, and competitors at each stage.

Therefore, you can earn more profit if you optimize for each stage of the Ecommerce sales funnel.

Stage 1: Awareness

In this stage, your customers start to know your brand and all your brand provides. They are aware that they must solve a problem or achieve a goal, therefore they seek solutions. However, yours isn’t the only one choice for them. That is why this stage is so important.

Throughout this awareness stage, your brand must provide educational content. Therefore, you need to give more information about your brand via conferences, blogs, reports, guidelines, or even television advertising. 

Stage 2: Interest

In this stage, you can’t let your audience go. Therefore, Continue to entertain and educate them so that they will continue to be interested in your products. 

As a result, you can share brand-centered memes on social media, creating more helpful content for your site. Besides that, you also can engage your audience via email marketing, and publish videos on YouTube 

Stage 3: Desire

Create desire after you’ve attracted your audience’s attention. Therefore, you should talk about the benefits of your product rather than its characteristics. And then this can persuade potential buyers to have the same fantastic results. 

Apple did it successfully. Instead of boring specifications (features), Apple tells its customers that its goods are stylish, attractive, simple to use, and secure (benefits). As a result, concentrate your marketing communications on how the customer will profit in the end. 

Make your CTAs as strategic. Instead of emphasizing what you have to give, explain how the audience will gain. Here are two examples of call-to-actions (CTA):

• Take advantage of the extra pockets and thicker shoulder straps with your own XYZ Backpack.
• Grab an XYZ Backpack for extra storage and comfortable straps that will help you avoid back problems.

Because the audience can imagine the advantages, the second one elicits more desire.

Stage 4: Action

It’s time to complete the purchase. You want potential buyers to add your goods to their shopping carts, enter their payment information, and then click “Buy Now.” 

As I mentioned above, the average e-commerce site only persuades just 3% of its website visitors to perform this step. But you can do it better. From beginning to end, examine your checkout procedure. What could lead customers to abandon their purchasing cart?

It could be a lack of other payment methods, unnecessary forms, or unexpected delivery prices. Therefore, different checkout pages should be tested to see which elements should be removed and which should be added.

How To Build An Optimized Ecommerce Conversion Funnel?

Step 1: Define Your Customer’s Journey.

Thanks to Google Analytics report, you can map the customer journey. Analyze what users do when they arrive at each page of your website:

• Do visitors act differently when they visit your homepage than when they go on one of your product pages?
• What are the most popular referring domains?
• And how many touchpoints does the average shopper go through before making a purchase?

Step 2: Map The Steps Of Your Funnel To Conversion Triggers.

Create a strategy for driving customers through your Ecommerce sales funnel using the four stages indicated above – awareness, interest, desire, and action. For example, make a list of the content you want to offer at each step and the web pages you want to test.

Step 3: Identify The Moment When A Visitor Becomes A Buyer.

When a visitor enters their contact information such as email address, they will become a potential buyer. Therefore, you need a potential customer nurture strategy.

Determine how you’ll assist customers in moving from awareness to interest, desire, and action. So that you can cater to your whole target group, your email subscribers should receive content created for all four stages.

How To Get More Conversions On Your Ecommerce Site?

Analyze And Improve Your Main Web Pages.

Depending on how many items you offer, your main pages for an e-commerce site are the homepage, product pages, and category pages. If you sell lots of items, you should have more “main pages” than if you focus on one or two main products.

Begin by optimizing those. Consider both SEO and user experience to ensure that Google drives traffic your way

Analyze And Improve Your Forms.

Conversion rates can be broken by lead-capture forms. Shorter forms usually perform better in e-commerce than longer forms. Therefore, you should reduce the amount of information on your forms to the minimum level. If all you need is an email address, just ask for that. Don’t make the client give you their name, address, or any other non-essential information.

Analyze And Improve Your Checkout Pages.

Remember how I mentioned cart abandonment rates above? If 15% of your visitors add products to their cart but only 3% of them complete the purchase, you’re losing revenue.

To make customers feel more secure, provide more payment options, use two-page checkouts, and include progress bars. Therefore, you should add trust symbols to reflect that you care about privacy and security. Besides that, you should not add on any unexpected fees during the checkout process.

The Most Important KPIs for Optimizing Conversion Funnels

You must regularly monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) if you want to optimize your Ecommerce sales funnel. These figures show how well your optimizations are working.

There are many KPIs. However, keeping track of them all can make you feel like you’re drowning in data. Instead, keep track of the metrics below, which are the most useful in determining the efficiency of an Ecommerce sales funnel.

Traffic

You can get traffic from a variety of sources, including social media, search, email marketing, and more, but you want it to increase steadily.

Keep an eye on where your visitors are coming from. In case you’re getting a lot of traffic from search. So you should put more of your marketing budget and effort into content marketing and SEO. Besides that, if Twitter drives a lot of traffic to your site, you should increase the number of tweets you post and the amount of information you provide in each post.

Rate of conversion

The conversion rate shows how well your offer is received by your target audiences. You may learn more about your audience by tracking conversion rates across all offers. A/B tests different offers to determine which ones attract the most attention, then use what you’ve learned in practice.

Bounce rate

The bounce rate of your website indicates how many visitors leave after only seeing one page. Therefore, you may lower the bounce rate by giving visitors more reasons to visit other pages.

Focus on increasing the “stickiness” of your website if you have a high bounce rate. As a result, on your page, you should add a lot of internal links to other websites as well as CTAs for other offers.

Sales

Another crucial element to monitor is overall sales. It is not important if your website receives hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors without purchasing. You may suffer some drops due to factors out of your control, such as the seasons. However, you also want to maintain a general upward trend. So you can concentrate on the Ecommerce sales funnel’s action stage.

Cart abandonment

A high percentage of cart abandonment indicates an issue with the checkout process. Therefore, you can cart abandonment emails to improve checkout flow. In case, shoppers leave your site without purchasing goods in their cart. You can send a reminder notice. Furthermore, you can invite them back – possibly with a discount code.

Free Best Ecommerce sales funnel templates

Tripwire Funnel

The tripwire funnel is great for selling unique products to a specific market. Instead of encouraging website visitors to the web aimlessly, wasting any advertising dollars you spend on that traffic… Therefore, you can drive those visitors to a sales page that focuses on selling a particular product- “Two Step Sales Page”

The Two-Step Sales Page’s purpose is to get the client to complete the first two most crucial stages in buying your product: providing their shipping and payment information.

In case you want this Ecommerce sales funnel to convert better. So you can give the client something for free on this page. In this way, customers will be more willing to provide their billing information.

Product Launch Funnel

Before you even tap “Launch,” you want to have tension and anticipation around your new product that your target audiences are willing to have their wallets out.

And that’s exactly with the product launch funnel. our customers will be excited about buying your new product

The product launch funnel looks like this.

Video Sales Letter Funnel

This video sales letter funnel is similar to the tripwire funnel we mentioned above. The main difference is that you use more video material on your sales pages than sales text. So, if you prefer recording videos than writing, this is suitable for you

To obtain a free sample of your product, your audience first comes to the Sales Letter Page to enter their shipping and billing information. After that, they move to your One-Time Offer page, where you upsell them. Because they’ve already provided their payment and shipping information, they’re more likely to add this offering to their cart.

Ecommerce sales funnel strategies 

Stage 1: Awareness

Your customers are at this awareness stage now. They’ve reached the level of awareness. Therefore, you must persuade them that your products are the greatest option for their requirements. These top-of-funnel clients are aware of their issue and your business, either through social media, a referral, a Google search, or simply by surprise.

You want to get as many customers into this stage as possible. As a result, you must attract targeted traffic to your e-commerce site to persuade them later. There are two methods for attracting more targeted customers to your online store:

• Paid
• Free

So now let’s have a look at both of them.

Get Targeted Traffic with Facebook Ads

With over 2.32 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the perfect site for raising brand awareness. You can rapidly promote the word about your business and get highly targeted visitors to your online store by using Facebook ads. Moreover, you may use the platform in whatever way you want.

Here are some excellent practices for Facebook advertisements at the top of the Ecommerce sales funnel

1. Repurpose Your Value Proposition

Using Facebook advertising to communicate your value proposition allows users to immediately understand your brand. You can provide users a reason to buy your products if you have a clear value proposition. Therefore, you should explain why your items are the perfect fit for them and how you distinguish them from the competition.

ArtSnacks advertises its value proposition in the following way:

The purpose of ArtSnacks is to raise awareness of their online business. And they succeed by telling potential clients what they stand to gain: “Discover your new favorite art supplies.” Besides that, they also use five stars and the amount of customers they have as the strong social proof of their value proposition. Finally, they use a “Learn More” button to link users to their website.

2. Show Product Categories

Another method to raise brand awareness is to simply describe what shoppers will discover in your online store. So you can arrange items together under brand names or categories. Therefore, you can showcase numerous products in one ad. This will help clients learn more about your product line by using Facebook’s carousel advertisements. Take a look at this example from Beauty Bay:

To drive top-of-funnel customers, they display the products they sell in their online store. Viewers can go to the product page they want by clicking the “Shop Now” buttons. This increases their chances of going to the consideration stage.

3. Promote Offers

Sales and discount coupons can be promoted on Facebook at various stages of your conversion funnel. As a result, offering introductory discounts is one method to attract users’ attention during this awareness stage. In one Facebook ad, Blue Apron offers its discounts and products:

This brand attracted customers with a “Get Offer” button. Using Facebook carousel ads, this brand is similar to Beauty Bay which displays its product categories as the catalog.

4. Promote Content

During the awareness stage, you should minimize hard-selling products. Product marketing integrated within your site content is a good way to promote your products to top-of-funnel clients. You may also promote your content to a targeted audience using Facebook advertisements.

Here’s how Casper does it:

Instead of advertising their bedding items, they linked to a blog article about sleeping with dogs in this ad. If the user is interested in this content, they will click on the advertising and visit the website.

So when they select the ad, that’s what they see:

It’s mainly the information about having pets in bed, but this brand also includes a product promotion.

Now the viewers are aware of Casper and like this topic. As a result, they might want to check out their items as well.

Create Free Content To Attract Visitors

To attract visitors to your site, you don’t need to write long blog articles or hold webinars. Because Facebook can help you reach out to a targeted audience and advertise your online store. In case you don’t have an advertising budget, you can still attract highly targeted visitors to your e-commerce site.

However, many e-commerce marketers are afraid of the term “content.” Besides that, you may develop content for visitors in this stage without a significant advertising budget or a busy marketing team by providing how-to videos on YouTube or a free tutorial on your site.

Moreover, you can mix content marketing with paid advertising for the best results in increasing targeted traffic to the site.

Stage 2: Consideration

You used both free and paid channels to drive targeted visitors to your online business. As a result, you now have people who are aware of your brand and are curious to know more about it. At this stage, customers are considering purchasing from you. Therefore, your goal is to help them move to the next step in this ecommerce sales funnel, such as adding a product to their cart or creating a wishlist. At this stage, you should solve any doubts your clients may have and make everything easier for them.

Start using email marketing to promote your content and products. Besides that, you also can use attractive content to engage site visitors.

Apply Social Proof To Multiple Channels

Many marketers use social proof to assume that other people’s views and actions are the proper ones in a given situation. Social proof is useful in many aspects of daily life, including e-commerce. Social proof is useful at every level of the e-commerce sales funnel. But it’s especially useful for persuading site visitors of your online store’s quality and reliability.

Social proof can be applied to a variety of channels. Here are some of the most effective methods you use to move customers to the next stage of the sales funnel.

1. On-Site Social Proof

The first place you should build social proof for your brand is your online store. Customer testimonials are one of the most common types of social proof. Just like Tuft & Needle, you may display customer feedback on product pages and your homepage. You can use the testimonials on your site. Therefore, you can rapidly impress visitors and convert them more simply.

Tuft & Needle also has a dedicated page with extensive filters for all of their product reviews:

Visitors will be able to read both positive and negative feedback before making a purchase. If you want your e-commerce site to be transparent, make all of your ratings visible.

User-generated material is another method to include social proof in your website. On your site, you can select your customers’ photos, videos, and social media updates. Therefore, you can display how your products work and build social proof for them.

Allbirds uses this method to show user-generated material on their product pages:

2. Email Marketing with Social Proof

Email is an important element in the consideration stage. The combination of social proof and email marketing is perfect for persuading consumers to take the next step. But how to combine them depends on you. So take some pointers from Brooklinen if you want to send out emails based on social proof:

More importantly, don’t forget to include social proof in your email subject lines. In your subject lines, you might write exact quotes from your reviews or indicate the great comments you received.

3. Paid Ads using Social Proof

Social proof usually supports your ad strongly at any stage of your conversion funnel. To encourage consumers at the consideration stage, you should use social proof in your remarketing campaigns or social advertisements.

Furthermore, Fabletics did it this way on Facebook:

To attract more visitors, this business promotes an offer on Facebook based on social proof. It’s more effective than showing the product simply. Because it shows the value clients receive from it.

Make Your Product Pages More Effective

At this consideration stage, product pages are the hearts of your business. You must persuade visitors that your products are the best choice and encourage them to add items to their shopping cart. To learn what your buyer persona is looking for, you should begin with keyword research. Then, by your text, use those insights to promote your items as a solution to those worries.

1. Product Descriptions

Firebox is an online shop that sells “strange presents for those with imagination”. So get it right with their product descriptions:

Firstly, they show a typical issue: trying to differentiate your luggage from that of others. Then, they suggest using customized luggage covers to avoid that problem. So you can simply imagine the problem after reading this description. If this is your type of product, you’ll think it’s a great idea and add it to your shopping cart.

2. CTAs (Calls to Action)

If you’ve been trying to persuade customers with similar CTAs, it’s time to switch things up. Take a look at this example from Birchbox:

The business offers subscription boxes and understands that customers might buy them as gifts or for themselves. So in the footer, they have two different CTAs: “Gift Now” and “Treat Yourself.” They’re both more powerful than “Buy Now”. Because they explain why you should buy them right now.

3. Return and Shipping Information

For online consumers, unexpected expenditures are a big problem. When a customer sees an unexpected additional expense, 60% of them abandon their carts. To convert clients to the next stage, you must clarify your shipping and return procedures as clearly as possible. If you have many shipping and return options, make sure to display them all on your product pages.

For example, Man Crates provides consumers with an estimated delivery date. Moreover, they also say how the item will be delivered:

Promoting Products with Curated Emails

Curation emails are a great strategy to promote products without being overly salesy. Thanks to the Curated emails, you can learn more about your subscribers’ interests. You can send curated product emails to convert leads who are considering buying from you. Furthermore, if you already have a newsletter, you may include them in it. 

Like Bombas, you can insert social proof to your emails by naming them as Customer Favorites or Best-Sellers:

Best-seller is an amazing word Because it already has a lot of social proof attached to it. You can create best-seller products like Bombas and pick the month’s, season’s, or category’s top products. It’s a great way to promote your items without being annoying about it. In case, you want to give curation emails more credibility. So you can label them as Our Favorites or Must-Haves.

Remember to personalize your emails by recommending items that your subscribers would enjoy. Keep track of which categories or goods they’re interested in, so you can better target them in your future campaign.

Stage 3: Decision

Through email marketing and convincing content, you can attract lots of visitors to your e-commerce site and persuade them to take action. They may complete adding items to their shopping cart or wishlist. So now all they need is a final push to complete the deal. You need to keep clients during the decision-making process from potential disruptions and persuade them to make the purchase. At this stage, on-site messaging and emails will be the perfect tools.

Let’s see how it works.

Take Advantage of On-Site Messages

Some people will purchase the first session. However, others will go through the full funnel before making the purchase. That is why you must differentiate between first-time visitors, subscribers, and returning visitors. And then you should build different campaigns to effectively target them.

Furthermore, you can’t afford to take those leads for granted, especially with cart abandonment rates reaching around 70%. Therefore, you should engage them with on-site messages and push them back to your site if they leave. Exit-intent campaigns are a great way to catch visitors who are about to leave. And then you can convert them with discounts or email marketing. So let’s look at this example:

This exit-intent-triggered campaign helps your business reduce cart abandonment and collect potential customers through email marketing.

Encourage Visitors During The Checkout Process.

The last barrier between your brand and visitors is your checkout page. At this stage, you should have the strategy of turning them into (loyal) customers or losing them 

Therefore, your Ecommerce stores must have a well-designed checkout page with several payment choices and appealing CTAs. There’s always more you can do to encourage visitors to complete the checkout process:

1. Free Shipping

Free shipping is a powerful incentive for converting decision-stage leads into customers. It may encourage them to place larger orders.

Take a look at how ASOS uses free delivery to attract customer to finish their orders and spend more:

2. On-site Messages

Combining on-site messages with product suggestions is a better method to use this strategy. Here’s how a campaign like this might look:

3. Offering Gifts

Offering gifts at checkout is another method to encourage customers to complete the purchase. You can use free samples to improve the average purchase value and sales revenue. During the checkout process, Estée Lauder provides consumers with a variety of luxury samples to pick from:

Besides that, you also can ask whether your customers want to buy another sample by spending $8 more. This will encourage your customers to make more purchases.

It’s fantastic how they use free samples as an upselling strategy.

Send Emails Based On Behavior

You have a lot of useful data on your subscribers. They leave the history on your site on each page they visit, every link they select in your emails, and every item they put in their cart. Therefore, you can use the information you acquired from cookies to customize visitors’ shopping experiences. And then you also can increase conversion rates 

Moreover, you may design highly targeted email campaigns based on the behavior of your visitors. Finally, you can assist them in taking the last step.

1. Abandoned Cart Emails

Abandoned cart emails are one of the most popular types of behavioral emails. Some visitors will become bored and quit your online store without purchasing anything. Therefore, in this case, if you do anything about it, you’ll lose a lot of potential revenue. Fanchest has a great abandoned cart email example:

When you put something in your cart, Fanchest sends you additional emails. They will remind you about the goods in your shopping cart. After that, they give you a 10% discount. Finally, they send the “Last Chance” email, which offers 15% off your cart products. This email is a good example because it:

• It displays my cart of goods
• Providing an incentive to return
• It suggests similar items

2. Wishlist Reminder Emails

Wishlist reminder emails are the underused behavioral email kind. Adding items to a wishlist suggests a buying intent that you should consider. You can encourage your visitors to use your wishlist function. After that, you can send them automated emails to notify them of their purchases. 

Here’s an email I received from One Kings Lane:

Stage 4: Retention

Congratulations! You have already gone to the bottom of the funnel with your client. In this stage, you should make them come back and buy from you again. Repeat buyers will be the main factors of your sales revenue if you have a good customer retention plan. According to research, recurring buyers are 9 times more likely than first-time shoppers to convert and spend more per transaction. Here’s how to retain your current clients while also increasing your earnings.

Promote The Loyalty Programs

A well-thought-out thank you page can increase your sales. Based on your conversion goals, you may improve thank you pages in a variety of ways, including asking for referrals, asking questions, nurturing your leads, and more. 

Using thank-you pages to promote your loyalty program is a perfect way to encourage buyers to return to your online store and boost customer lifetime value. You can encourage customers to move down the sales funnel and return for more with a strong loyalty program.

It’s a great chance to advertise your loyalty program after a transaction. You’ll be able to catch the emotion and thank clients for purchasing from you. Moreover, you can introduce your loyalty program to the first visit people. So, with your thank you page, let’s make them feel special. Here’s an example it:

Referral Marketing

Getting a customer to come back to your site and buy more items is a great strategy to boost revenue. However, Referrals can be greatly useful to e-commerce businesses. According to one survey, 84% of customers believe recommendations from other people.

A successful referral marketing campaign will provide a large incentive to the referrer, such as a discount on the next order, credit sales, freebies, or gift cards. Make certain there’s something in it for the new customer as well.

For example, let’s look at how Away offers did

Each friend who performs their first order using your referral link will receive a $20 credit from this brand Your friend will also receive $20. As a result, both parties have an incentive.

Moreover, the form includes a pre-written message. So you don’t have to worry about writing something to say to your friend. Because this brand gives you four choices for referrals, you can choose from email, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, or link sharing.

Maintain Customer Engagement

Remember the e-commerce sales funnel’s form and what it means: Only a small percentage of your customers will become loyal customers. However, the good news is that 32 % of first-time buyers are more likely to make a second purchase.

Therefore, Email marketing is the ideal method for attaining this. With email campaigns that target existing customers, you may show your appreciation for encouraging them to take action.

Celebrating anniversaries and sharing business insights are excellent ways to re-engage your client base. With an animated GIF and a heartfelt thank you card, see how Allbirds did it:

This kind of email is more than just a thank-you message. It cleverly adds strong social proof. Because this email also highlights the amount of customers Allbirds has attracted.

Milestones or sincere thank you letters help you maintain your brand in front of people’s minds. In case you want to increase the engagement of your email list. So you should include an incentive in your appreciation emails. Let’s do as Moo did:

This brand does not just compliment you on how great you are. They also offer you a 20% discount to get you back to their e-commerce site.

If you’re getting birthday information from your clients, send them a personalized message along with a valuable offer. Here is the way Saucey handles it:

Conclusion

Your customers will go through those four stages of the Ecommerce sales funnel in their purchasing journey regardless of what you’re selling. Some people will go rapidly, whereas others will take longer to persuade.

Therefore, the idea is to understand how your customers progress through your Ecommerce sales funnel. And then let’s use that data to improve each stage for getting higher conversions. Hopefully, these methods can help you in your Ecommerce conversion funnels.

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