A Simple Guide to Understanding and Creating a Website Conversion Funnel

How many articles have you read recently about the “conversion funnel”?

Likely a lot! You’re probably hearing, seeing, and having the term “conversion funnel” shoved in front of your eyeballs all day long. I personally come across conversion funnel information dozens of times during my research and reading—every single day.

Why?

Don’t think you have a conversion funnel in place?

Well, if you’re selling a product or service online, you do have one. Maybe it’s not optimized, but it’s there…

Even if your goal is to get your visitor to take a simple action—such as signing up for a free newsletter—you have a conversion funnel.

A conversion funnel is really an idea or a way to visualize and comprehend the flow and conversion of potential customers into paying customers. If you can understand and analyze the process, then you can take actions to improve that flow.

So what exactly is a funnel? Let’s look at the most common definition.

This is a very simple visualization showing each step through the sales process:

First, your potential customer becomes aware of you or your product.
Second, you build interest in your product. (Notice the funnel gets smaller because not everyone who is aware of your product will have interest.)
Third, you need to plant the seed of desire for your product or service. (Once again, the funnel gets smaller because you can’t expect everyone who is interested to actually desire your product.)
And finally, ask for an action. As an example, the action might be to buy something or sign up for an email list. (This is the smallest part of the funnel because a small percentage of the original potential customers will take action.)

Of course, this isn’t the only visual representation of a conversion funnel. It could be more complicated, depending on what steps and processes you want to analyze. Here’s an example with a few extra steps:

As you can see, the makers of this funnel diagram have more goals in their funnel. Monitoring these goals will help them maximize the amount of prospects that arrive at the “purchase” level of the funnel.

But wait…

Your conversion funnel isn’t actually a funnel!

If you refer back to the definition of the online conversion funnel, your actual funnel is better defined by the verb form, “to guide or channel as if in a funnel.”

What happens when you take a real funnel and pour liquid into it?

All of the liquid—that’s 100%—will be forced through the small hole in the bottom of the funnel. It has to go somewhere.

Now put your potential customers through your imaginary funnel. What happens when you pour your customers into that funnel?

Only 1–5% of the customers who enter your funnel come out the bottom!

Where did those potential customers go? They didn’t magically disappear.

The truth is your funnel has holes at each level.

Think of it like a set of filters. Each level of the funnel will have it’s own filter and only the ones who qualify make it to the next level. The others leave your funnel through the side.

Of course, you could just let these potential buyers go… but you likely worked hard or even paid for those leads, right?

The simplest plan to get them back is to put them into a different funnel—with a different offer they may be more interested in. For example, if they aren’t interested in buying a $97 product, you could try to down-sell them to a $27 product.

Now that we’ve covered the basics of the funnel—and analyzed how and why they work—let’s build a simple funnel you can use in your online marketing efforts.

Building a Simple Conversion Funnel

Before you start, remember that building an effective conversion funnel takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight.

And, if you’re learning how to market—and putting that advice into practice—you already have a funnel.

You just need to understand it, analyze it, and consistently improve it.

Here’s the image again:

Our goal is to increase the percentage of prospects traveling through each step in the funnel.

Ideally, we want more people completing the last step or final desired action.

The 4 Levels of a Simple Conversion Funnel

1. Awareness

Ask yourself, “Where are my customers coming from and how did they become aware of my product?”

Then, look at the percentage of people taking that first step and consider…

Did you advertise? If so, what is your click through rate? Or how many people saw your ad and clicked on it?
Do you get traffic from organic search results? If so, which pieces of content reach more people?
Do people find you through social media? If so, do they click through to your website to learn more?

Make sure you’re properly targeting your customers so you aren’t working on pulling the wrong type—or completely unqualified customers—into your funnel. You’ll spend too much time and money trying to convert them. Think of who your ideal client is and target them. You can always cast a wider net later.

2. Interest

Write a headline for your website that grabs your visitors’ attention immediately. Then, craft content that keeps their attention. A good copywriter can be invaluable for this step. Content and websites that keep visitors interested and engaged are crucial for helping the prospect get to know, like, and trust you.

So how can you tell if your “interest” level of the funnel is working?

I recommend asking for an action that you can measure—most often a signup form with a bait piece. Crafting a good bait piece—and asking your visitors to exchange their email information for that free goodie—is a great way to see who has more interest in your product or service.

3. Desire

An autoresponder series is perfect for this. It continues to build the relationship between you (the marketer) and your potential customers.

Not sure how to take advantage of an autoresponder series? Check out this article.

Remember people most often desire a solution to a problem. What problem are you going to solve with your product or service? Make them desire that solution and you won’t need to promote the product! Again a good copywriter can be worth his or her weight in gold when turning interest into desire.

This level of the funnel can be a little tricky to analyze. But a measurable metric is how many people take the action you ask for. You’ll know you’re developing more desire as you get a higher percentage of prospects to take action.

4. Action

You want them to buy!

As you likely notice, only a small percentage of prospects make it to this level. That’s why you should use the conversion funnel to analyze your sales process and make improvements at each level.

Think about it this way: A 10% increase in the leads you get could mean an extra sale at the end.

Once someone buys, don’t stop there. Your best customers are repeat customers.

Think about other product funnels you could move them into. If you don’t have any, it might be time to expand your product line, create a new service, or even promote affiliate products.

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Author Link: https://blog.crazyegg.com/2014/03/03/website-conversion-funnel/