If you’re planning to sell a product online, I’d highly recommend developing a simple sales funnel.
What? A sales funnel is a visual representation of the process through which your business turns prospects into customers.
Why? A funnel will provide a clear, direct path of how to convert cold leads into purchases. It gives your customers one path to follow and one decision to make. It will also enable you to forecast sales, estimate stock and evaluate your sales methods.
How? Many experts believe the traditional sales model is no longer valid. However, I think the following method still works for small ecommerce businesses at the very least and can be employed by the following three simple steps:
- Awareness. The aim is to get traffic to your website and the best way to do this is by paying for targeted ads – Google, Facebook and TikTok are the obvious options. At this point, the targeted person viewing your ad might well not be looking to buy from you and could just be curious to know more. Hence, your ad needs to have a great headline and great copy in order to make them click through to stage 2 👇
- Consideration. This should be your landing page. You’ve got the lead onto the site to consider your offer and now you must make them buy the product. Check out my post on creating a great landing page here.
- Action. Boom! The customer adds the product to their cart and completes the purchase 🎯
Alternatively, you could use a service like Clickfunnels to do this all for you!
What defines a successful sales funnel?
Click Through Rates (CTRs) average around 3-4% for paid ads. While a decent Conversion Rate (total sales / total views * 100) is around 1-4%.
How do I analyse my sales funnel?
The stats on your ad account will show you your Click Through Rates. Google Analytics and Shopify (my ecommerce platform of choice) will enable you calculate your Conversion Rates. You could also look at Hotjar to see how users behave and where the drop-off points are on your website. Another option is Triple Whale, which offer to cover the whole of your sales funnel.
How do I optimise my sales funnel?
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) can be achieved in a number of ways:
- Build profiles of your target customers. What do they eat, watch, wear, listen to etc. This will enable you to personalise the whole funnel for your target customer.
- Amend the target customer, headline, copy, imagery or video of your ads. Consider several similar iterations of same ad to compare and contrast how well they perform. There’s also plenty of tools around to help you spy on your competitors ads if you need more help.
- Amend the headline, copy and imagery on your landing page. Check out my post on how to create a great landing page here.
- Have an exit intent popup.
- Install abandoned cart email & sms automations onto your website.
- Reach out to your customers after they make purchases by sending thank you notes or offering coupons and discounts. Customer retention is easier than customer acquisition.
- Build a mailing list and send mailouts to your potential customers on a regular basis.
- Upsell other products to converted customers to further increase your sales.
