What Is the E-commerce Conversion Funnel?

The conversion funnel or sales funnel is a sales term that’s comprised of different stages in the buyer’s journey. An important tool for every business owner, the conversion funnel helps ease buyers through their journey and brings them closer to conversion in every stage.

In this article, you’re going to learn exactly what the conversion funnel is. Plus, you'll learn different tips on how to optimize and improve your e-commerce conversion funnel.

What Is a Conversion Funnel?

The conversion funnel conveys how potential customers are guided through a purchase. This is important because it helps to distinguish potential customers from buyers that are ready to make a purchase.

The conversion funnel also allows companies to segment buyers so that marketing and sales teams can tailor marketing tactics to target customers and improve the chances of a sale.

The conversion funnel is divided up into three parts:

• Top of the funnel or upper funnel: When the potential buyer is just starting out their journey by doing research about the product. During this stage, the prospect may research different brands and try to understand which brand will be able to solve their pain points.
• Middle of the funnel or middle funnel: During this stage, buyers know more about brands and which brands are the most popular. In the middle of the funnel, buyers may have signed up for a company’s newsletter or have requested to be contacted by the company to learn more. It’s also important to note that during this stage, customers have most likely built up expectations by looking at catchy product descriptions and have decided which companies provide the best quality products and the most value for money.
• Bottom of the funnel or lower funnel: Customers in the lower funnel have determined which brands are their favorite and are looking for information to seal the deal. That information could look like customer reviews or social media content that helps buyers get a clear idea of what their product will look and feel like—for example, narrowing down your favorite brands on Amazon and then looking at customer reviews to get a clear idea of how others experienced the product.

The Levels of a Conversion Funnel

The main purpose of the conversion funnel is to guide buyers through the different levels to convert sales.

There are four stages of the conversion funnel. Buyers that travel from the top funnel all the way down to the bottom funnel result in a conversion or sale. The four distinct stages are:  “awareness,” “interest,” “desire,” and “action.”

Awareness

The very first step of the conversion funnel is the awareness level, this involves making customers aware that your products exist. This can be achieved by raising awareness for your brand or products, for example, by posting images of your products to your social media accounts. During the awareness stage, the data will show you which sources provide the most traffic and help you decide which sources and strategies are the most effective for driving quality traffic to your website/store.

Interest

After you’ve started to develop more interest in your website and upped your traffic, the next important task is to generate interest in your offerings. Whether you sell products or services, one of the best ways to build interest is to produce and post engaging content. Other ways to generate more interest in your offerings are discounts, deals, and loyalty programs.

Desire

Building trust is one of the most influential ways that a brand can convert customers. If buyers trust you and your brand, they’re more likely to spend money on your products. By helping your potential customers learn more about your brand and the products that you offer, you can build trust and desire, turning your potential customers into highly qualified leads.

When a prospect transitions into a highly qualified lead, they need to be nurtured into conversion. Email campaigns are a great way to guide prospects further down the funnel as they provide personalized marketing content.

Action

The most important level of the e-commerce conversion funnel is the action—this involves your customer converting and making a purchase of your goods or services. It’s important to keep an eye on whether your customers convert at this stage—if you notice that you’re repeatedly seeing abandoned carts from your customers, it often means that your lead nurturing needs to be optimized.

How to Optimize Your E-commerce Conversion Funnel

The simplest way to optimize your e-commerce conversion funnel is to break it down into upper, middle, and lower sections. As previously mentioned, the upper funnel is to attract new visitors to your brand, the middle funnel is to transition your prospects into qualified leads, and the lower funnel is to macro convert and nurture customers.

Optimizing your conversion funnel:

• Upper funnel optimization: One of the easiest and most effective ways to optimize the upper funnel is to focus on driving high-quality traffic to your store. For example, if you only ship domestically within the United States, it’s entirely pointless to drive international traffic to your store. Other ways to optimize your website traffic are evaluating your SEO, paid search, and creating unique and engaging content like blog posts and videos. Social media is a powerful way to drive engagement with your audience through memes and carousel posts.
• Middle funnel optimization: The middle funnel is all about showing your prospects how your products can solve their pain points. Earning a customer’s loyalty and trust shouldn’t be taken lightly, as it can dictate if your customers make a one-off purchase or become repeat customers. At this stage, it’s essential to understand your customer’s state of mind. With that information, you can use different tools and techniques to earn their trust. There are a variety of tools at your disposal, such as case studies, reviews, forums, price comparisons, and engaging content. One of the most effective ways to optimize the middle funnel is to ensure that your content connects emotionally with your audience. Generating emotional connections builds brand experiences, which makes your customers feel good about themselves and makes them feel part of your brand.  
• Lower funnel optimization: As your prospects move further down your e-commerce conversion funnel, it’s important to do everything you can to guide them to conversion and, after that, retain them into loyal customers. to help you retain more customers, try strategies like targeted offers, email campaigns, and loyalty programs. This could look like emailing your customer with a future discount immediately after they make a purchase.

Important Conversion Funnel Metrics to Track

In the world of marketing and sales, data is one of the most important currencies. Data can help you to gain more leads, convert more sales and reshape your entire brand. There are some important key performance indicators (KPIs) to look out for when evaluating crucial data for your business.

Traffic

It's essential to keep track of how many visitors your website/store has and from which sources your website gains the most visitors. This is important because it helps you to determine where to spend your time and money—for example, if you're getting a lot of quality visitors from paid search, it's best to invest your money back into it.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate shows just how many of your visitors exit your site after browsing a single page. A great way to reduce bounce rate is to make your site more visually appealing or incentivize visiting other pages. For example, if your brand is offering 20% off t-shirts, you have 20% off t-shirt banners or website copy on your homepage to drive your customers toward the other pages on your website.

Sales

One of the most important metrics to track is your sales data, as it shows which products are selling and who they're selling to. In general, your sales data should show a steady incline as sales should grow. If you have inconsistent sales, focus your attention more on the action level in your conversion funnel.

Optimizing Your Conversion Funnel Can Help You Generate More Sales

The conversion funnel is a very helpful tool for marketing and sales teams to visually represent where a customer is in the buyer's journey. Not only can the conversion funnel help you to tailor strategies to increase conversions, but the data gained from it can also be implemented into customer retention.

When optimizing an e-commerce conversion funnel, it's important to work with a professional. Browse the Fiverr marketplace and hire an e-commerce marketer today.

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