Your e-commerce sales funnel starts with desire and, ideally, ends with lasting client retention.
At the beginning of the customer journey, or the widest part of the funnel, we are dealing with a large mass of people that merely knows about the existence of your product. These people may have seen a web ad, social media post, or a catchy blog featuring the product, which gave them awareness. However, by no means will everyone who saw the post click on a link or sign up to a mailing list.
In fact, the post will only speak to a certain subset of our now-aware potential customers. If our product is a facial cream that speaks to women in their 20s or 30s, we want to engineer the initial hook to speak to this specific demographic. The funnel has begun to narrow into a more limited number of people who can now relate to and express actual interest in your product.
For the marketeer, capturing, maintaining, and converting this initial interest into action means laying out several tactics. This may include a link from the social media post to the website's landing page, or a limited-period offer for first-time customers if they sign up with their email.
While it is important to keep these incentives in mind, it is also crucial to take stock of potential inhibitors that can prevent otherwise motivated leads from going through with their purchase. In e-commerce, where ease of transaction, speed, and simplicity matter, a checkout page with too many fields or a slow load time can narrow the funnel more than necessary.
Of course, there are also indecisive customers who browse, make it to checkout, and then leave their cart behind. In these situations, a well-timed follow-up email may still bring them back.
What remains is the next layer of the funnel, leaving us with the leads we have successfully converted into paying customers. This number depends strongly on the success of the marketing strategies laid out at each step of the funnel.
Keeping in mind that you have a higher chance of making a sale to a returning customer than to a new customer, the customer journey should not abruptly end once they click pay.
Creating retention through a loyal customer base that returns to your website and brings in new leads through word of mouth may be at the bottom of the funnel, but it should be on top of the priority list.
With years of experience and a proven portfolio of successful lead conversions, Voke Design can help you drive business with an expertly constructed sales funnel that addresses your unique business needs.
[1] 40+ Mind-Blowing Stats About Sales Funnels - AutoGrow
[2] 13 Interesting Sales Funnel Statistics & Facts (2022) - markinblog.com
[3] 40+ Mind-Blowing Stats About Sales Funnels - AutoGrow