How to Keep Customers in the Conversion Funnel

4 – 5 minute read:

Conversion rate helps see how effective an e-commerce business’ website is at generating sales, and a visual representation of it is the sales funnel. By understanding how the funnel works, business owners are able to find areas on the website that are causing visitors to turn away rather than continue their purchase journey. We’ve put together a guide to help you retain as many customers in the conversion funnel as possible and generate more sales.

What is a Conversion Funnel?

A conversion funnel represents the journey customers go through when completing a purchase. This journey is from the start when the customer gains brand recognition, meaning they find out about the company and its products, all the way to completing a transaction and receiving the product or service. While this process varies from business to business and can range from more straightforward to a more complicated one, all conversion funnels contain four major categories.

• Total sessions (awareness)
• Product page view (interest)
• Add to cart (desire)
• Transaction (action)

The conversion funnel is an important tool for business owners because it shows where potential customers are lost throughout their purchasing journey. Higher conversion rates bring in more revenue from the same amount of traffic, so increasing this measure can be very beneficial. 

Build the Right Funnel

Building the right funnel is crucial to higher conversion rates and increased sales. For this reason, it is important to determine and research what visitors do on your website. Are they spending more time on specific pages, and if so why? Are they skipping certain sections of the site? These questions can lead to the identification of “holes” in the funnel which are parts of the funnel where potential customers are lost. For example, if a website has a long and quite boring looking section of text, customers might be uninterested and leave before taking time to read the content.

There are many ways for a business owner to improve their conversion funnel. Some options include making the customer’s journey on the company website as smooth, quick, and intuitive as possible so that they don’t end up being confused. Another way is by adding conversion triggers and CTAs (click through actions) such as buttons leading visitors to the next stage of the funnel.

One of the most common “holes” in a funnel is the checkout process. Customers do not like feeling as if their privacy is invaded, so lengthy and unnecessary checkout forms can end up deterring them from the purchase.

Track Conversion Performance

In order to successfully manage and improve funnels, it is important for business owners to regularly view and analyze KPIs (key performance indicators) related to conversion. The easiest way is with a data analysis tool such as the UI Ave Analytics App. Shopify store owners can see a visual representation of their funnel along with a full breakdown of their conversion and traffic performance with KPIs such as:

• Click-through rate
• Bounce rate
• Cart abandonment

This data is crucial to identifying any possible “holes” in the funnel so that they can be fixed quickly and efficiently, and reduce the number of lost sales. Once these improvements are made, the app makes it easy to see their performance and track whether or not the changes fixed the problem.

Conclusion

Having a strong website leads to a strong conversion funnel. By implementing features such as easy-to-use and intuitive pages, CTAs, a short customer journey, and simple checkout forms, business owners can have better results retaining people on their site. When paired with a strong data analysis tool, these actions turn visitors into customers and generate profit for your e-commerce business.

Summary:

• What is a Conversion Funnel?
  • Steps customers take to make a purchase
  • The 4 stages 
• Build the Right Funnel
  • Determine customer behaviour 
  • Shorten an simplify the customer journey
  • Add conversion triggers and CTAs
  • Simplify your checkout process
• Track Conversion Performance
  • Regularly analyze KPIs
  • Identify holes in the funnel 
  • Ensure the performance of optimizations

External Resources:

https://www.abtasty.com/blog/ecommerce-conversion-funnel/
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/conversion-rate-optimization-conversion-funnel/ https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/ecommerce-conversion-funnel/ https://www.shopify.ca/blog/conversion-funnel-leaks