How to make your sales funnel as fast as possible!
To move from customer engagement to customer purchases, it is essential to understand what a sales funnel is.
The sales funnel breaks down each step a user needs to take to become one of your customers. If you were a traditional storefront, your sales funnel might be moving through racks of items in the store, selecting an item or multiple items, and moving to the checkout to reach the bottom of the funnel.
In an eCommerce funnel, you might include emails or social media engagement to move the customer towards your site, then check out.
In general, there are four stages of the funnel:
1) Awareness
This is the moment when a customer first becomes aware of your product or business. In eCommerce, this will likely happen digitally, as well as potentially in an offline environment too. Either through a social media post, website ad, internet search, or another method, at the first stage, the customer has just discovered you and your brand.
2) Interest
At this stage of the customer funnel, the consumer is very interested in your product or similar products. They may be doing research or price comparisons.
Here is where thoughtful content will help the customer make informed choices.
Here is where you want to establish yourself as a superior product or service over your competitors. It is a delicate line to walk-if your product is pushed too hard at this stage, you may turn your customers off and away.
3) Decision
This is the point where the customer is ready to make their purchase. At this time, offering the best deal possible could be vital to swaying their final decision. Something such as free shipping or a discount code. A call to action that cannot be turned down.
4) Action
This final portion and bottom of the sales funnel are where a customer makes their decision and becomes a part of your customer base.
Tips for a Strong Sales Funnel
1) Buyer Awareness
To establish brand awareness, you need to identify your target audience.
Who are they? Where are they spending their digital time? Is it on Facebook or Instagram? The more you know about your audience, the more effective you will be when it comes to building awareness. Having a firm understanding of your buyer and their relationship to your brand is critical for converting leads to sales.
2) Engage customer attention
A sales funnel will only work if you can convince people to visit your sites and view your content. Offering various content types across multiple platforms gives different kinds of customers to learn about your eCommerce platform.
If you have researched your audience and target customer, spending money on ads where your customers are most likely to frequent could be beneficial in building site visits.
One of the most consistent ways to build awareness and gain interest is to craft a content plan.
A content plan isn’t just what you think your customers would like to see; it is what you know will resonate with them. By doing careful market research and having a thorough understanding of your potential customers and how their relationship with your product works, you will be able to craft outlets and active interest as customers work through their interest and research phase and move towards a decision.
3) Focus on nurturing
Getting customers to engage and through the funnel to the point where they decide to purchase from you can be a long journey.
Keeping customers engaged and interested with content, email marketing, or other venues will be essential to building that relationship. It is also necessary to consider that if they make a purchase, that relationship doesn’t end after the purchase; a continued relationship can lead to future sales.
4) Manage your funnel
It is essential that once you have set up your sales funnel, you are continually evaluating its effectiveness. There may be opportunities to streamline the funnel and move a customer to purchase sooner. If you notice that a significant number of potential customers are exiting the funnel at a particular stage, examine why that may be happening.
Conclusion:
A fast funnel deserves a fast store. So you have customers banging at the door, they are desperate to buy your product and are willing to checkout. Is your UX up to scratch?
Is your Shopify Store as fast as your competitiors? Stay one step ahead of the game with The Stonethro Speed Tool – we analyse various metrics that will have an impact on conversions and show you where your site ranks in comparison to the world’s top 5000 Shopify stores.
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