How to make a sale: creating a sales funnel on an e-commerce website

Running an e-commerce website is all about one thing: conversion. There are plenty of resources online that will let you know the ways that work to optimize your content in order to rank higher in search engines, and thus, drive customers towards your products.

Social media campaigns are popular choices, as well as utilizing avenues like LinkedIn and Google Ads (Adwords) to increase visibility and reach. However, all of these options are key elements to building an effective sales funnel.

A successful sales funnel can’t happen overnight. In fact, it will take a lot of careful investment into understanding your target market.

Want to know how to create a successful sales funnel? Read on!

Establish your brand

On an average day, how many advertisements do you see? You might not even realize the sheer amount of publicity going on around you at any given moment. There are so many brands around the globe working to establish themselves with their target market, and some of these are your competitors. When it comes to funnelling people towards your brand, trust plays a vital role in conversion. Establishing your brand allows the customer to know who you are and what you’re all about, and the customer knowing you is paramount when it comes to trust.

How do you find a way to build trust with your potential customers as part of an online brand? Your sales funnel needs to begin with the development of a well-crafted landing page. For best results, your landing page should be A/B tested, as this will help you to further optimize and work towards better conversion. Videos are an excellent resource for your landing page as a way to give the customer a quick, interesting and playful overview of what your business does as well as the ways in which your approach differs from others.

If you’ve been collecting customer testimonials, now is the time to utilize them. Add positive feedback from real clients to your landing page as another sure-fire way to show brand loyalty and build trust with newcomers. A landing page offers a space to grow product awareness but that doesn’t necessarily mean every individual that ends up there will buy something. Remember, that’s totally fine. Collecting e-mail addresses and building a client list is the first step to the funnel initiative.

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Educate and hook sales for a later date

Once you’ve collected a few emails and built a solid awareness, you can begin to start driving these customers towards a funnel. The next step of the process is finding a way to educate and hook your potential clients. This is not the time to make a hard sell. Instead, find a way to cultivate and nurture reasons why you’re more valuable than your competition for potential customers.

As mentioned in our title, this is the time to use the powers of education to explain to users the reasons why your business, services or methods are the best solutions to their issues.

A bi-monthly e-mail or Facebook advertising campaign is an excellent way to approach this without overwhelming the customer with too much information or coming across as too pushy. The e-mail process itself can be automated so that you can schedule emails to send at a later date and not have to waste too much time in the process.

You should bear in mind that every visitor who finds their way to your website is unique, and so is their knowledge regarding your product. This is why it’s paramount to carry out the follow-up process correctly and make sure that you’re building trust and recognition about the value of your product.

Real life interactions

If you are a small company, interacting with potential customers in real life is a great way for them to get an understanding of your brand as well as the faces behind it. This should lead to further trust as well as buying potential. Trade shows, pop up shops and conferences will get your business and brand out in the world, and this can seriously help to grow a start-up or small business.

This is because it will help you to get familiar with the target market of those who are interested in your brand and this will include their concerns, their personal needs as well as any objections they might have with your business.

This dialogue and feedback that happens in these real-life interactions offers a concrete way for you to structure e-mail marketing campaigns and other promotional materials as a form of follow-up. Coming face to face with customers allows them an additional way to relate to your company. This part of the process may be time-consuming, but it’ll definitely offer you a leg up on your competition.

Lead offers

Now that you’ve collected e-mails and interacted with some of your customers in real life, you’ll need to draft up a lead offer. In some cases, this will be referred to as a “tripwire” which is essentially a low-cost incentive targeted towards new or first-time customers. The entire goal of a sales funnel is to turn potential customers into loyal lifetime customers, and there is no better way to accomplish this. 

The lead offer should tie directly into your e-mails as well as information regarding feedback, needs or concerns that you received both online and offline. This offer should be affordable and thus, you’re not necessarily looking to make a huge return with it but instead, your interest should rest in wanting to turn a visitor or browser into a return customer.

Consider various avenues for this offer, and promote smaller offers or less expensive products. This is where small conversions will happen and these are just as important as the big ones.

The main offer

Here is the stage of the funnel that you’re working towards as the ultimate goal of your e-commerce website is to make sales. Once customers trust you and are familiar with your products or services, you’ll begin to have a relationship with them. This is where you’re hoping that the customer will make a large purchase.

But more so then this, you should continue to cultivate your relationship with these clients. Continue to strengthen ties with your clients in interesting and informed ways.

This is because in the grand scheme of things if you’ve continued to harvest a positive relationship with your clients, you’re more likely to be the first they think of. For more tips regarding improving your e-commerce website, check out our article on the subject!