Guide your customers through your webshop

Sales Funnel: typical path a visitor takes through your website

Your sales funnel is the typical path a visitor takes through your web site. In the example people typically visit the home page, then the services page and then the contact us page where our ultimate goal is for them to make an enquiry.
And as visitors pass through the funnel some will naturally drop out - hence the name funnel and the shape of it. Our goals are to increase the number of your best potential customers entering the funnel and decrease the numbers who drop out.

Supporting Pages

You can see a number of supporting pages down both sides here. These are pages that not every visitor to you web site needs to visit so they are not part of your main sales funnel. Their purpose is to give visitors any additional info they seek and direct them back into the sales funnel.
Examples of supporting pages might include frequently asked questions, your company history (a lot of people do want to read this after they've seen your main sales message) or your newsletter.

Funnel Pages

Design the pages for your funnel based on the information that most people need to see before they buy. If most visitors need to see it to make their purchasing decision then include it in the funnel. Otherwise add it to a supporting page.

Knowing your customers well really counts here.
If you know your customers well and you've planned your web site well, you'll end up with a high proportion of your best customers on your contact us page where they make an enquiry.

To maximise the effectiveness of your funnel, and hence your conversion rate:
- Identify the benefits that are most important to your prospects,
- Thoroughly answer all their fears and objections,
- Write sales copy that makes it easy to find the information they want and skip the information they don't, and
- Add a call to action on every page - tell them what to do.

Keeping it Simple

So a good sales funnel will give your customer a really simple path through your web site, it answers all their questions, fears and objections and does not put any barriers in their way.
And planning it well simplifies the process of building your web site.

Here's a web site action plan template to help you identify your goals.

Source / read more: anyware.co.nz

Additional examples

Establish a simple and light checkout process for your customers

Making the checkout process simple and efficient on your e-commerce website is not rocket science; however, many companies add in so many features and checks to the process that it becomes a lengthy and tedious task. Certainly security is important and systems should give customers the opportunity to check that they have made their purchases correctly. At the end of the day, you need to remember this one simple fact -- your business will only thrive if you keep customers happy by making their lives better, easier or more efficient. Nobody likes to get bogged down in systems, least of all your customers. It is therefore essential to make the checkout process as simple and efficient as possible for your customers. Here are some tips on what makes a checkout process efficient.