Is Sales Funnel Better for eCommerce products? Discover if sales funnels are better for eCommerce products, dropshipping, or whitelabeling
Are you thinking of increasing conversion rates for your website? You should read this article.
In today’s competitive eCommerce world, converting visitors to loyal customers is difficult. You would need a strategy that will help you understand your target audience. This is where a sales funnel comes in.
An eCommerce conversion funnel is a series of forms and sales copy that guide visitors or potential buyers from the awareness stage to the conversion stage. This conversion funnel is also called a sales funnel.
Let’s dive in and learn more about this topic.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- A sales funnel guides customers through a buying path, reducing distractions and improving conversion rates.
- You can tailor your funnels to different audience segments, making it easier to personalize offers based on user behavior.
- Funnels make it easier to track and optimize conversions from paid ads.
Sales Funnels VS eCommerce Stores: Understanding the Basics
While eCommerce stores give visitors a traditional storefront experience, sales funnels guide potential customers through a structured linear journey till they are converted.
A sales funnel has three steps which are the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. Having a sales funnel will help you study customer behavior and engagement and know what they want. These insights allow you to invest in the right marketing channels.
The stages of a sales funnel are awareness, interest, evaluation, engagement, action, and retention.
In building a sales funnel for your business, you should analyze audience behavior, generate leads, capture audience attention, and maintain relationships.
eCommerce is the trading of goods and services online. This can happen through social media, websites, online marketplace, or sales platforms. The goal is to match the product in your eCommerce store to the needs of your company.
Users can get a lot of benefits with eCommerce like buying at their convenience, since it is an online store.
The types of sites that host electronic transactions are business-to-consumer(B2C), business-to-business(B2B), consumer-to-consumer(C2C), and consumer-to-business(C2B).
Every eCommerce site can accept orders, take payments, handle logistics, and provide excellent customer service.
Benefits of Using a Sales Funnel for eCommerce
More often than not, visitors to your eCommerce site feel lost because there is no guidance. However, when you introduce a sales funnel, everything changes.
A sales funnel guides your visitors through all the stages until they make a purchase rather than leaving them to wander.
Here are a few benefits of using a sales funnel for your eCommerce store.
Improved Customer Retention
You can keep customers coming back with your sales funnel by focusing on post-purchase engagement and loyalty. It does not stop at just making sales.
Funnels help to keep your return customers engaged. You can implore email marketing strategies such as follow-ups, offers, and recommendations to keep customers interested.
By tracking customers’ previous engagements, you can send personalized promotions that appeal to individual preferences. You can also incorporate a reward system for return customers. This will play a huge role in their loyalty.
Helps Streamline Customer Journey
Using a sales funnel for your eCommerce store can help you streamline your customers’ journey. When creating your funnel, you need to make sure that it has the most simplified form of information regarding your product.
It needs to provide a clear path for visitors to go through so that they do not get overwhelmed with choices. When customers feel guided and supported, their confidence in your brand increases.
Higher Conversion Rates
A properly built sales funnel guides visitors or potential customers through a series of processes to the point of purchase.
Focusing on techniques that will target and push your audience to the point of action is important in increasing conversion rates. You can also use sales funnels to set automated follow-ups and retargeting strategies to bring back visitors who abandoned their carts.
One technique that can also help increase the conversion rate is leveraging persuasion techniques. You can place a sense of urgency and scarcity to encourage visitors to take action.
Improved Analytics
With sales funnels, you can get detailed insights about customer behavior and engagement. This can guide your business in reviewing its marketing strategies based on factual data.
You can identify at what point potential customers leave the funnel or abandon their carts. It allows you to also measure your campaign performance to know which ads or emails converted the best.
A sales funnel also gives you insight into your customers’ patterns of purchase and their preferences so that you can easily personalize future marketing.
Limitations of Using a Sales Funnel for eCommerce
Sales funnels can go wrong in multiple places. Let us take a look at a few of those places.
Oversimplification
One of the major limitations of using a sales funnel is that it oversimplifies the customer’s journey. It is built to guide customers through a direct path.
However, most customers do not want to go through a direct path. They want to explore other options.
This oversimplification does not take into consideration customers’ unique needs and how they might engage with marketing materials at different stages.
It is Rigid
A sales funnel can be inflexible and rigid. Thereby, forcing customers into a direct and linear path. This can cause businesses to lose the opportunity to engage with customers more directly.
This rigidity also overlooks the ability of visitors or potential buyers to research and engage with your product at different points in their journey to make a purchase.
Case Study: How Funnels Increased Conversion for Apple Watch
Apple company used the AIDA sales funnel strategy, and it increased its conversion rate by far.
The AIDA model used by Apple is as follows: Attention, interest, desire, and action.
Attention
This step is the awareness stage. Your brand has to create awareness about your product to your target audience. It is at this stage that you identify your target audience’s problems and desires.
If you try to sell at this stage, you will destroy your marketing strategy. Apple made an ad using the tagline “watch is coming.” They did not say much about the product features.
This built anticipation and made the audience look forward to the product release. Another important thing they did to grab people’s attention was upload high-resolution graphics. The images were too crisp to ignore.
Interest
After creating awareness, Apple then made users know how the watch can solve their problems and improve their lifestyle in the interest stage.
At this stage, you want to come up with engaging content that will keep your potential customers fixed and hooked to your product.
Apple has to show its brand uniqueness and the specialty of its product to keep users interested and looking forward to more.
Desire
The goal of the desired stage is to shift your audience’s mindset to “I want this product.” This stage looks a bit similar to the interest stage. However, this stage goes beyond providing them with your product features and functionalities.
You want to sell the product to them. There has to be some form of light persuasion. Something that will prompt them to make a purchase.
Action
This is the point where potential customers begin to convert into actual customers. A lot of purchases happen at this stage. Here, people are convinced about your product and are excited about what it can do for them.
During the sales of the Apple watch, they came up with different designs and colors. Thereby, allowing end users to choose the one that resonates with their preferences.
This theory can be implemented on any product or service. This strategy simply helps to increase sales.
Steps to Building a High-Converting eCommerce Sales Funnel
If you have an eCommerce store, you would need a sales funnel to guide your customers through the purchase experience. The steps to building high-converting eCommerce sales funnels are as seen below.
Identify Your Audience
You need to study your audience to know their preference and activities so that you can tailor your marketing strategy accordingly.
Convince with a Video
When creating awareness for your product, you need to be able to create compelling and eye-catching videos that will make people convinced enough to want to invest in your product.
People are moved by what they see. High-quality content-filled videos will sell your product even faster than posting write-ups that people might not even read.
Adilo is a video hosting company that allows you to host high-quality ad-free content.
Lead Capture
The most effective way to attract email sign-ups is with pop-ups. You can use Adilo to create email sign-ups for the video you put out there when creating awareness.
You can also nurture and build relationships with these leads by providing information addressing their concerns. This will guide them to the path of engaging more with your products.
Also, reference and link to any of 4 Adilo Video Research articles
How Sales Funnels Can Improve Conversions in Dropshipping & Whitelabeling
Using sales funnels for dropshipping and whitelabeling can improve conversions because they guide potential customers through a structured journey from awareness to when they convert.
Sales funnels also help you to build credibility and engagement even before your product gets out there and is ready for purchase.
Building long-lasting relationships with your customers is what makes any thrive long-term. By doing this, you create a connection with your customers which makes them want to remain loyal to you.
You can also segment your audience, target their specific needs based on their activity in your store, and then deliver personalized content, offers, and recommendations to them.
The first stage of the sales funnel for dropshipping is the awareness stage. This is where you get potential customers into the funnel. You can use eye-catching videos to showcase your products. Platforms like Adilo allow you to host ad-free videos.
You can also capture leads through your videos by using opt-in forms. All this can be done in one dashboard on Adilo.
Going through the AIDA process till conversion.
FAQs
Are funnels better for dropshipping or whitelabeling?
Sales funnels are perfect for both models. For dropshipping, they streamline the checkout process and reduce cart abandonment, and also focus on direct response marketing which works great for impulsive buyers.
It also works great for whitelabeling by improving customer retention through email follow-ups and also building brand authority.
What are the benefits of using a funnel for eCommerce stores?
It can result in high conversion rates, better customer retention, and better marketing strategy.
What platforms can I use to build a funnel for my eCommerce store?
You can use great popular platforms like ClickFunnels, GetResponse, Unbounce, Instapages, and Leadpages.
Can I use a funnel with social media ads?
Yes. You can use funnels with your social media ads. Funnels can help turn cold traffic into buyers much more effectively than an online store.
Final Thoughts: Is Sales Funnel Better for eCommerce?
It is safe to say sales funnels are the icing on the cake to boost conversion in your eCommerce store.
If you use a sales funnel and set it up correctly for both dropshipping and whitelabeling, you will attract and convert leads more effectively, increase sales, and optimize your overall marketing efforts.
One important thing to note when creating your sales funnels is that first impression matters a lot. You want to create an amazing first impression that will keep your customers coming back.
The secret to creating a lasting first impression is using catch and high-quality graphics at the awareness stage. This is a game-changer. You can use Adilo to host your high-quality videos for free.
Priscilla Aguonye is a Customer Support staff and SEO Writer at Adilo. She dedicates most of her time carrying out research to ensure innovative and accurate content. When Priscilla is not writing or helping customers out, she is karaoking.
Felix is the Senior Content Strategist at Adilo, where he harnesses his expertise in social video marketing, online video platforms, search engine optimization, e-commerce, e-learning, and marketing to help businesses drive results. With a keen eye for storytelling and a pulse on industry trends, Felix crafts actionable content that empowers brands to elevate their marketing and thrive in the digital landscape.
