Is your eCommerce sales funnel not living up to your expectations? There may be challenges that you might not have been able to overcome.
You have to sink in the fact that the average conversion rate for eCommerce sites is 2.63%. The ugly fact of 97.37% of the visitors coming to the site just to look through your collection & shop around, can be frustrating.
But, if you have the strategy & have studied your eCommerce sales funnel closely — you definitely do not have to settle for the least.
Most businesses fail to design their eCommerce sales funnel in a way to benefit their customers the most. Knowing about the customer’s journey and understanding what they have actually come for — would make an immense difference.
Conceptualizing the eCommerce sales funnel would help with an improved digital marketing strategy and improve the conversion rate. Understanding the customers’ journey from beginning till the end and picking it apart from one stage to the next can magically make this happen.
In this blog post, we would be talking about how conceptualizing a typical customer’s journey can help you through increasing your eCommerce sales funnel conversion rate. Are you ready to discover how you can improve the conversion rate through your eCommerce funnel?
Let’s dive in:
We’ll understand from the basics as to what is an eCommerce sales & how to navigate through each stage of the funnel to improve conversion rate.
ECommerce sales funnel.
In simple language, an eCommerce sales funnel is the path that your customers take from getting aware of your product to becoming a converting customer.
There isn’t any estimated information on how much time it will take for the customer to reach from initial to the final stage. While in some instances, it can happen in a blink of the eye & at the other instance, it can take them months & years to reach to the final stage from the initial.
Different business funnels have different eCommerce conversion based on how customers navigate through. While some of them have a shorter eCommerce conversion funnel, the structure & stages are almost similar.
This could be explained as — when your company is selling a low-cost product, customers will convert more easily. However, this will also include the three crucial stages — consideration, decision & retention.
Let’s discover what are the five important stages of the eCommerce sales funnel:
Breaking down the eCommerce sales funnel into a different stage:
While some agencies talk about three, or four stages, we would be discussing here “five crucial stages of the funnel” from awareness to the retention stage.
Sate 1: Awareness.
The awareness stage is critical — it is when the customer is learning about the product, and what is product all about. Your customer might have been struggling with a problem and stumbled upon your product or business while he might have been looking for a solution. This is when they are learning about your product through paid traffic, organic searches, and other marketing tactics.
What’s the best possible way?
Through the awareness stage, you must make sure that it has educational content. You should welcome your customers & help them learn about your product by giving up free guides, webinars, blog posts & reports.
Stage 2: Consideration.
The next stage in the eCommerce sales funnel is a consideration. This is when you should know that what gave results on top of the funnel may not work for the mid-funnel customers. This is when you have to keep them glued to what you are selling with product descriptions, testimonials & more.
What’s the best possible way?
You have set the hook, you cannot afford to let them go. You can also share brand-related memes on social media, keep them engaged through email marketing & do YouTube marketing.
Stage 3: Decision.
This is when the customers are making the final choice. At the decision stage, you have to work out different ways to show off — how you are different from the thousands of agencies or portals providing similar services/products.
What’s the best possible way?
It is when you can boast your value-added services — fast delivery, transparent exchange/return policies, HUGE DISCOUNTS & more.
Stage 4: Purchase.
This is when you have to deal with customers at the bottom of the funnel. At this stage, your customers have already decided to buy the product or not buy the product. At the purchase stage, you have to make it ready for the customers to smoothly buy the product. In normal cases, only three percent of the website visitors get converted, but you can increase this number.
What’s the best possible way?
Case 1: If your customers decide to buy the product.
Focus on a smooth, easy & frictionless checkout process & account sign up process. Check &v recheck the checkout process — do away with every reason that could cause someone to abandon the shopping cart.
Make sure there aren’t any unnecessary forms to fill or shipping charges or anything that can annoy the customer.
Check through all the checkout pages & make sure that all the pages are working properly.
Case 2: If the customer decides not to buy the product.
If that is the case, you can make use of other strategies like remarketing ads or cross channel marketing to the customer in your sales funnel.
Stage 5: Retention.
The motive of the initial four stages is to keep the customer engaged deeper down the funnel convincing them to buy the product. On the other hand, the goal of the Retention stage is to convince the customer to come again & again.
What’s the best possible way?
The customers at the retention stage are the beyond-the-funnel. You can use loyalty programs, email sequences & customer accounts so that these customers could be kept for cross-sells, upsells & add-ons.
Takeaways.
Testing continuously, collecting relevant data, knowing the right next step in each stage, and taking the right step accordingly can change the game for you. Every business has different stages for their eCommerce conversion funnel — some have a three-stage theory & others a four or five-stage theory. We have here discussed all the five-stage of the eCommerce conversion funnel. Here’s a Recap:
Stage 1: Awareness
Stage 2: Consideration
Stage 3: Decision
Stage 4: Purchase
Stage 5: Retention
However, the eCommerce conversion funnel might look complex, but if you are prepared with the right kind of data & tools — you’ll win over your customers. Each stage is essential from the awareness stage to the retention stage. At every stage of the funnel, arm yourself with the essentials, deal with challenges & most importantly make sure you have an easy, smooth & helpful solution to your customers’ problems they have come looking for.