What is Conversion Funnel Optimisation?
Conversion rates are a driving force in e-commerce, with minimal potential and where even the slightest adjustment can have a profound impact. With the typical e-commerce conversion rate ranging from 2.5 to 3%, a change of a few decimal places can completely change the direction of an organisation.
An e-commerce conversion funnel can help you identify areas where improvements can be made. An e-commerce conversion funnel can track the customer journey to show where customers are making purchases, what motivates them, and what your company can do to boost conversion rates. Do not let the phrase "conversion funnel" intimidate you.
You already have a conversion funnel if you sell a good or service online; all you need to do is optimise it for the best outcomes. Becoming an expert at creating a conversion funnel that converts customers will take practice. For the duration of your online business, you will work to analyse and improve it.
Typical Marketing Funnel Components
All types of companies frequently share the components of a conventional marketing funnel. It tracks every customer journey phase and considers how marketers can best connect with customers at each stage.
Awareness
During the awareness stage, attracting customers to your website is crucial. To do this effectively, you must evaluate the methods employed, such as media, search engine results, PPC, blogs, etc.
Lead generation encompasses a range of techniques to increase brand awareness and promote products and services through outbound marketing strategies, referrals and inbound marketing approaches.
It is essential to review click-through rates and other metrics related to awareness to comprehend which words, ideas and messages resonate with your target audience. The next step involves targeting the audience. Investing time and resources into e-commerce marketing but failing to reach the customer base will adversely impact your store's conversion rate.
Interest
In this conversion funnel stage, you work to pique customers' interest in your good or service. Here, you want to establish a stronger connection with your customers, and your e-commerce website, content, and email marketing campaigns are fantastic ways to do this.
Newsletters, email lists, and opt-in forms are excellent tools for this. Improve attention-grabbing elements like headlines, carousel images, and banners to raise your opt-in rate. For entry points, such as blog posts, your site's homepage, and product pages, create compelling copy and use a well-executed layout.
Desire
Building on the interest phase now that you have a customer's attention, you want to make them want what you are offering in this phase. Use elements with a higher level of abstraction and greater attention to detail. Offering top-notch product images, enticing product descriptions, fantastic product options, and engaging product videos is a logical place to start. Work on getting some excellent product reviews as you generate sales. Customers are in the consideration stage, and you want to arm them with all the knowledge they need to make wise choices and eliminate their problems.
Conversion
During this stage, customers take the desired action. Concentrate on your product pages to ensure you remove obstacles and do everything you can to motivate customers to add items to their carts. After that, review your checkout process by providing pertinent details and responding to frequently asked questions. Here, where minor checkout tweaks can make a big difference, improving your checkout to lower cart abandonment rates is a no-brainer.
Re-engage
The importance of this last step cannot be overstated for e-commerce companies. Retention is essential to expanding an online store, so after someone has converted on your e-commerce site and taken the desired action, you will want to entice these highly targeted customers back into the funnel.
Invite them to sign up for your email newsletter or social media channels so you can market to them later on to encourage repeat business and purchases. Additionally, you can email them a coupon or promotion. You can entice them to return and show them how much you value their business by including retargeting or loyalty materials in their shipment and expanding your product line or services.
Phases of an E-commerce Conversion Funnel
Although the stages of an e-commerce conversion funnel may differ from those of a conventional marketing funnel, they have the same main objective. Every step of the customer journey, from initial interest to checkout and beyond, is tracked and guided by both companies. The specificity of the stages is the primary distinction between the two. They follow the steps below for the e-commerce funnel:
Homepage
The homepage is the first section and the area on your website that your customers are most likely to visit first. Optimise your homepage with attention-grabbing copy, eye-catching images, and elements like customer testimonials or reviews. The success of the beginning of the customer journey can be determined by the homepage, which frequently serves as the location where your company's first impression is made.
Product Page
You are responsible for ensuring that the process is as simple as possible for customers interested in a product to find it from the home page. Review your navigation, search bars, and recommendation engine to make sure they are visible, simple to use, and point customers in the right direction to make the journey successful.
Shopping cart
The following action is to add the item to the shopping cart after successfully locating the item they wish to buy. Customers need to be able to see and quickly review their carts because if they get lost, you risk losing a valuable prospect.
The customer now has two options: go back and look for more products, which presents businesses with an additional upselling and cross-selling opportunity, or move on to the next stage.
Checkout page
Customers enter their payment information during the final step before conversion, which is the checkout process. But even though they have reached the checkout page, the sale may still go through. You risk losing the customer just before the finish line if the user experience is subpar or the payment options are few. Ensure your checkout page is as functional and simple to use.
Delivery and order processing
Orders must be processed and shipped after the customer completes their purchase. The journey for your company or the customer continues even though the sales process is over. Events can still happen that can end the sales experience, whether your products are running out of stock or a customer cancels the order. It is in your best interest to ensure that everything goes as planned and that you have enough stock. Not only can a processing or shipping problem end a single sale, but it can also make a customer so angry that they never return.
Post-purchase
The actions taken following purchase and after a product has been delivered are included in the final phase of conversion funnel optimisation. There are two main ways of moving forward with customer loyalty and additional acquisition:
- Businesses should adopt an acquisition mindset and concentrate on obtaining referrals and customer recommendations to increase sales through word of mouth and satisfied customers. A customer is likelier to recommend a product or service to his friends if the sales process is effective.
- Companies should try to keep the clients who have already purchased from them. You can use your established familiarity to send them product discounts and loyalty programme offers by concentrating on these clients.
Conversion funnel optimisation to prevent cart abandonment
There are numerous explanations for why a prospective buyer would leave their cart empty. They may need to look around, compare prices, or remember to finish their purchase. You can still reach out to them using email marketing, retargeting ads, or even push notifications since abandoned carts do not necessarily indicate missed sales. There are several campaigns you could implement to reduce cart abandonment:
- Emails sent to users who abandon their carts remind them they have items in their carts.
- Remarketing Campaign: Emphasising the value of one of the items in the user's shopping cart,
- Push notification alerting the user to a product price reduction in their shopping cart.
Tools for Conversion Funnel Optimisation
The right tools to optimise your conversion funnel can significantly improve customer engagement and increase sales. These tools provide valuable insights, analytics, and testing capabilities to help you identify areas of improvement and implement data-driven strategies for better conversion rates. Here are some popular tools that can assist you in optimising your conversion funnel:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful and widely-used web analytics tool that provides comprehensive insights into user behaviour on your website. It allows you to track various metrics, including traffic sources, user demographics, and behaviour flow. By setting up conversion goals and funnels in Google Analytics, you can analyse the performance of each stage of your conversion funnel, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions to improve the user experience.
Browsee
Browsee offers funnel analytics that can help you understand why users drop out of your conversion funnel. With session replays and funnel alerts, you can gain valuable insights into user behaviour and take action to improve your funnel's performance.
Mixpanel
Mixpanel is an advanced analytics tool focusing on event tracking and user engagement. It lets you track specific user actions and interactions within your conversion funnel, providing valuable data to optimise user experiences and drive conversions.
How does Browsee improve funnel conversions?
The features of Browsee's funnel analytics tool make it easier for you to understand why users leave your conversion funnels before completing the objectives. You can use it to analyse each dropped session separately to determine precisely what is wrong with your funnel.
You can get session replays for dropped sessions, user and session counts for each step, conversion rates, and average session length information with Browsee's funnel analytics. Additionally, you can set up funnel alerts to receive your funnel analytics in Browsee's daily summary email.
Browsee Conversion Funnel to Help in Buyers’ Journey
Bowsee's funnel SEO assists at all stages of the buyer's journey by offering insights into what consumers are searching for and comprehending content intent.
Brands must understand the complexity of consumer intent to engage and reach modern consumers effectively. This broadens the search beyond a marketing strategy to a multifaceted discipline that includes customer experience management and funnel optimisation, enabling a more solid connection between a business and consumer—and conversion.
In a Nutshell
Conversion Funnel Optimisation is critical for e-commerce businesses looking to maximise their conversion rates and drive growth. It involves analysing and optimising the various stages of the customer journey, from awareness to post-purchase, to ensure that potential customers smoothly transition through each step and eventually complete their desired actions.
The traditional marketing funnel components of Awareness, Interest, Desire, Conversion, and Re-engage are essential steps that businesses should focus on to attract, engage, and retain customers effectively. By continuously improving each stage of the funnel, e-commerce companies can enhance their overall conversion rates and achieve better business outcomes.
The e-commerce conversion funnel, consisting of the Homepage, Product Page, Shopping Cart, Checkout Page, Delivery and Order Processing, and Post-Purchase stages, is a specific version tailored for online businesses. Each step is crucial in guiding customers through the buying process and ensuring a seamless and satisfactory experience.
Tools like Browsee's funnel analytics offer valuable insights into user behaviour and help identify areas where customers drop out of the conversion funnel. By analysing session replays and utilising funnel alerts, businesses can better understand the reasons behind cart abandonment and take appropriate actions to re-engage potential customers.
How much is a great User Experience worth to you?
Browsee helps you understand your user's behaviour on your site. It's the next best thing to talking to them.
