Have you ever gone to an ecommerce platform and bought nothing? Obviously, yes, every person has done this in their life.
It may surprise you to learn that 97% of visitors to your ecommerce site left without making a purchase.
The necessity for ecommerce sales funnel efficiency becomes even more essential when you consider how expensive it is to gain just one customer.
In this blog, I will assist you in how to grow your ecommerce business by creating an effective sales funnel.
Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need before they realize it themselves – Steve Jobs.
Also read: B2B SaaS Sales Funnel: Complete Guide
What is the ecommerce sales funnel?
An e-commerce sales funnel describes the potential clients go through from user to buyer. An e-commerce sales funnel consists of multiple sections, commonly referred to as the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. However, these steps might change based on the company’s sales strategy and its sales training.
Customers visit the top of the sales funnel and work their way down, step by step, until they turn into regular customers (ideally). Consumers can finish the ecommerce funnel in a few seconds, or it could take several months.
All brands and sectors have a standard design and flow for their ecommerce funnels. However, it might vary based on the goal, structure, or type of business.
Also read: Start Your Own Ecommerce Business
Stages with strategies of Ecommerce sales funnel
Ecommerce sales funnel stages are generally divided into four parts:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
- Retention
Also read: Ecommerce Growth Strategies That Fire Up Sales
1. Awareness
How do the customers come under the awareness stage? When a user is experiencing a problem and looking for a solution.
Perhaps they’ve just learned that their issue has a brand. Then they realized that one of the possible solutions for them could be found in your ecommerce store.
When a customer learns about your online or ecommerce store, customers hunt for solutions and become aware of your brand when they understand they need to purchase a good or service to address their issue.
It is your brand’s responsibility to successfully catch the attention of potential customers and draw them into the second stage.
Through your marketing strategy across a variety of platforms, including Facebook marketing, Instagram marketing, search engine optimization, google ads, media monitoring, campaigns, and countless more channels, you may increase consumer awareness.
Also read: 6 Ways To Increase E-Commerce Visibility And Sales
Key techniques for the Awareness stage
- Promote your USP
Be aware that consumers are searching for something you have to provide that your rivals can’t. You must therefore promote the USP of your company.
You can attract your customer by running Google and Facebook ads.
Facebook and Google ads, which have more than 2.32 billion monthly active consumers, are the ideal medium for raising your brand’s awareness.
Facebook and Google advertisements come in various formats for your conversion goals, which is beneficial for businesses. You can quickly draw a target audience to your e-commerce site by using Google & Facebook advertisements.
The most social aspect of both platforms has no restrictions on how you may utilize it. You can do whatever you want to increase your ecommerce store sales.
Also read: 8 Essential Ecommerce Marketing Strategies For Success
- Promote Your Content
The best approach to draw people is through content, which is the brain of modern marketing techniques. So use compelling content marketing to spread the word about your products and information.
Customers might need help when they start their journey. Why not provide them with content that includes solutions or recommendations?
The word “content” is broad. You don’t need to create in-depth article entries or hold webinars to get visitors to your website. You don’t even require a huge budget or a busy team to develop content for customers at this level.
You have to only create video content on YouTube or a basic tutorial on your e-commerce site for easy understanding consumers.
Also read: Top B2B Ecommerce Marketing Stats [2021]
2. Consideration
This stage shows that your marketing campaign was effective because customers are now thinking of buying your brand. They interact with your brand and start purchasing your product.
Your main objectives are their engagement with your ecommerce store and eventual purchase. You will need to work on ecommerce usability, explicit content, discounts, incentives, and even more to do this.
It will assist you in giving potential customers the assurance they need to make a purchase.
Key techniques for the Consideration stage –
- Emphasis on Social Proof and Trust
One of the best ways for an ecommerce store to establish trust is through social proof. You will employ social proof on your ecommerce site by presenting consumers’ reviews and content.
The social proof will prove the dependability, worth, validity, and originality of your brand as accurate by your current customers.
This is a powerful technique for persuading site visitors of the reliability and quality of your ecommerce store. It performs in each stage of the e-commerce sales funnel.
Social evidence is helpful in many different contexts and platforms. So you can look into some of the most effective strategies you use to guide consumers along the sales funnel, like paid ads, email marketing, and many more.
- Optimize your ecommerce site
You win your customers’ hearts on your shopping sites when they are in the consideration stage.
Customers must be convinced that your items are the best option, and you must encourage them to add items to their shopping carts.
At this point, you should link your homepage language with regular inquiries from buyers and clear up any misunderstandings.
To determine what your buyer persona is searching for, start with targeted keywords. Utilize these findings throughout your content, accurate product description, and shipping and return info, and then present your items as a solution to these issues.
Let’s now move forward to discuss the portion of the sales funnel where consumers decide what to buy, i.e., the decision stage.
Also read: Ecommerce Google Ads Automation: 8 Successful Strategies
3. Decision
Within the ecommerce pipeline, you have effectively attracted and kept the viewer’s attention. Remember that you direct them in the appropriate direction and provide them with the essential knowledge when they are ready to buy things from your store.
The choice could indicate that customers have placed items in their wishlist or shopping cart, but it need not automatically entail that they are purchasing the item. Therefore, you must still exert effort to obtain the conversion.
You can attract any person who is interested in buying your product or visiting your ecommerce site through email marketing with the help of various email marketing CRM and persuade them to take action.
Probably they added something to their wishlist or wallet. They just require one more effort to close the deal.
Prospects considering making a transaction need to be protected from any distractions and gently encouraged to do so.
Your preferred tools at this point will be emails and on-site messages.
Also read: 9 Best B2B Ecommerce Platforms
Key techniques for the Decision stage
- An Active Push
If we’re unsure of a choice, we all require some help. Right?
Similarly to this, you must provide visitors with immediate support if they are spending their time on your item sites or payment pages and are afraid to buy a product.
The only thing connecting you and the customer is your checkout page.
You now have two options: convert them into committed consumers or permanently lose them.
E-commerce stores require a perfect checkout page with several payment choices and strong CTAs.
Source- Amazon Cart
Amazon gives you various payment, secure payment gateway choices like using any Debit/Credit cards you have, cash on delivery, net banking, or suggestions to recent customer views; in short, the main motto is to provide a good consumer experience.
However, there’s always more you can do to encourage customers to complete their transactions by giving the advantage of free shipping or sending the target or personalized emails.
- Retargeting for Cart Abandonment
It’s normal for people to add items to their carts and then forget about them or decide not to purchase them. Therefore, it’s crucial to retarget these individuals in order to motivate them to finish these transactions.
So, sending personalized emails is the best solution for cart abandonment.
Amazon is the best example of sending personalized emails to their customers. Sending mails to customers at every stage, whether on cart abandonment time, upsell mail, invitation mail, thank you mail, or else confirmation mail.
Also read: How To Develop B2B SaaS Sales Process
Source- Browsing history email
4. Retention
Cheers!
Now your customer was successfully led all the way to the bottom of the funnel by you, which is also known as the bottom of the funnel.
Key point – If you put up constant work, this stage will provide you with immense value in terms of profits and growth.
The best part now is to get them to come again and purchase more.
The primary sources of your total sales will come from recurring consumers if you have a strong customer retention strategy.
According to surveys, returning consumers have a nine times higher conversion rate and purchase more than new customers.
A good retention strategy will therefore result in increased lifetime value for customers and ongoing recurring business.
That’s how to total profit you generate with your current consumers.
Also read: 5 Best Ways To Attract And Retain Your Customers
Key techniques for the Retention stage
- Give good customer shopping experience & reviews
Customer retention is significantly influenced by the customer shopping experience. As a result, be sure to consider consumers’ feedback, inquire regarding their experiences, and work to enhance the customer experience.
Fact: 32% of your first consumers will return to place an order again.
And you know what the best practice for doing that is email marketing. With a business email marketing campaign aimed at current consumers, you can let them know how often you value them while also trying to guide them to interact.
- Offer Coupons & discounts
Customers are excited about only one thing, i.e., rewards. Correct? They get 100 out of 110% satisfaction from that product or when they may get much more value from their purchases.
Customers are encouraged to be committed to the brand and purchase again through these rewards and loyalty programs.
In this email, amazon invites customers to re-purchase the product by offering them good discounts and offers.
Everyone may benefit from word-of-mouth marketing, which brings in new consumers while rewarding those who referred them with offers.
Using unique dynamic QR codes for referral marketing can be a good way to boost your customer loyalty and also gain new customers. With a dynamic QR code generator, each customer receives a unique and reusable QR code to share for referral loyalty points which can be used for value-added benefits as their referral makes a purchase, this way, you can help onboard new customers with the help of your loyal ones.
Also read: Fintech And Ecommerce: All You Need To Know
Expert Tip
Knowing how your customers are progressing via your ecommerce sales funnel and using that knowledge to optimize each process for increased revenue are the factors that make a successful sales funnel.
The most important thing is to satisfy your customer. A satisfied customer is considerably more inclined to support your company by making a purchase. Creating the procedure as easily and smoothly as you can aids in guiding the customer.
Just imagine- You just enter a store and find no signs. You ask an employee for help when you do not find what you need, yet they are unhelpful. You look for the item you want and find it, but you’re unsure where the payment line is. Finally, you attempt to apply a coupon code you found no longer valid, causing you to pay more than you planned. All these things frustrate you, don’t they? Would you be satisfied with this visit and ready to return to that store?
Obviously No. So avoid being that company online.
And make it easier for customers so that it will be more accessible for you too to generate more revenue.
Also read: The Catchiest 7 Shopify Themes For Your Ecommerce Store
Conclusion
The primary thing you can do for your company is to improve your sales funnel. Every customer will go through these four stages in their buyer’s journey regardless of what your company is.
While some people move through the stages rapidly, others may take weeks or months to persuade.
Knowing how customers progress through your e-commerce sales will help you to optimize each stage for greater conversions.
Your company’s revenues will increase to an efficient sales funnel, significantly accelerating overall growth.
You can see great outcomes for your ecommerce store if you optimize your sales funnel better for your customer and start using some of these tactics in practice right immediately and notice a boost in your ecommerce conversions.
What tactics do you employ to guide customers through your ecommerce conversion funnel? Tell us in the comments section below.
