Not everyone who lands on your eCommerce website will end up buying from you! But, if you set up a well-planned eCommerce marketing funnel on your website, it brings in more sales and conversions.
An eCommerce marketing funnel illustrates your website visitors’ route from your brand awareness to become a repeat buyer. In short, an eCommerce marketing funnel consists of all the strategies that are needed for awareness, customer retention, upselling, and cross-selling your products.
An eCommerce marketing funnel helps identify the areas that impact the conversion rate and optimize them to increase sales.
Stages of the eCommerce marketing funnel
Though every business has its unique conversion funnel, the critical stages that all the eCommerce marketing funnel has in common is:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
- Purchase
- Retention
Let’s explore each of these stages in detail:
Awareness
In the awareness stage, a potential buyer is looking for a solution for their problem and has become aware of your website through various ways like social media posts, organic search, or word of mouth.
It is crucial to grab the consumer’s attention, as they need a lot of information to solve their problem. To turn the awareness into an interest in buying your products, you need to provide relevant information about your products/services, offers, and discounts and tell your brand story.
If you are a new business with a limited budget, it is recommended to craft compelling content to rank your website organically in search engines like Google. It will help in bringing more organic visitors to your website without much advertising budget. The content can be a podcast, YouTube video, or an excellent blog post on your website.
For example, if you are creating video content on platforms like YouTube, you can consider crafting content around:
- Answering the Frequent Buyer Questions
- Showcase the new products
- And, Do-It-Yourself videos (that focuses on how your product works).
The more detailed your content is, the higher are the chances of consumers getting aware of your brand and getting interested in buying your products.
Now that you have built awareness about your brand, let us move to the next stage, consideration.
Consideration
Now that you have successfully sent the targeted visitors to your website, it is time to create trust and build a strong connection with your visitors to consider buying your product.
You can build a strong connection with your website visitors by having strong social proof. Social proof hints to the new customers that your product is being purchased by others and works well for them.
You can create strong social proof by asking your existing customers to leave reviews and ratings about your brand on your social media page. Also, adding a video testimonial by your existing customer will help build more trust in your store.
You can also mail these product reviews to your email subscribers and loyal customers to consolidate your relationship with them.
Apart from the social proofs, a few other things you can implement that can be tried and tested are:
- Sending special offers for your first-time buyers
- Fast Shipping and Proper Delivery information
- Creative Call-To-Action buttons for attracting purchases
Now that your visitors are interested in purchasing from your website, you can give them a nudge towards the shopping cart.
Decision
In this stage, the existing customers are less likely to hit the abandoned cart page than the new customers. Hence, it is essential to target first-time buyers effectively.
Here are some practical ways to do that:
- Offer free shipping: First-time buyers are usually attracted by free shipping, even if it takes longer to arrive. Create an attractive banner on your website, highlighting the free shipping on every purchase.
- Good Customer Service: Good customer service will always lead to repeat purchases on your website. You can add chatbots, FAQ pages, and LiveChat to help customers pick the right product and connect with them at each stage.
- Correct Use of Popups: Try to make use of the Popup options for the best. If a visitor is likely to exit your website without making any sale, try to offer him an extra discount by using an exit-intent popup.
Purchase
Once the buyer has crossed the decision stage, he eventually ends up purchasing on your website. However, not every visitor who crossed the decision stage ends up buying.
To make sure that you won’t lose out on these leads, try to implement these strategies in the purchase phase:
- Add Trusted Payment Gateway: With every day new eCommerce sites popping up on the web, it makes your customers a bit hesitant to make purchases on your website unless they see a trusted payment gateway. So, try offering your customers popular payment methods.
- Offer More Discounts: Offering more discounts to your customers will help them make their first purchase and make them your loyal customer in the long run. Also, discounts act as a trigger to pull off a successful purchase.
- Easy Logins: If your customers have a hard time signing up on your website, it frustrates them and makes them leave your website. So, try including an easy signup page for your customers.
- Abandon Cart Strategy: When a customer leaves the cart abruptly, try to send them an abandoned cart email with extra discounts or freebies. It will compel them to complete the purchase. This email marketing strategy you should implement as soon as you start your store.
Retention
To convert your one-time customers to loyal buyers, you can try sending them a simple Thank You email. It makes your customers feel special and welcomed. In this ‘Thank You’ mail, try using different retention methods. In addition, you can provide information about your loyalty program, surveys, and referral program.
The more attractive your rewards are the higher chances of your customers coming back for their next purchase.
Conclusion
An eCommerce marketing funnel will always help you in driving more conversions to your online store. It is always recommended to refine your marketing funnel and implement A/B testing to understand your customers exactly!
