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E-Commerce Sales Funnel Strategy - Optimizing Funnels in 2024

Ecommerce Sales Funnel Strategy

Can you think of the last time you purchased something online? Did you directly buy from the website, or did you do your due diligence on the brand and quality before making the purchase? Did you visit the website with a purchase intent, or were you influenced and redirected to the website by social media and ads? Let us forget the jargon and understand the concept centered on this blog post.

 

Did you think it through? This thought is the most essential segment of this blog. Today, we try to understand ecommerce sales funnel strategy. In simple terms, the consumers available in the market must be put through a structured procedure that closely resembles a funnel, to filter and lock in their business with you.

 

In short, an ecommerce sales funnel maps the customer’s journey toward becoming a part of your business and product. It tracks the process from the initial point of contact to the final sale. It is the process of guiding them by creating awareness of your company, your brand, and your products to turn them into loyal consumers of your brand.

 

In this blog post, we discuss the various stages of the ecommerce sales funnel, strategies, tips for optimization, and top tools utilized in this process. Join us and gain more insights on the topic within the next few minutes!

What Is an Ecommerce Sales Funnel?

Let us take a moment and what is sales funnel in ecommerce. Ecommerce sales funnel, also known as ecommerce conversion funnel, starts by introducing potential customers to your brand and then guides them through the process of making a purchase. The funnel is a premeditated and well-crafted group of steps to help them discover your product and be influenced to turn into a customer.

 

The ecommerce sales funnel could be compared to a cylinder. But then, every prospective customer who enters the cylinder emerges as an actual customer and that is not the case. As the name suggests, it closely represents a funnel shape. Millions of potential customers reach the broader part of the funnel, but only a few hundred to a few thousand come out as actual customers who make a purchase.

 

A marketer’s ultimate mission is to attract people to the funnel and push them down the funnel, meaning, keep influencing them to move down the funnel, using many strategies, enticing them to buy your product and making sure they keep coming back to the brand.

 

For example, you want to purchase an item but are unsure of which brand to choose. Do you research online for options, or do you blindly choose a random brand? Do you visit their website, read their blogs, check their social media handles for pictures and videos, check for customer feedback and reviews, and find a discount coupon in your inbox for purchase?

 

All the above-mentioned movements are closely watched by the respective service providers because now you have entered the wider part of the funnel. From the minute you resolve to do the research, all your movements get slightly influenced by these providers.

 

They guide you through the various stages of the funnel, constantly boosting your interest and curiosity in their product, until you finally make a purchase. Now, for a better understanding of the ecommerce sales funnel strategies, let us take a slight detour to understand the various stages of the sales funnel.

Stages of an Ecommerce Sales Funnel

This ecommerce marketing funnel has four major stages –
  1. Awareness
  2. Consideration
  3. Purchase
  4. Retention
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Awareness

As the name suggests, people are made aware of the existence of your brand. This stage includes making the first contact and getting as many people as possible interested in your product. Use all the modes via which these customers can gain more knowledge of your product – social media, organic search, referrals, or influencers. Remember to jab, jab, jab, and hook your audience.

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Consideration

In this stage, the audience begins to consider your product as a solution and has potentially listed your product as one among others. This is a small victory and, in this stage, you must nudge them in the right direction with social proof and email marketing. Outshine your audience and build trust. As they evaluate options, present yourself as the best in the market.

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Purchase

Congratulations! If your audience has made it to this stage, they are purchasing your product and are paying customers. This doesn’t mean that you are successfully out of the woods yet.

 

Customers may abandon your brand if they stumble upon unexpected situations during their purchase. Make sure they receive an uninterrupted shopping experience and a user-friendly checkout. Eliminate last-minute doubts via discounts and offers.

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Retention

A new business owner or marketer might consider the last stage to be purchase, but the real challenge in the ecommerce sales funnel is retention (post-purchase). It is retention and attracting new customers that raise the profits for your business. Ask your customers for feedback, fill out surveys, and in turn, make sure you give loyalty discounts as a part of the loyalty programs.

 

When customers return to business, the major reason would be business satisfaction. Thus, make sure you satisfy them enough for them to return to your funnel repeatedly for more business.

E-Commerce Sales Funnel Strategies for 2024

E-Commerce Sales Funnel Strategies for 2024

Now that you are familiar with the stages of the ecommerce sales funnel, isn’t it time to discover what is the best strategy to increase ecommerce sales?

 

We bring you strategies to optimize your e-commerce sales funnel. Increase your conversion rate this year. Check our expert-advised strategy for creating an effective sales funnel.

Free Course on Website or YouTube

Free Course on Website or YouTube

YouTube is a popular video-sharing platform that welcomes content from all genres. You can take advantage of this platform to create and upload free courses on your website and YouTube channel. Nothing is more attractive than free informational content for the customer and Google to rank you.

Blog Posts

Blog Posts

Long and short-form blog posts prove your expertise in the topic and product. It also enables you to show off your product on various other websites as an affiliate marketing strategy. Incorporate SEO ranking elements into your blog post and discover how you rank on search engines in the top 10. If your niche is highly competitive, consider publishing your blog post as a Facebook Ad.

Social Media Presence

Social Media Presence as a Ecommerce Sales Funnel Strategy

Social media is the essence of the digital era we live in. Companies and brands have taken various social media platforms by storm. Some social media platforms that you can consider for your promotion are Facebook, Instagram, Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok. Upload images, reels, videos, and podcasts; post stories of your products on social media. For further reach, link your website with social media handles.

Paid Marketing

Paid Marketing

Paid advertisements can be seen on radios, televisions, web pages, and search engines. In this blog, we are focusing on digital paid advertising.

 

Paid advertising is where brands bid on a certain slot to show their product recommendations ads to their target audience. The most preferred platforms are Google Ads and Meta Ads. It helps in instant traffic attraction, advanced targeting, performance measurement, and affordability. Types of paid advertising include search engine advertising, social media advertising, video advertising, and display advertising. Ensure you know the target audience and their preferences for paid advertising to work for you.

Referral and Loyalty Offers

Referral and Loyalty Offers

The oldest way of marketing your product, in the digital world, you can work by offering discounts and loyalty offers to your customers. As your customers are already your target audience, you can be sure that they will refer prospects who align with your product and brand. Let your customers benefit an offer by bringing in more customers to grow your business. Who doesn’t love a discount?

Email Marketing

Email Marketing

Email marketing and email campaigns are the OG of marketing campaigns. You can send your target audience various emails to remind them of your product. They include welcome emails, add-to-cart emails, cart abandonment emails when they abandon their carts, confirmation emails after a purchase, thank you emails enticing them to return, transactional emails for payment confirmation, and more.

Check out our blog on various email templates for you to benefit from.

Social Proof

Social Proof

Social proof plays a significant role in the e-commerce sales funnel. When your target audience becomes aware of your brand, start displaying social proof such as influencer endorsements, customer reviews, feedback, testimonials, and more. Showcase these on various platforms such as social media, blog posts, product landing pages, and other relevant channels. Utilize the positive feedback about your business available on the internet to attract potential customers to your brand.

Optimizing Brand Pages

Optimizing Brand Pages

In online shopping, your customer cannot hold the product physically to feel its benefits. In this case, it is your product page that has to make up for it and sell your product. Hence, add high-quality images and lucrative language and impart as much information as possible within the first 50% of your page. Here is where product descriptions work their magic for you. Optimize your checkout page to impart a user-friendly, snag-free purchase and checkout. Add compelling CTAs and customer reviews to your e-commerce site.

Real-time Customer Service

Real-time Customer Service

Ecommerce websites and shops always present a separate FAQ page with detailed answers for frequently asked questions as a ecommerce sales funnel strategy. But sometimes, the customer might not find an answer to their question. That is when a real-time customer service agent can help the customer. Add customer service chat via phone or live chat and close more deals.

Improve Checkout Flow

Improve Checkout Flow

It is time to streamline checkout for customers. The more distractions, the less likely they are to finish the transactions. Make sure to offer limited options – cheap or fast. Provide them with major modes of payment. Ask only the required information to complete your transaction. Lastly, add trust badges to give the customer peace of mind. Do not upsell or cross-sell on this page.

Ecommerce Sales Funnel Tips For You

Here are some proven tips and tricks as well as some best practices for ecommerce sales funnel that
our experts swear by for you to try for your ecommerce sales funnel.

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Use marketing funnel tools.
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Define your target audience early.
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Improve your prospect’s customer journey experience.
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Create content using the ‘Hook, Story, and Offer’ format.
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Include social proof.
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Bombard your sales funnel with upsells, cross-sells, and next-sells.
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Leverage Facebook Ads and Meta Ads the most.
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For free audience attraction, focus on dynamic content creation.
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Map your sales funnel with triggers.
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Analyze your product, pages, and results regularly.
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Exit-intent pop-ups are your best friend.
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There are always unsatisfied customers from your competitors. Attract them!
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Product descriptions are good. Video product descriptions are the best.
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Repurchases are your profits. Increase your retention rate and decrease your churn rate.
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Clear Call-to-Action is your companion to great sales.
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Offer free shipping.
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Accept all forms of payments, including EMIs.

Top Ecommerce Sales Funnel Tools

There are many tools available that help with your e-commerce marketing funnel. Some of the top ecommerce sales funnel tools include:

PlusThis
PlusThis
Wishpond
Wishpond
GetResponse
Zendesk
Convertkit
ActiveCampaign
Drift

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter what product and brand category you belong to. Every customer who intends to buy your product as a solution goes through the four major e-commerce sales funnels. While some customers may take just a few hours as they are convinced that your product is their solution, some may take days and months to convert to your brand. If you understand how prospects move through the funnel, their challenges, their trust building, and their pain points, you can get optimizing ecommerce sales funnel and
get them to purchase, and increase your conversion rates. Follow the strategies mentioned above for 2024 and discover how your business converts with high ROI and loyal customers.

 

Always remember these points as ecommerce sales funnel strategy for an incredible journey with your prospects –

People who do not know you won’t buy your product from you.
Trust is an essential factor for purchase. If they know you and don’t trust you, there won’t be a purchase at the end of the funnel.
Easy is the slogan for ecommerce customers. If the checkout process is not easy, the customer won’t buy from you even if they trust you.
If you entice the customer right, you can get a repeat purchase of your products as a loyal customer.

With our informative blog, kickstart targeted marketing and utilize various communication channels such as email, phone calls, social media, etc, to win over customers for your growth now! Do not forget to ease your ecommerce sales funnel by purchasing our email lists at campaign-friendly prices for a larger start and even higher conversion rates!

FAQs

A sales funnel in ecommerce are deliberate stages the brand prepares from awareness to conversion and retention. These steps go down as a funnel, and the main objective remains to guide them through the purchase process and convert them into loyal and paying customers of the brand’s products.

There are various strategies to create an effective ecommerce funnel. For starters, marketing teams must go through their funnel dropout rates and build strategies to retain prospects in the funnel stage. Another approach is creating targeted strategies and retargeting prospects with a new perspective regarding their pain points and challenges. Some tactics that ecommerce companies can use to grow their funnel are personalized content, streamlining user experience to make it positive brand engagement, and increasing sales with streamlined communication.

As ecommerce dominates the clothing and fashion sectors, we bring an example from the same industry.

 

Awareness Stage – A prospect discovers a beauty brand that works close to oily skin products.

 

Consideration Stage – The prospect visits the brand’s website, reads reviews, explores social media handles, checks out testimonials, and compares prices to narrow down to a few brands.

 

Purchase Stage – Upon persuasion and offers to attract the prospect to your brand, you make them add the product to the cart and proceed to check out. You streamline the checkout with no distractions, helping them complete it.

 

Retention Stage – When they are satisfied with your service, you attract them again with loyalty points and discounts on repurchases. Hence, it lowers your churn rate for the product.

The top major sales funnel strategies that ecommerce companies use for product promotion and sales are awareness, consideration, purchase, and retention.

Yes. They have a proven record of working for various brands. Specific factors that decide their success rates are understanding the audience’s needs, the quality and uniqueness of the content, and targeting the right prospect at the right time in the right channel. An effective ecommerce sales funnel possesses the power to increase customer lifetime value and boost ROI in the long term.

Ecommerce companies and brands need a significant number of prospects and their contact information and insights to build an optimal ecommerce sales funnel. An easy approach to this funnel building is to acquire a list of prospects as an email list from reliable and credible B2B database providers such as DataCaptive. Buy a customized email list from us today at budget-friendly prices today for an incredible product journey!

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