Hi, I'm Tyler Willis and I've been helping businesses optimize their digital marketing and web development efforts for over 10 years. I excel at teaching and helping companies understand complex digital solutions, and applying them to their businesses.
Effective websites in 2022 and beyond are not simple, static sources of information. Rather, they are active, efficient and measured sales representatives for your business constantly producing new leads and growing your revenue.
To understand how this works, it's important to visualize your website in terms of every possible sales funnel, or path, that a user could take from first being aware of your brand to becoming a paying customer. And it's not just being aware, it's creating new ones, based on a review of the data, that will best work and produce continual sales.
Below are some examples of sales funnels that may already exist on your website and ones that you could get setup and started today.
1. Search result -> blog post -> service page -> signup form
The user's journey through this sales funnel will look like:
- Conduct search on Google or another search engine platform
- Receive list of results, click on the result for your blog post
- On the blog post, click on a link to your service page
- On the service page, either sign up via a form directly on this page or click to another page and sign up there
This is a pretty standard user flow from awareness of your product or service to conversion. Most buying decisions start on search engines, and the search results that typically rank the best (or most) are those of blog posts or another type of lengthier content.
The problem that I see here more often than not, unfortunately, is that companies don't link well from blog posts to services. There are at least a couple of reasons for that:
- They don't know that they should - understandable.
- Their blog post isn't directly correlated with a product or service. So, why write it if it's not going to bring in more potential customers?
Or sometimes there IS a link, but it's either in the standard navigation menu on the top of the page or only a small text link at the bottom of the post. It's fine if those exist, but you should think about giving your page visitor a stronger nudge.
2. Facebook post > conversion page
The user's journey through this sales funnel will look like:
- Browse on Facebook
- Click on a Facebook post
- Get redirected to a webpage
- Submit a form (e.g. sign up, request info, etc.)
This sales funnel gets straight to the point and assumes you have a page that can convert users efficiently.
It also assumes you have an audience that is ripe for converting - they're well-researched and knowledgable about the product or service and are ready to take action quickly.
Examples of this might include a consumer brand that sells t-shirts, or even a B2B brand that sells industry data reports. A user could become aware of a good deal and instantly act by purchasing the item. Not much further information or research is required.
3. Paid Google ad -> product page -> checkout form
The user's journey through this sales funnel will look like:
- Conduct search on Google or another search engine platform
- Receive list of results, click on the paid ad result to a product page
- Click to buy and checkout via the form
Similar to #2 above, this funnel also gets straight to the point. However, in this case, the user is clicking on a Google ad instead of a Facebook post.
However, in this scenario, it's even more important that the product page is well-equipped to convert users from site visitors to paying customers and that is because you are paying money for ads, not just posting for free on social media.
It would be important to make sure that you've analyzed the metrics for both the Google ad and the page both before getting started and as long as the paid campaign is ongoing.
If you're able to generate more revenue from sales of new products than the ads cost to run, a wise company would look to raise the ad budget. It would be like printing money!
4. Paid Google ad -> blog post -> request a quote
The user's journey through this sales funnel will look like:
- Conduct search on Google or another search engine platform
- Receive list of results, click on the paid ad result to a blog post
- Learn about a service on a blog post and click on a link to request a quote
- Submit a form to request a quote
This sales funnel is a little more unusual, but possibly a good idea if the metrics back it up. The reason why this isn't typical is because you'd be paying for ads to send visitors to a blog post. If you run a blog, that might not be the worst idea. But if you run a business, the blog isn't your source of revenue, right?
But a well-written and optimized blog post can almost act like a landing page, or case study for your service. Or it could do such a good job at explaining a complicated service and why you're the best company for the job that users fell compelled to take the next step and request a quote.
5. Backlink -> service page -> request a quote page
The user's journey through this sales funnel will look like:
- Click on a link to your webpage from another website
- Learn about a service and click on a link to request a quote
- Submit a form to request a quote
This sales funnel requires that a link to one of your webpages exists on another website. This could be like a Chamber of Commerce website, or maybe a backlink to one of your high-quality blog posts.
6. Paid Google ad -> blog post
The user's journey through this sales funnel will look like:
- Conduct search on Google or another search engine platform
- Receive list of results, click on the paid ad result to a blog post
- Complete conversion activity
Similar to scenario #4, the user here will click on an ad and be sent to your blog post. However, the actual tip of the sales funnel could vary and it could exist directly on the blog post itself rather than on a subsequent page.
That could be an inline form like joining the newsletter email list, or perhaps some sort of call-to-action to download a file or ebook. Whatever your goal is, if you can incorporate it without having to add another step, it could help to reduce friction for the user.
7. Home page -> pricing page -> signup page
The user's journey through this sales funnel will look like:
- Visit the home page of a website
- Click on a link for the pricing page either in the navigation menu or somewhere else on the page
- Clickthrough one of the links on the pricing page to signup
- Submit the signup form
This is perhaps one of the most common, automatic sales funnels - it simply exists as soon as you build a home page, pricing page and signup page and doesn't require another path being set up.
It's important to recognize that, without even trying, your site already contains dozens, hundreds or even thousands of overlapping sales funnels like the one above. They might not be the most effective, but they exist and you should learn and study them to learn how they can be optimized.
8. Email newsletter -> case study -> signup page
The user's journey through this sales funnel will look like:
- Open an email from a newsletter
- Click on a link in the email to a case study
- Read/browse the content on the case study page
- Clickthrough to the signup page
- Submit the signup form
This sales funnel starts with the user already being a member of your email newsletter distribution list. That's a good start and typically means that they're already a somewhat "warm" prospect.
When you distribute emails, you have the opportunity to start the recipients on a number of different sales files by embedding links to various pages of your website.
In this case, maybe you've introduced a case study in the email that the user can read more about on your website, and then perform an action of their own.
9. Digital tool -> blog post -> service page -> request a quote page
The user's journey through this sales funnel will look like:
- Interact with a tool on a website
- Click from the tool to a blog post
- Click on a link to a service page
- Click to request a quote
- Submit the form
This funnel starts by getting users to use and interact with a tool on your website, or possibly someone else's website. Tools can be one of the best ways to get users to your website, and backlinks to the page containing the tool.
10. Home page -> service page -> request a quote page -> email drip campaign -> sale
The user's journey through this sales funnel will look like:
- Visit the home page of a website
- Click on a link for the service page either in the navigation menu or somewhere else on the page
- Clickthrough one of the links on the service page to request a quote
- Submit the form
- Receive a series of emails following up on the quote and providing more information
- Committing to the sale
This sales funnel scenario follows through beyond what is limited to a website. Often, unless a product or service is directly purchased through the website, sales end up falling through. Maybe the user lost interest or the company didn't do a good job of following up and closing the sale.
It's important to have a process for converting these users, and one such way is to build and automate an email drip campaign to automatically email the user and continue the sales funnel to increase the chances of closing the sale.
