Ecommerce Conversion Funnel Guide to Succeed in 2022
What is an ecommerce conversion funnel and why do you need one? How can you create a winning ecommerce conversion funnel?
You will find all these answers and more in this post. But first, let’s understand what the current ecommerce landscape is like and why ecommerce conversion funnels are practically necessary if you hope to succeed in such a competitive market.
Ecommerce marketing is a $5.5 Trillion global industry and is growing at an unprecedented pace.
While that may seem promising, you need to understand that most of this market is captured by ecommerce giants like Walmart and Amazon.
So, the rest of the millions of ecommerce companies are fighting for a fairly small share of this large pie. Needless to say, the level of competition in the ecommerce industry is extremely high.
So, how can an ecommerce conversion funnel help you?
An ecommerce conversion funnel can give you clarity on how to approach different prospects in the right way, at the right time, using the right marketing tactic.
Basically, an ecommerce conversion funnel provides a more organized and focused way of utilizing your marketing efforts to get better results.
In this post, you will learn:
- Stages in a customer’s journey
- The right strategies to use at different stages
- Various customer touchpoints in an ecommerce conversion funnel
- Ways to improve these customer touchpoints
- Ecommerce marketing best practices
So, let’s get started.
What is a Customer Journey?
A consumer goes through several stages in their decision-making process to buy a product or service. The path that an average consumer takes to make a purchase and become a customer is commonly referred to as a customer’s journey or a buyer’s journey.
Traditionally, a customer journey had three broad stages:
- Awareness — The stage where a potential customer first hears about a brand or product.
- Consideration — The stage where they check out the features of a product and compare it with similar products to determine which one’s the best.
- Purchase — The stage where a consumer decides that one option is better and makes the purchase decisions, converting into a customer.
However, modern marketers believe that a customer’s journey doesn’t end there, and rightly so. Any marketer worth their salt would know that retaining customers and encouraging them to make repeat purchases is more beneficial than acquiring new customers.
That’s why smart marketers have added two more stages to a typical customer’s journey:
- Loyalty — This is the stage where customers start making repeat purchases and engaging with your brand on various channels.
- Advocacy — This is the ultimate stage in a customer’s journey where they start advocating your brand to others. This is every ecommerce marketer’s dream.
Well, that’s all theoretical. What does a customer journey actually look like?
Let’s understand through an example.
Have you ever seen an ad on social media, clicked on it, and ended up making a purchase?
Well, that was your journey as a customer from seeing a social media ad (awareness), checking out the product (consideration), and making a purchase. If you like the product, you’ll probably buy from the brand again (loyalty).
And if you remain loyal to the brand for a long time, you may even start recommending it to others (advocacy).
How does it matter to you?
You need to understand the stages of a customer journey to build your ecommerce conversion funnel. After all, an ecommerce conversion funnel has the same stages, along with marketing tactics to use at each stage of the funnel.
Here’s a smart checklist to help you speed up your ecommerce conversion funnel.
Now that you understand what the customer journey and ecommerce conversion funnel are, let’s discuss the various marketing tactics you can use to win customers at various stages.
Tactics for Different Stages of an Ecommerce Conversion Funnel
Customers at different points in an ecommerce conversion funnel have different needs that you can tap into as a marketer. As an ecommerce marketer, your marketing goals would also differ at different stages of the ecommerce conversion funnel.
In this section, you will learn how to best engage a customer based on which stage they’re at in their journey or the ecommerce conversion funnel.
Let’s get started.
1. Awareness
At the awareness stage of the ecommerce conversion funnel, your goal would be to attract potential customers by spreading awareness about your brand or products.
Your ecommerce marketing strategies for this stage of the funnel would be the ones that help you reach as many people as possible.
However, these ecommerce marketing strategies can be divided into two categories:
- Targeted Strategies — Aimed at attracting a specific target audience and driving them down the sales funnel. The goal is to get quick results.
- Generic Strategies — These are long-term strategies that will get you a steady inflow of leads for years. These are not highly targeted and focus more on spreading awareness than driving conversions.
Let’s discuss the different ecommerce marketing strategies that fall under both these categories.
Targeted Strategies
Here are some of the targeted ecommerce marketing strategies that you can use to attract customers to your ecommerce site.
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SEO (Money Keywords)
Target high purchase intent keywords through your ecommerce SEO efforts to attract potential customers who are likely to convert.
This would entail:
- Properly optimizing your landing pages with money keywords
- Creating targeted content for transactional search intent keywords
Please note that this is different from your broader SEO efforts as it targeted specific high-volume keywords (money keywords).
This also makes it much harder. So, opt for professional SEO services to boost your ROI and target money keywords realistically
PPC (Search and Retargeting)
Paid search ads are one of the best ways to attract relevant leads to your website. All you need to do is choose the right keywords that:
- Are related to your products
- Have a high purchase-intent
For example, let’s say that you sell sports shoes. A high-purchase-intent keyword for you would be “buy white sneakers”.
Here’s an example of PPC ads for this keyword. You’d notice that all these ads lead to the relevant product pages on different ecommerce sites.
You can use Google Keyword Planner to find the right keywords to target through your PPC search ads.
Another way to quickly find and engage the right leads at the awareness stage of the funnel is to run a retargeting PPC campaign.
It involves showing your ads to people who have already interacted with your brand before but may or may not have made a purchase.
Email Marketing
Send emails to your subscribers informing them about your new products and offers. You should personalize these emails using email marketing platforms to deliver more value to the readers and increase their chances of clicking on your emails and checking out your offer.
Email marketing is a cost-effective way to build awareness about your new products among people who have already interacted with your business.
Sponsored Content
Hire industry experts and popular influencers in your niche to create great content about your products. Some examples of the type of sponsored content that works well at the awareness stage are:
- How-to posts or videos
- Product tutorials
- Unboxing videos
- Product reviews
- Product comparison posts
Affiliate Marketing
Start an affiliate program and enroll influential people in your niche to promote your brand and products in exchange for a commission on every sale they help make.
It’s a win-win partnership that many influencers would be interested in. Choose your affiliates wisely and ask them to promote your products on multiple platforms.
This is a quick-turnaround strategy that will get you tons of leads and conversions.
Generic Strategies
These are strategies that take time to show results and are not hyper-targeted to attract a specific audience. While these don’t deliver quick results, these should still be a part of your ecommerce conversion funnel.
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Influencer Marketing
Collaborate with influencers to promote your products to their audience, review them, and create content that spreads awareness about your brand.
A simple mention from a trusted influencer can make people aware of your brand and even get to try your products. An honest product review and do even more to boost your brand image and credibility.
Here’s an example of an influencer reviewing a product on social media.
PR
Online PR is one of the most popular marketing tactics to create brand awareness and improve brand reputation.
Online PR includes a mix of various digital marketing techniques like influencer marketing. social media marketing, content marketing, etc.
As an ecommerce marketer, your goal would be to create awareness about your brand and products. So, focus on creating share worthy content around your products. Also, participate in interviews & panel discussions, build relationships with news & media companies, and more.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is the best place to reach your target audience and engage them on platforms where they’re most active.
Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are a boon for ecommerce marketers as these are visual platforms where you can showcase your products.
In fact, Instagram can practically act as a virtual product catalog or even an alternative store.
However, don’t be too promotional and try to build a community on social media. The key to successful social media marketing is to connect with your audience and engage them instead of shoving products on them.
Focus on creating targeted, relevant, and engaging social media content that provides value to your audience, while also promoting your products.
Check out this video, for example, where Amazon engages its audience by giving them some spring fashion inspiration while also promoting its products.
PPC (Display)
Display advertising is one of the best ways to attract prospective customers’ attention using high-quality images. And it works especially well at this stage of the ecommerce conversion funnel.
Sometimes, product images can tempt someone into buying, even if they were not specifically looking for that particular product. That’s why display ads work so well at the awareness stage of the ecommerce conversion funnel.
Pro Tip: Social media ads, especially stories ads, work even better as they seem like native content and engage people when they’re most active.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a generic marketing strategy that works at almost every stage of the ecommerce conversion funnel.
However, given that it’s a long-term strategy, you should start your content marketing efforts early.
Some types of content that work well at this stage of an ecommerce conversion funnel are:
- Informative blog posts
- Engaging videos
- Social media content
If you don’t have an in-house team then it’s best to invest in professional content marketing services to get high-quality content.
2. Consideration
At this stage in your ecommerce conversion funnel, your goal should be to nurture your leads and help them choose your brand over others. For that, you would need to make your products stand out from the crowd.
How?
By following our advice.
At this point in their buying journey, customers would visit your online store to check your products. They would also compare your products with other similar products before they make a decision.
So, you need to nurture your leads on two fronts:
- Optimize your website to ensure a smooth purchase experience
- Creating content that helps convince prospects that your brand is the best
Let’s discuss each in more detail.
Originally published at Attrock.com.
About The Author
Gaurav Sharma is the Founder and CEO of Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company. Grew an agency from 5-figure to 7-figure revenue in just two years.
