How to Create an Effective eCommerce Conversion Funnel

Designing an effective eCommerce conversion funnel can be daunting, but it is necessary to maximize sales.

You must evaluate the customer journey, devise a strategy for guiding users through the funnel, create content to draw them in, and optimize the funnel for maximum efficiency. This process will turn website visitors become paying customers.

To gather data on your eCommerce site, you need to use a customer experience analysis tool like our FullSession. It lets you create and track the results of your eCommerce funnel, identify problems with your site thanks to session recordings and replays, and pinpoint issues with interactive heatmaps. You can also get customer feedback via website feedback forms.

 Interested? Sign up or schedule a demo to assess all features!

If you want to know more about eCommerce conversion funnels, read on! We’ll provide tips to help maximize your sales, grow your business, and show you how to use FullSession to create an effective eCommerce conversion funnel.

What is an eCommerce conversion funnel?

Image source: Stray Digital

An eCommerce conversion funnel visualizes potential customers’ progress through critical stages, from discovering a product to making a purchase.

At each stage, customers can either move forward in the funnel or drop out due to a lack of interest or motivation. You can track and identify areas where customers may experience issues to improve your eCommerce site, increase conversion rates and maximize profits.

Why is an eCommerce funnel important?

Conversion funnels are a critical component of any successful eCommerce business. It helps you:

• Create an effective sales process
• Define target customers and identify their needs
• Gather insights into customer behavior
• Identify and remove areas of friction in the buying process
• Convert visitors into leads and leads into customers
• Track, measure, and optimize the sales process
• Create tailored marketing campaigns for different customer segments
• Create a better customer experience and improve customer loyalty

Finally, an eCommerce funnel can be a valuable tool for measuring the success of your overall sales strategy and ensuring that your efforts are providing a return on investment.

What is the average conversion rate for eCommerce?

Image source: Smart Insights

The average conversion rate for eCommerce is challenging to measure as many variables are involved, such as the type of business, the products sold, and the customer demographics.

According to IRP Commerce, in October 2022, the average eCommerce conversion rate was 1,77% (up 0,06% compared to 2021).

 

Breaking down the eCommerce sales funnel

Image source: Freepik

Let’s take a moment to define the eCommerce sales funnel and look at the various stages customers go through on their way to purchase.

The awareness stage: Getting people to notice your brand

An effective eCommerce funnel starts with the awareness stage to get people to notice your brand. It helps to create a solid foundation for the rest of the customer journey.

You must understand your target market and create a strategy to reach your audience.

Developing a comprehensive digital marketing plan that includes SEO, PPC, social media, influencer marketing, and content marketing tactics can help you achieve your objectives.

The interest stage: Sparking interest in your products or services

You should have a well-crafted eCommerce site that communicates your products and services to existing customers, including detailed descriptions, pricing information, and visuals such as photos or videos.

Then, consider using the following:

• Content marketing to share valuable information with blog posts, infographics, and videos
• Social media marketing to promote your products with platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
• Email marketing to reach potential customers and send personalized messages directly to their inboxes
• Paid advertising to reach even more people, such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads

With these strategies in place, you can spark interest in your eCommerce products and drive people down the funnel.

The consideration stage: Making your case

It is the point at which customers begin to weigh their options and decide whether they want to purchase your product.

The key to success is to provide customers with the information they need, such as product descriptions, customer reviews, and pricing comparison charts.

Additionally, it’s beneficial to give customers incentives to encourage them to purchase. It can be anything from free shipping or discounts to loyalty programs or rewards points.

Ensure your checkout page is optimized and includes payment options and delivery information.

The decision stage: Closing the deal

The user has already seen the product details, gone through the checkout process, and selected a payment option. They will either commit to the purchase or abandon the shopping cart.

It is crucial to provide them with an easy, secure, and satisfying checkout experience. Providing reassurances such as a money-back guarantee or free returns can help to alleviate any doubts the user may have.

Additionally, suggestions for related products can prompt customers to add more items to their cart and increase the total value of the purchase.

The action stage: Getting people to take action

Customers have already gone through the awareness and interest stages and clearly understand the value of your offer. They are ready to take action, such as purchasing a product or signing up for a service.

Conduct a user experience analysis to ensure your website forms are optimized, and your eCommerce conversion funnel effectively converts users into paying customers.

The retention stage: Keeping customers returning

At the retention stage, the focus shifts from attracting new customers to retaining existing ones. You can give customers incentives such as loyalty programs, discounts, or other rewards to encourage them to return.

You must ensure your products and services meet customer expectations to reduce churn. You can conduct regular feedback surveys, A/B testing, or other means.

Invest in customer service initiatives such as live chats or 24/7 support to provide customers with a more personalized experience and take advantage of automated communications such as emails or text messages to keep customers informed and engaged.

The advocacy stage: Turning customers into brand ambassadors

By taking advantage of the advocacy stage, you can create a strong referral network, turning current customers into ambassadors who will help bring in new customers.

You should provide an exceptional customer experience that encourages positive reviews and recommendations. It could include incentives for referrals, discounts for returning customers, or personalized customer service.

Additionally, you should encourage customers to join social media channels, review products online, or leave feedback.

You need to track the right metrics to understand if each funnel stage provides satisfactory results. Let’s discuss the most important ones.

 

Crucial KPIs you need to track to optimize your eCommerce funnel

Here are some KPIs to remember regarding your eCommerce conversion funnel.

• Conversion rate shows the percentage of people who take the desired action, which is a crucial indicator of how effective eCommerce sales funnel is.
• Click conversion rate is a metric used to measure the effectiveness of marketing efforts by tracking the number of clicks on an offer, advertisement, or link versus the number of people who complete the desired action on your online store.
• Add-to-cart rate is a metric that shows the percentage of visitors to an eCommerce website who add an item to their cart. It’s typically calculated as the number of add-to-cart events divided by the total number of visits to the site.
• Customer lifetime value is a metric that represents the total value of a customer to your business throughout your relationship.
• Average order value is a key performance indicator that measures the average size of an order placed with a business in a given period. You can calculate it by dividing the total value of all orders by the total number of orders received during the given period.
• Cart abandonment rate is the percentage of customers adding items to their online shopping cart but not completing the purchase. It can provide helpful insight into the customer experience, website usability, and other factors affecting conversions.
• Retention rate measures how many repeat customers stay with your business over time. You can calculate it by dividing the total number of customers at the end of a period by the number at the beginning of the same period, multiplied by 100.
• The return rate shows the percentage of customers who return a purchased product. It provides insight into customer satisfaction and loyalty. High return rates can indicate that customers are unhappy with your product, which can be costly in terms of lost sales and reputation.
• Repurchase rate is a metric that measures the percentage of customers who buy from your business again after making an initial purchase. It is an essential measure of customer satisfaction and loyalty, indicating how well customers receive your products, marketing strategies, and multiple payment options.

 

Now that you know which KPIs to track, let’s look at the process of creating an optimized eCommerce conversion funnel.

10 tips for optimizing your eCommerce conversion funnel

Image source: Freepik

Here are some tips and ideas to build an optimized eCommerce conversion funnel.

Define your audience

Knowing your target audience helps you create a successful product that meets their needs. This insight enables you to develop effective marketing and sales strategies and build an efficient eCommerce conversion system.

Set measurable goals

It allows you to measure progress easily and determine if you need to optimize your funnel. It lets you stay focused on what matters most and keeps you from getting distracted from the end goal.

It’s essential to set goals that are S.M.A.R.T: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.

Know your customer journey

You must understand the customer journey to ensure your website is as efficient and effective as possible.

You can better understand how customers interact with your eCommerce site and determine which elements require optimization. It will help ensure your customers have the best possible experience.

Identify your crucial marketing channels

To ensure you are reaching the right people, you need to identify the marketing channels best suited to your business and select those most likely to deliver the best results.

It could include using social media, email marketing, SEO, traditional advertising, or any other methods to help you reach your intended audience.

Develop a clear value proposition

It’s essential to ensure that what you’re offering fits into the current market, has a clear value that sets you apart from the competition, and is something customers can’t get anywhere else.

Customers should see your product as valuable and reasonably priced. It will draw them in and make them eager to purchase.

Optimize your checkout process

The checkout process is where users are ready to finalize their purchase, and any problems or roadblocks they may encounter can mean the difference between a successful sale and a lost customer.

It’s essential to ensure your checkout process is efficient and free of any potential issues that could stop a user from completing their purchase.

Focus on mobile optimization

Mobile devices drive nearly 60% of traffic nowadays. It is critical to ensure that all content, from text to images to videos, is optimized for mobile and that your website is accessible and user-friendly to the growing number of people who access the web through their phones and tablets.

Create targeted content

Targeted content is the key to successful communication and marketing campaigns.

Instead of creating generalized content, it is crucial to focus on the needs and challenges of your specific target audience. It will ensure that the message resonates with the intended audience and is more likely to convert them into customers.

Personalize the user experience

Personalizing the user experience is necessary for businesses that want to convert visitors into customers effectively.

By understanding the needs of your users and crafting tailored content, design, and feature set, you can provide an enjoyable and engaging experience that meets their needs.

Reduce friction points

Friction points can hinder the customer’s journey to completing their purchase. When you identify and reduce these friction points, you are taking a proactive step to ensure that customers can complete their purchases without difficulties.

As a result, you can increase your conversion rates and improve your overall sales.

Measure results, rinse, and repeat

By continually measuring, evaluating, and repeating the process, you’ll be able to determine which changes have the most significant impact on your conversion funnel and help you reach your desired conversion rate.

Since we covered all essentials, let’s show you how FullSession helps you in the process. To evaluate all features while reading, start your 14-day free trial.

 

How to improve your eCommerce funnel performance with FullSession

FullSession is a behavior analytics platform that helps you optimize your eCommerce site and boost your conversion funnel by allowing you to understand users’ issues, fix them promptly and provide an optimal customer experience.

 

Let’s explain all critical features in more detail.

Funnel and conversion tracking boost your revenue

FullSession makes tracking conversions and funnel effectiveness easy. All you need to do is log in to our dashboard, create the funnel you want to track, and you’re ready to go.

You can:

• Name your funnel
• Add all steps your users need to take to convert
• Choose the event type ( click, visited page, and changed input)
• Choose a selector or text
• Define operation and value

You can monitor your funnel performance in real-time and get detailed metrics:

• Track the number of users
• Monitor your conversion rate
• See what time it takes users to convert
• Calculate max drop-offs
• See how your funnel performs at each stage
• Add a filter
• Create a segment

With FullSession, you don’t need other tools to take your conversion tracking to the next level.

Session recordings help you find obstacles that reduce conversion

With our session recordings and replays, you can easily optimize your funnel by removing obstacles to conversions.

There is no need to spend precious time watching the entire session; FullSession helps you skip periods of inactivity, pause, rewind, and fast-forward the recordings to quickly get to the heart of users’ issues, share them with your team, and fix these challenges promptly.

Use heatmaps to understand what site elements don’t work

You’ll get access to click maps for click tracking, scroll maps to monitor how far users scroll on a page and where to place CTAs, and a cursor map to watch how users navigate your eCommerce site. Let’s share some examples.

Click map

Cursor map

Scroll map

Collect feedback directly from your customers and fix issues immediately

At FullSession, we understand that user feedback is critical for success. We don’t provide NPS software, but why we offer customer feedback tools that make it easy to identify and address any issues with your eCommerce website.

Our website feedback forms are entirely customizable, giving you detailed insights into what your customers think about your website and its performance.

With our comprehensive customer feedback reports, you’ll be able to quickly identify any problems that may be preventing your customers from converting.

Final thoughts about the eCommerce conversion funnel

Creating an effective conversion funnel is critical to increasing revenue in the eCommerce business.

It can be a complex task, but with trial and error, an appropriate customer-centric marketing strategy, and good user behavior tools, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

FullSession is a powerful UX analytics tool that can help identify issues in your conversion funnel and optimize every funnel stage.

With features such as funnel and conversion tracking, session recordings, replays, interactive heatmaps, and customer feedback forms, FullSession provides all the necessary tools to engage with customers and increase your overall revenue.

 

Sign up for a free 14-day trial or get a demo to understand how to start optimizing your conversion funnel!