Defining a Conversion Funnel
By Justin Handley of Narasopa Media –
One of the most important things that you can do for your business is to understand your “Conversion Funnel” and spend time analyzing and optimizing it.
Once you have a web site online and selling your products, promoting your services, or getting the word out about your cause, the easiest way to improve the performance of your online business is to figure out where people are getting stuck in your conversion funnel.
Before we go into detail, I’m going to give you my definition of a “Conversion Funnel”. If you’ve used Google Analytics goal tracking feature (or any number of other CRM, Analytics, and Testing packages) you will be familiar with the concept of Funnels. For those of you that may not know, here it is:
A Conversion Funnel is the path that a visitor takes from point A to Point B in your marketing process. Simple. It is called a funnel because, much like a physical funnel, it takes large numbers of people and hones them into a targeted stream by the end of the process.
For the sake of this document, I’ll define funnels using “>” as in:
Step 1 > Step 2 > Step 3 > Conversion Achieved!
Conversations = Conversions
One thing that is certain is that engaging your target audience in a conversation is a guaranteed way to boost your overall conversions. Although conversion metrics can be optimized at every step of the process, from the apparently insignificant color of your sign up button to the larger question of whether your copy is professionally written and targeted to your market, one of the easiest places to start is to simply ask the question:
Am I having a conversation with my customers, clients, or audience?
If the answer is no, you are almost certainly not optimizing your conversions. An example of a conversion funnel that doesn’t include conversation would be:
- People see a search result for your site >
- People click on the link in the result >
- They land on your page, which is a product page of a shopping cart >
- They either choose to buy your product, or they leave your site.
This can work, especially if you have good results in the search engines and are indexed for exactly what a user is looking for (i.e. they search “Cheap iPod” and you present them with a discounted iPod page.) However, in most cases, a huge number of sales are lost in a simple process like this.
A more optimized sales process for the same product might look like this:
- People see a search result for your site >
- People click on the link in the result >
- They land on your page, which is a product page of a shopping cart >
- They either choose to buy your product, or they leave your site >
- As they are leaving, you present an exit-popup with a relevant free report >
- They give you a name and email in exchange for information they want >
- You send out weekly emails with product specials >
- After three weeks, they see what they want and make a purchase.
However, before you can start thinking about optimizing your conversion funnel, you need to know where you are right now. If you haven’t done this simple exercise for your business recently, here is a great way to quickly boost your sales.
Step 1 : Define Your Traffic Sources
Hopefully, you use many different techniques to generate traffic and visitors to your site. Maybe you are listed in organic search results, pay for Pay Per Click results in some of the bigger engines, purchase ads on other people’s sites and newsletters, do joint venture mailing promotions with targeted partners, have physical flyers that you put up on community bulletin boards, have business cards that you hand out potential clients.
These are your first communications with your target audience, and are the very top of the funnel. So, grab a blank piece of paper, and quickly list your web site’s traffic sources top to bottom in order of amount of traffic generated. Don’t worry too much about accuracy. As an interesting exercise you can always go to your site’s traffic logs and compare your notes to the actual top traffic referrers you have.
Step 2: Define Your Primary Funnels
Depending on your business model, you may just have one primary funnel or you may actually have quite a few. Let’s assume that you run a spa, and that all of your advertising simply points to the home page of your web site, and your goal is to get people to fill out a contact form to request an appointment. You also have a “Products & Services” page, an “About Us” page, and you run a health newsletter and have an opt-in page.
You actually have two goals here – one is to gain newsletter subscribers, the other is to get people to request an appointment.
Theoretically, your ideal funnel would be:
Traffic Source > Home Page > Request an Appointment Page > Appointment Requested!
However, this is sometimes not the case. It is possible that once people have seen the list of services you offer they are more likely to request an appointment, in which case your ideal funnel would be:
Traffic Source > Home Page > Products & Services > Request an Appointment > Appointment Requested!
Or, it may be that almost no one requests an appointment the first time they visit your site, but if they sign up for your newsletter it is common for them at some point to return to your site and request an appointment.
In this case you have two funnels (one per goal).
Traffic Source > Home Page > Newsletter Signup Page > Signed Up!
And then…
Newsletter Received In Email > Request an Appointment > Appointment Requested!
If you are already using web analytics and tracking software on your site, you should be able to easily find out what the most common paths are that visitors take while visiting your site.
One of the keys to successfully optimizing your conversion funnel is knowing how many people make it through each step of the process, so that you can find the points where you are losing the most people and test different ways to improve them. Without proper tracking data you are flying blind – if you don’t yet have some sort of tracking installed on your site it is very easy, and free, to get set up with Google Analytics.
So – take a minute now and write down the most common conversion funnels that visitors use on your site. If you don’t know and don’t have tracking software installed, take your best guess – go to your site and navigate through it and notice how you move. Ask a couple of friends to do the same and let you watch over their shoulders. Or, in a worst case scenario, just write down every page on your site and you can analyze each page individually in terms of its ability to drive visitors to your conversion page.
If you use autoresponders you may also want to make a list of each autoresponder message that you send out to your customer list. Unfortunately there is no significant way to optimize one time newsletters other than split testing and collecting data to a small group of customers before sending it on to your entire list, but you can treat each autoresponder you send out as a piece in your conversion process.
Step 3: Ask Yourself Some Questions
Now you should have a list of the main places that your site gets it’s traffic from as well as the main paths people take through your site to reach your conversion page (or conversion pages if you have more than one goal with your site). It’s time to take a look at these lists and ask some key questions.
Questions To Ask About Each Of Your Traffic Sources:
- Is the message relevant to the context?
In PPC advertising, does your ad copy make sense with every single keyword you are bidding on? If not, break your keywords into relevant groups and write ads specific to each one. In email promotions, whether paid or JVs, is the email message you are sending out to the list targeted, relevant, and formatted in the same way that people on the list are used to? Don’t send out one stock email to every list you advertise on – customize based on what they normally receive, and if you can, join in a conversation that has been ongoing on that list. If you are flyering for a rave you don’t go to Wall Street and hand out flyers to business executives – make sure all of your advertising is in context and relevant.
- Am I respecting my potential client’s intelligence?
This may not seem relevant to you, but you should never underestimate how smart your audience is. This is primarily a warning against spam – if you use forum posts as a traffic source, make sure that they are relevant to the topic being discussed and not just flat out promotions. If you are riding the social media wave, don’t set up a Facebook profile just to advertise – people see right through it.
- Is there a logical connection between my ads and traffic generating posts and the first page I am directing them to on my web site?
If you are using syndicated articles to get traffic to your site, does each article link to a relevant page on your web site? For example, if I was using this article to generate traffic for my business, I wouldn’t link to a page about web design, I would link to a page about tracking and analytics consulting. If you have successful ads that have very different messages, consider creating different landing pages for each of them to keep your reader’s attention engaged start to finish in your sales process.
Questions To Ask About Each Step In Your Funnel:
- Am I continuing the conversation?
Once you have engaged readers online, you’ve entered a conversation in their head. Once they’ve read your first ad – their first point of contact with your company – and have clicked through to your web site, their mind is moving on a track that was triggered by that ad. You need to make sure that as they go through your site, that conversation continues. For each step in your funnel, make sure that it is logical, and that it adds to the knowledge and information that people have already seen in previous steps. If every part of your funnel rehashes the same information, consider cutting down the number of steps and condensing into fewer, more relevant pages.
- Does this step add value? Is it necessary?
On a similar note, make sure all of your communication is necessary, and that you don’t have any steps in the process that are pure fluff. One of the key metrics people often use when analyzing site usability is the number of clicks it takes to reach any given page. Make sure every part of your funnel is on target and to the point, and that you don’t have extra, unnecessary steps in people’s way of getting to your conversion page.
- Is it obvious?
I’ve made it to your site, I’ve clicked on products and services and read about a product I really want. Do you have a prominent clear way for me to click through and buy that product? As time progresses on the web buttons have gotten bigger and bigger – often with good reason – big buttons get clicked on more often. Make sure people can see very clearly how to move to the next step in your process. Don’t hide and opt in box or an order link – make sure that people can clearly and immediately see how to take action if they want to. If they want to read more first, they can, but at least they know where to go when they are ready to move forward.
Take Action
Once you’ve listed your key traffic sources and conversion funnel steps and answered the key questions for every step of the process, take action! Based on your answers, identify key actions you can take to improve your conversion funnel, and get to it. If you don’t have site tracking that allows you to at least see the number of visitors to each page (or ideally, let’s you track goal funnels), get it in place. Google Analytics is free and easy to set up – it’s not a perfect solution, but it does give you some powerful information. When you make changes to your site, you want to make sure what you did actually does increase sales!
You may read my list, decide your order button needs to be bigger, and put a huge red button on your pages that says “Order Now!”. Depending on the market, that might work like anything, or it might turn people off because they feel it is too pushy. If you don’t test, you won’t know!
Make it your goal to take at least one action today that will improve the conversion rate of your funnel. Commit to doing that at least once a week and you will watch your sales grow exponentially over the course of the next year.
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Guest Post – Justin Handley has been working in web design and online marketing since 1999 and is mad about tracking, conversions, and testing. He is the founder of Narasopa Media LLC, a full service internet marketing agency.
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