What is a website conversion funnel?
If you think of all the visitors to your website as water, the aim of your conversion funnel is to get as much water as possible from the mouth of the funnel (your home page) through to completing your contact form or making an online purchase.
The simpler your funnel is the less chance there is for wastage along the way. For example if you sell dog grooming accessories online, people don’t want to have to go through lots of different stages just to buy what they need.
The chances are the more stages you have in your process, the lower the amount of visitors who will end up becoming customers.
Below I’ve taken a look at two different example conversion funnels for the same site.
Stage 1 – Arrive on home page – 100%
Stage 2 – Select category page – 54%
Stage 3 – Select product – 32%
Stage 4 – Register details – 8%
Stage 5 – Complete payment details – 2%
In the example above only 2% of people who arrive on the site’s home page go on to place an order.
Stage 1 – Arrive on home page – 100%
Stage 2 – Select product – 54%
Stage 3 – Complete payment details – 12%
In this example the conversion funnel has been simplified from five stages to three.
Step-by-step conversion success
In any conversion funnel there will be a number of steps. The key to a successful conversion rate on your website is to reduce the number of steps and optimise these so they let as few people slip away as possible.
Using Google Analytics or another analytics tool you will be able to work out what’s happening to your traffic and the journey people take through your site.
Using the three step example above let’s take a look at common conversion funnel problems.
Stage 1 – what people do when they arrive on the homepage
Do you have links to your most common products on your homepage or do you make people browse through categories and sub-categories to find what they’re looking for?
Purchasing a dog grooming accessory online isn’t an expensive thing so you can afford to have a more streamlined conversion funnel and take people straight to more information on specific products.
Possible problems: poor navigation, quality of images, overall look of your website.
Stage 2 – what makes people want to buy a product?
Each product page should have a high quality image as well as a unique and well-written description. Can your images be increased in size for easier viewing? Is your pricing structure clear? E.g. do prices state whether or not they include VAT?
Possible problems: no prices, no delivery options, lack of images.
Stage 3 – the all important payment details
This is the most important part of the funnel. If people are getting to your checkout page and not actually buying it’s like having a leak just before the end of your funnel.
It can be very frustrating to fail at this final hurdle and there could be a number of reasons why this is happening.
Possible problems: using an unknown payment service provider, not providing a secure payment page, no security certificate.
When you want to improve your online conversions the first step is to reduce the number of steps in your conversion funnel.
You then need to ensure you guide the visitor clearly to each step of the process rather than making them search for it.
Finally you need to use an analytics tool to pinpoint where your conversion funnel is leaking and use trial and error to plug the leak.
If you liked this article you may also want to read my top 5 small business e-commerce tips
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