Understanding Your Conversion Funnel And 8 CRO Tips For The Best Flow

When it comes to driving conversion rates, every little detail can mean a large, direct influence on the performance of your website. Every step of the customer experience offered can be crucial in the conversion process. Even a redundant word or two in a call to action can be devastating to the overall performance of your conversion funnel. 

Each step of the buying process can be broken down into its individual pieces, and these pieces can be maneuvered and designed to flow together with a cohesive goal and drive higher conversions. A better understanding of a conversion funnel can lead to a higher return on investment with marketing, sales, and web design processes. 

What Is A Conversion Funnel And Why Does It Matter?

If you have a business that is selling a product or service, your conversion funnel is just a byproduct of the entire customer experience. Average conversion rates and targets can vary, but understanding customers and their customer experience with your commerce chain is invaluable to driving higher conversion rates. 

Steps in this process can be broken down into parts to better understand how to relate to customer needs and wants through your e-commerce platform, advertisement goals, and web design. 

Attraction and Awareness

Marketing efforts are directed towards building awareness and grabbing attention. Letting people know your brand or product exists is the key here. You need to find new eyes for your product or service and connect to those who will be most interested in what you can offer. 

SMS marketing can be a great way to get your name out there and also start the funnel process to give customers a sense of interaction and feedback on their path through the conversion funnel. Sending SMS messages for marketing is going to be indispensable for digital marketing going forward. 

Conversion

Once eyes have been attracted and more people know about what is being offered, the next step is convincing prospective customers to take the next step. Social media posts, product reviews and recommendations, SEO, and anything else geared towards brand awareness. Anything that can be offered to humanize and connect customers to a brand. 

Showing comparison to competing products and brands in order to demonstrate advantages can also be a critical role to fill in this stage. 

Closing

The next step is transitioning from interest and engagement to commitment and follow-through. Reviews and social proof can be very important in this stage. Giving customers reassurances that they are making the right decision. 

Use clear and streamlined design approaches that prioritize quickness and ease of use, and utilize clear and direct calls to action to drive actions forward and seal the deal. 

Reward And Follow Through

Every new action and engagement is a step in the right direction, but ultimately the final step is about leading to a purchase. It is important to try to reward completed conversions. This can sometimes mean actually thanking a customer, offering exclusive rewards and services, and most importantly, encouraging follow-ups and feedback.

Anything that can promote a converted customer to leave reviews, fill out surveys, or post about customer experiences with your brand, can really help future conversions.  

Biggest Roadblocks To A Successful Conversion Funnel

There are many factors that may limit your conversion rates. Every step in the funnel is going to hemorrhage potential customers. Knowing where your weakest spots are can help with knowing how to adjust approaches. 

Customers Should Always Know The Next Step

At any step in the process, the customer should be immediately aware of what the next steps are. Customers won’t proactively seek out where to go next or what to do. Direct them.

Value Needs To Be Demonstrated

In the interest stages of a funnel, it is important to clearly and directly demonstrate the value of what is being offered. Inadequate communication of benefit can be a massive leak in a conversion funnel. 

Unclear Or Indirect CTA Usage

CTAs are very valuable, but they need to be executed correctly. This is an area that can often be affected by too many choices confusing and boring a potential client. 

Pro Tips For A Steady Flow:

Landing Pages Are Vital

A Landing page can be a big influence on conversion rates. Clearly showing the most relevant information, drawing attention where you want it, not cluttering the visual design, and offering clear navigation are all very necessary. 

Show Testimonials And Social Reactions

Present your results. People want to feel validated in their choice as they are in the process of making it. So be sure to include testimonials and reviews and make them accessible and prevalent in the conversion funnel. 

Run Advertisements

Running SEO ads, Keyword targeting, and other digital marketing endeavours are really important to drawing attention and informing interest. 

Use CTAs Effectively

Grab Attention. Keep It Simple. Demonstrate value. And don’t oversaturate visual cues. 

Forms Can Help Gather Leads

Multi-step forms that are broken down into smaller, submittable chunks allow for lead generation and steady encouragement towards conversion. Customers who get through step one of a form are more likely to continue through the next. It’s kind of like setting small goals and checkpoints along the way to keep things from feeling overwhelming. 

Start With Small Commitments

Offering introductory steps can help land the hook. A free trial membership is a small step for a customer to take, but may be just the thing to ensure the hook is set and you can reel them in the rest of the way. 

Don’t Neglect Site Performance

The speed of your site can mean everything when it comes to fighting off dreaded bounce rates. A conversion funnel never starts if a landing page doesn’t load well, and any step in the process can hemorrhage potential customers by having a slow-loading site. 

Thank You Pages Pay Off

People want to feel heard and appreciated. So reward a conversion with follow ups. A thank you page with links and CTAs for surveys, reviews, feedback, and future customer support can go a long way towards repeat customer conversion.