The Hidden Science of Funnels: How to Unlock Explosive Business Growth
Gabriel Nasajon
As a business strategist, I empower entrepreneurs and business leaders to achieve their goals, transforming one business at a time. Let's build your success story together.
In this article, I will help you understand how to optimize your funnel and double your profitability in the next few weeks. I will point out a series of actionable items you can check today and start getting results right away.
First, we will understand the main factors that influence results then I will present actions you can take to improve them and a brief explanation of why it is important. You will also find a handful of examples to help you visualize what is being discussed.
Data is a key factor in landing page optimization. It provides the raw material that people need to analyze. It is not enough to rely on human analysis and process, you need a system.
A landing page should be optimized for conversions with data-driven insights. Data can help us understand what people are looking for, what they are clicking on and what they are not clicking on.
Data is very important in optimizing the landing page. Different touch points on the page can give you information about how your conversion rates are going (and what to do to increase those results).
Data can also help us understand which elements of a landing page might be driving conversions and which ones might not be doing so well. It can also provide insight into what customers are looking for, what they are expecting to see, and what they want to find when they land on the site.
The data we have about our customers should be used to optimize the landing page in order to increase conversions and ultimately make more sales.
Funnels are a popular tool used by marketers to track their website's conversion rates. The funnel shape shows how many people enter at each stage and which ones make it to the next stage.
The 3 main factors that influence the optimization of a funnel are:
Now bares the question of how to do those 3 “little things”. Truth be told, each client is different. But after managing hundreds of clients, and thousands of funnels, we got a grasp of the main touchpoints you can check to have the easy wins you are looking for.
The first step is all about the funnel strategy. Let me explain. The funnel strategy is a marketing term for a sales process that tries to maximize the number of visitors who become customers.
The funnel strategy is about reducing friction in any step of the funnel. Again, there is a multiverse of change possibilities but in general, this can be done by:
When we talk about decreasing the size of the funnel, what I mean by that is to reduce the number of pages/clicks it takes for a visitor to become a client. This reduces friction in any given time.?
A great example of this in action is when you have a questionnaire step. Many of our clients use questionnaires to qualify a lead. Sometimes having 37 questions long before the sale. The problem many of them face is that only about 10% of those questions really matter. When we understood that, immediately we reduced the number of questions to under 5 and that generated dramatic results. The aim is to minimize friction and simplify the process of converting a visitor into a client.
First, we had more people getting to the last question and therefore, more leads becoming clients. Last, clients would get faster to the sale and therefore buy more.?
This change alone, allowed the customer to multiply his ROAS.
To fix this problem and generate more results, you should keep in mind some basic questions.
How practical is the information you are asking?
Do I need or want the information I am asking?
Is this information being used in any way?
Is this information making a difference in the CLIENTS purchase rate?
Is this information really relevant?
By eliminating unnecessary information, it becomes clear that such information was simply a means of reducing your profits by disguising it as irrelevant or impractical information.
Here is some practical questions and their explanation focused only on your landing page (the first page people get after your ad)
Many times when we write a website or design its contents we forget about the consistency of the client's Journey. That means that more often than not, we end up with a bunch of content that does not communicate with each other. As a consequence, this decreases the rate at which clients make purchases due to the lack of confidence and reliability of the information presented.
What I mean by having consistency on the clients journey is that each page that is subsequential on its Journey communicates with the previous one. so let's say a client has seen an ad and then goes to a landing page. The ad talks about losing weight and the landing page talks about making money, this shows a lack of consistency in the journey. The thing to keep in mind here is that every page, every step, on the client's Journey must communicate with each other.?
The first thing We must do to increase our profitability is to look for those low-hanging fruits. That will allow us to get better results on our funnel. The first thing I’ve seen having great results is changing the content towards the funnel and making it consistent with its messaging.?
Knowing that consistency is important has a tremendous effect on how to optimize the funnel. Taking into account that you already have consistent messaging on your pages, the next most important step to reflect on is the title, the headline, and the message you are presenting.?
The title is the single most important piece of text you can have on your landing page. Make sure to optimize that first. In order to do that you must rely on, first consistency and, second A/B testing. Consistency will be the key to attain attention and have the most out of each lead.?
A/B testing on the other hand will allow you to determine which is the best text and have the best results.?
When testing different titles among your text you should definitely look at a couple of different things. You can test the title written as positive or negative messaging. You can try writing the headline using the desired outcome or the challenges the lead might be facing. Try putting timestamps or emotional wording. All those would still be consistent with the main journey but would have different conversion rates. And yes, this should all be tested if you are looking to be competitive in the digital marketing world.
Let's take losing weight as an example. “Lose weight”.? This headline most probably won't make your eyes glow. But we can work on that.
The first thing we can try is turn it into positive/negative. In this example we could change it to “Don’t be fat” normative negative or “Be slim” normative positive. This alone would already be better than just “lose weight”.? But we could go further and try to use copywriting principles here.
The main goal of this article is to help you understand how to optimize your page and funnel and not talk about copywriting details but is very important to understand that optimizing headlines and text, in general, will rely on copyright. It is comprehensible that a few words can impact tremendously and the results will be affected.?
Telling someone he will lose weight in the next 15 days and get rid of those undesired extra pounds and finally be seen as a sexy woman is more effective than just saying “lose weight”. I could write a whole book on copyright but for now, we can just focus on the general context on how to optimize the funnel as a process (and not the details of copywriting and A/B testing). Just bear in mind that you should test different messaging in the headline and every single line of text you use on the information you are delivering for your audience as long as it remains consistent with your funnel.
This brings me to the next point of optimization that is:
This is a great example of poor landing page design copy. Nobody wants to read long paragraphs of text on your landing page. When a landing page is designed with so much content that users have to scroll down to reach the bottom, it’s likely to be too busy and distracting.
Effective landing pages are aligned around a single objective, rather than promoting disconnected products
Having a single purpose on a page is fundamental to having good conversion rates. Your goal as the funnel Master is to have as many results as you possibly can for the best value. When we talk about high-level digital marketing results, your goal is to have those results (be profitable). Your goal is not to be funny, your goal is not to be eccentric, your goal is not to be liked, hated, or remembered, and your only purpose is to have results. And results can be translated into dollar signs when we are talking about the funnel. You might not like what I'm about to say but as a marketing expert, this is your only concern. Are you bringing results? And how are you measuring those results??
Okay this might have sounded a bit aggressive but it's the truth. If you're not a big company, a giant into your Market and you don’t have those millions of dollars that can be spent on fluffy duffy marketing strategies that might only bring results in the long run in the form of intangible value (like brand awareness) then this is indeed those are the only questions that matter. Yes, you can have a few marketing strategies that are focused on lifting your brand awareness but this is not what we are talking about here. When we talk about optimizing a funnel and having the results-driven mindset, we are talking about having a process that generates consistent profit.?
This is Chase, a national bank headquartered in Manhattan. The problem with this landing page design is simple: too many call-to-action (CTA) buttons.
On the left, there is a “learn more” CTA button, while on the right another CTA button asks you to sign up for an account. And below this, five links take you to different destinations.
Using too many or irrelevant CTAs will end up disorienting or distracting your landing page’s visitors.
When you have multiple goals inside a page, the end result is generating confusion on your clients Journey. This will create unnecessary friction, confusion and drive clients away from making a sale.?
imagine you have multiple objectives in a given page. If that's the case how do you measure each conversion? Which one is more important? When a customer enters a webpage and is presented with too many options to choose from, it can cause confusion and make it harder for them to complete a purchase. This is because they may spend more time navigating through the different paths and options instead of focusing on the intended action. This can increase friction and make the buying process more difficult than it needs to be. Your only goal as the Funnel Master is to drive as many results as you possibly can. 1 Goal per page is fundamental. 1 consistent message for every step of the funnel.
You might be thinking now, what is unnecessary information in a funnel? That is a fair question I will answer in the next couple of paragraphs using data (not emotion).
To define if an information is worth having or not you must use a data driven process to avoid emotional driven mistakes. This may look simple but it's not.
So I will try to make it as seamless as possible to you. Answer a couple of questions and you will be able to define if this information is relevant.
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LIke an elevator pitch, those first couple of seconds are gold. If a possible lead comes to your website and he can’t understand the purpose of your page in less than 5 seconds, you are doomed. The message must be clear, easy to understand and simple enough to be understood as fast as possible. Each second that goes by after this in the need to understand your purpose will decrease your chances of converting that lead.
A bonus question is:
**How long will it take the page to load.**
In today's world “time is money” couldn't be more right. Each millisecond is important. If your loading speed is bad (you can check this using websites such as “gmetrix.com” you should consider making urgent improvements. Loading speed by itself will improve your numbers.
This is optional but very important, especially for those people that love the extra information. Sometimes a Headline alone can get big in order to deliver the full information you want. In those cases, consider having a small description to enhance the headline. Tricky part is to keep it simple. Each business is different but you can usually use a maximum of 3 lines as a guideline for this. More than that and you probably should be rethinking the wording or the message.
When we talk about getting information simpler and consistent to reduce friction on the funnel we can compare our website as a powerpoint presentation. Having those big chunks of text will make it hard to understand the message and soon drive attention away from the goal.
How do we solve the problem? Simple, we make information simple, direct and seamless. Just like a powerpoint presentation. We can use some of their secrets to improve our website as well. Turning a bulk of text into 4 or 5 bullet points makes it easier to get the main points of the information passed and cleanliness to the message across. Especially when we are trying to describe the benefits of the product/service, you want to deliver this information as fast and simple as possible.?
Another big mistake people make here is to try selling the features, like the material or new technology. But having a rubber instead of nylon or I17 instead of the i15 means nothing to the client. It doesn’t bring value to the table. Instead, try focusing on the benefits, like how the rubber helps keep the product from slipping or the lightning fast new processor that allows you to work up to 10 times faster. People don’t care about the feature, they care about the benefits it will bring them. Let me put it this way… no one likes to take vaccines but everyone wants to be healthy, so people do something that is not pleasant to get the desired outcome. Compared to products and services, nobody wants to spend money, but people love to buy and solve problems, the question is which one they prefer. The last decision will be based on the balance of how much perceived value and benefit it brings versus the pain of the perceived costs.??
Another huge mistake I’ve constantly seen people making is having unnecessary information in a given form. Many call funnels consist of trying to filter leads through forms before the sales call. That works fine but you must be careful to have only those questions that really matter. Otherwise, you are throwing money down the drain. Like I said before, sometimes people want 30 long forms that could be substituted for 3 or 4 questions and have the correct information. Each question added will reduce the number of people answering it. Be conscious of it and avoid having unnecessary questions. This alone will save you a lot of money. Every question must have a clear purpose to either to qualify the lead (with information that will be used) or help the total amount of sales. An example of a good question is how much money is the lead willing to invest. With this answer, we can then qualify if the visitor is a qualified lead (more prompt to make a sale) or not. Usually, in high ticket funnels this(or some variation of it)? is one out of 3 questions that really matter. Cut the fat here. You don’t need to know the clients dogs name (even if you sell a dog related product, you also don’t need that - more important if its a shitzu or a pug)
Opt-in form fails! Why lose the opportunity to build a list of potential customers who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer by failing to design your sign-up form properly?
In our example, you’ve got an extensive opt-in form for the United States Postal Service (USPS). 15 fields to fill in just to get your hands on a white paper report!
When giving things away, people tend to not attribute value to it. It's a psychological phenomenon. Get used to it, it's how our brain works. So it's very important to show exactly what the prospect is getting. The value, the discount, the ebook pages. Especially now that we have so much “free” stuff online, finding content on any topic becomes easy and effortless. This makes paramount to explain the amount of value the opportunity being “sold” its about. It makes a psychological difference for the prospect to know this. There are many experiments showing this but keep in mind that just by putting a value (“from 297, today free”) even if you are giving it for free, helps your client make a decision and take action. It also put your product/service in a different category on the client's mind due to the “discount’. Even if he got it for free “it's not a free course” it's a 297 that HE was able to get at a special price, but it's worth 297. This gives a slight edge when compared to a “free course”.?
Trust in the modern age is a commodity. It became very hard for people to trust anything on the internet. This caused social proof to be even more important to the decisions clients make. The ability to drive trust and consequently action testimonials is unmatched (preferably in video). If you do not have any recorded testimonials, having someone talk about you personally can have a similar impact. Pages that can display testimonials (especially in video) have a great advantage over those that do not. So make sure to put some effort into it.
Understanding how people make decisions is the single most important thing you can do when planning a funnel. One of the key aspects of decision-making is trust. Since the spams and scams numbers went up in society, people are getting more and more afraid of the aggressive promises and risks they face online. Having a professional design is a little sign that points to the offer being true.
Cruise is a site that advertises cruise deals, reviews and guides. Take a look at the above image of their landing page design and see if you can guess what’s wrong with it.
If you thought clutter, you were right. There’s so much going on here, it makes our eyes hurt!
As discussed before, trust is really hard to obtain in the online world. Providing value and visual clues that can bring security and confidence add up value and help convert those leads. Providing a sample or a usage video of the internal area, a chapter preview on a book, or a giveaway instantly show value and help the lead take action while demonstrating the quality of what he is getting. Making this right can result in the client creating good internal reasons why he must buy the full access/product and ease the sale.
Lowering the friction and helping the client make a decision is the main goal when optimizing a page. When humans know about a certain topic, they tend to forget how difficult it was at the beginning. However easy it may seem to you, try to speak like your audience has a third grade education and is trying to understand the next step he needs to take. This will help you make decisions and explain the message in a simple way that anyone can understand.
Having visual cues to direct the attention to the CTA will also reduce friction and help explain where to click or look. Having a simple arrow pointing to the CTA can increase your clicks by a few percentage points.
Here are the different kinds of visual cue tactics you can incorporate in your landing page:
Here’s a good example of Intercom. They’ve strategically placed the call-to-action button between the two illustrations that are facing each other.
When someone says a page looks “cluttered”, the culprit is probably poor use of visual cues. Many of the pages we design have the job of “Help me choose.” This means that they must help the visitors choose a next step, a product, whether to sign up or not, or whether to leave.
Arrows are powerful sources of visual gravity. But they lose their power when they point to things that aren’t exciting, or are only exciting to the owner of the website.
The arrow promises something important. The button text breaks that promise.
This creates a visual bridge to nowhere.
Visually, arrows point to the most pertinent part of the page. If that doesn’t excite the reader, then the rest of the page seems unimportant.
If you’re going to use an arrow, make it point to something exciting for the visitor. The arrow below points at something a bit more exciting:
Arrows don’t have to point to extraordinary offers. They can be used as simple guides to increase scrolling, as long as they are working in the interest of the reader.
There is a nice article about visual cues I took a few of the information (the source will be at the end of the article)
The first section of your page is the most important, don’t waste it with unnecessary information. People don’t have time to read (or willingness) the whole site, so keep it simple. Most useful and important information first. Your CTA should be in the first section of the page, if the lead has to scroll down to see it, your numbers will be worse than they could’ve been.?
A lot of funnels use weekly timeframes. This means that their leads will have to leave the page and digest the information at some point. Use that last touchpoint to provide further instructions, and prepare the lead or generate value.
Data-driven decisions are the best decisions when it comes to generating results. Being able to gather data and take action based on that is what differs a successful funnel from a non profitable one. Small and incremental improvements are your best friends on the internet. There is no “1 hidden secret” that will turn your page into a winner. That is not even healthy. Instead, what works is small constant improvements. That being said, It's way better to understand that success is a process and that you must be always improving. Yes, there are a few tricks like having an arrow pointing to your button to help call the lead's attention and increase conversion a bit, but that won’t have a huge direct impact on the end result if you don’t focus on the process of getting better at each possible step. Provide value and work with data and you will be fine. This is a long-term game that you can win if you improve 1% each time.
Sources:
Visual cues: https://conversionsciences.com/visual-cues/
50 point checklist - https://unbounce.com/landing-pages/checklist/?