Tactics to try at every stage of your eCommerce sales funnel
Imagine if everyone who visited your online store was instantly ready to buy everything in sight. That would be amazing, right?
But in reality, the journey from knowing about your store to going in to your website to making a purchase isn't usually that straightforward.
You've probably noticed that many potential customers need multiple interactions before they're ready to buy. Maybe they visit your site, browse a bit, and leave without making a purchase. It can be frustrating, but understanding this process is the first step to improving it.
The more you understand each stage of the eCommerce funnel and optimize every step, the more you can increase your store's conversion rates and drive sales. Our aim is to get those visitors into actual paying customers, right?
That's why this month, we wanted to share some tactics we've learned from other eCommerce store owners for each funnel stage to help you maximize impact—so you'll be ready for what's to come during the busy shopping season. ?? Ho-ho-ho!
But before that, we'd like to invite you to our upcoming webinars this September:
"The Sales-Marketing Tango: Steps to Harmonize Your Teams"
on 4 September 2024 at 4PM CEST with Eduardo "Eddie" Casado and ?????? Dipak Vadera,?Director of Community and Ecosystem Marketing at Dealfront.
"Is Marketing Attribution Really Dead in B2B SaaS?"
on 12 September 2024 at 4PM CEST with Eddie and Adam Holmgren, Co-founder and CEO at Fibbler.
The 5 Stages of eCommerce Sales Funnel
A typical eCommerce conversion funnel has five stages: Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Purchase (aka Conversion), and Post-purchase (aka Retention).
Here are the tactics you could use at each stage and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track:
Awareness
First, you want to capture interest and introduce your brand. Here’s how:
? Create informative TOFU (top-of-the-funnel) content like blog posts and videos to educate or entertain your target audience. It should not be about the products you sell, but rather about what your ideal customer might want to do.
Example: if you sell hiking shoes, write about "The 15 best hiking trails to try in 2024".
? Promote your content on Google (PPC), social media, or even billboards, if your budget allows.
? Optimize your content and website for search engines.
?KPIs to Track
At this stage, the KPIs you track depend on your strategy. For SEO blog posts, track website traffic and email list growth (especially if you encourage newsletter sign-ups). For advertising, monitor reach, impressions, and click-through rates (CTR). If you use referral or influencer marketing, look at engagement and referral traffic.
Interest
Once you’ve got their attention, keep them interested:
? Collect emails with a sign-up form/pop-up and launch an email campaign.
? Create videos that talk about product features, benefits, and use cases. Again, not only about the products that you sell, but about the whole category to give your potential customers the information they need to make the right choice.
? Use retargeting ads to stay top-of-mind and show products they viewed.
KPIs to Track
Look for signs of growing engagement and interest, like email open and click rates and time spent on content and product pages (you can check this on Mouseflow's heatmap list).
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Consideration
They’re almost ready to decide. Make it easy for them:
? Provide product comparisons.
? Show social proof to build trust.
? Highlight unique features on detailed product pages.
?KPIs to Track
Focus on KPIs that show increased product research and purchase intent, such as add-to-cart rates, product and comparison page views. You can also track your pages' bounce rates. Though on its own, the bounce rate doesn’t give context to why visitors bounce. So, balance this metric with Mouseflow’s session replays to understand why they left the page.
Pro Tip: If you’re using Mouseflow, you can create a custom tag so that every add-to-cart event is tracked.
Purchase
They’re at the finish line. Help them cross it:
? Streamline your checkout process.
? Offer multiple payment options.
? Use clear CTAs and offer free shipping. A $15 product with $5 shipping? Nay! The same product for $20 with free shipping? Yay!
?KPIs to Track
“Success” to an eCommerce brand means completed purchases and revenue. So focus on metrics like average order value (AOV), cart abandonment rates, friction score (a metric unique to Mouseflow that is calculated based on friction events), and of course, the conversion rate.
It's one of the most important metrics of the overall effectiveness of your funnel, and you can see your conversion rate on Mouseflow and even watch why users did or didn’t convert.
Post-purchase
Don’t let the relationship end after the purchase. Keep them coming back:
? Offer loyalty programs, discounts, or exclusive rewards.
? Implement a referral program to tap into their network.
? Stay in touch with your customers through regular communication.
KPIs to Track
You should concentrate on KPIs that show increased loyalty, advocacy, and long-term revenue, such as customer lifetime value (CLV), repeat purchase rate, and referral rate.
Remember, you can track and analyze the on-site part of your funnel with Mouseflow. Set up the main funnels on your website (e.g., product page -> cart -> checkout) and monitor each step for visits, drops, conversions, and friction.
Keep experimenting, learning, and adapting, and you'll see your efforts pay off. Happy converting!
See you next month,
Team Mouseflow ??
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