Before we dive into details of customer journeys and conversion funnels, let’s make an important point to keep in mind. You build conversion funnels according to how customers buy. Not according to how you sell! If you stick to this simple principle, you’ll do better than 80% of ecommerce businesses.
TOFU, MOFU AND BOFU
It’s the age of acronyms. If you work in ecommerce and don’t know that TOFU can be something other than bland, non-cheese on a plate, you might be one meal away from bankruptcy. Jokes aside, TOFU (top-of-funnel), MOFU (middle-of-funnel) and BOFU (bottom-of-funnel) refer to where customers find themselves in your sales or marketing funnel. It has everything to do with converting customers into paying clients. How and where you speak to them, and what you say to them.
It’s a bit like dating. If you like somebody, you first introduce yourself and have a light conversation before you ask for a date. The rest follows logically from there. At every touchpoint or interaction, you become more familiar with each other. You build trust until you eventually enter into a relationship that hopefully lasts forever.
If you look at the infographic, you’ll notice that modern funnels spend much more time on wooing than selling. The more effectively you build your brand, address consumer needs and wants, and create products to answer these needs, the more seamless the selling process becomes.
Analyse sales funnel conversion rates
Every business’s sales funnel is different. If you sell t-shirts online, your touchpoints and conversions will happen much faster and at various stages of your funnel than someone who sells cars, for example.
Irrespective of how different sales funnels might be, they are all full of barriers and friction. By analysing your funnels, you’ll discover where customers are dropping off without converting. Look for high-traffic pages with high drop-off and conversion rates. Compare high drop-off pages to high-converting pages. These metrics will provide insight into both:
- Cost per acquisition
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Drop-off rate (people leaving the page and your site)
- Conversion rate
- Number of qualified marketing leads (MQLs)
- MQLs to customer conversion rate
- Conversion rate per channel (social, paid, email)
Not all leads are created equal
It’s important to track leads across your funnels. Some people drop off at the top of the funnel, and others go down to slip away at the crucial buying moment. Once you know where your high-qualifying leads come from, you’ll be able to analyse the touchpoints to see what you did right. Ask yourself:
- How is the touchpoint different from others?
- What information do you think resonates there?
- Are there any barriers or friction?
- How many steps do people still have to go through before they convert?
What you’re doing right is just as vital as finding out what you’re doing wrong because you can learn something from both. Various sales funnel tools, heat maps and session recording tools can help you record and make sense of the data.
Optimise funnels
Figure out which touchpoints work along your customer journey and which don’t. Optimise the ones that work and work on those that don’t. Let’s look at it in more detail.
TOFU
Look at the different channels you use to attract leads. Social media, search engines, blogs, and paid ads feed customers at the top of your funnel. Find out which channels attract the most relevant leads and put effort into getting more out of those.
MOFU
It’s your job to keep potential customers moving along your funnel until the point where they convert. What are the barriers to customers moving down the funnel? What can you do to help them along? Here are some ideas:
- Post product videos and images
- Look at your FAQ pages
- Publish white papers, case studies and blogs
- Look at search and filter options
- Send out newsletters
- Provide discounts
- Double check the loading speed on pages and look for broken elements
BOFU
All your efforts culminate in this phase of the customer journey. Customers need to turn into paying clients. Possible barriers if they aren’t could be that your product pages need some work. Include shipping costs, videos and zoom options on each product.
Ensure your checkout process runs smoothly and remove any sticky points to avoid abandoned carts. Your payments page and process should run like clockwork. If you don’t have a payment provider that offers seamless, secure payment options across devices, countries and currencies, speak to Truevo. We can’t wait to break barriers with you.
