Did you know that 70% of visitors who add items to their cart don’t actually buy anything?
Cart abandonment is a serious issue that affects everyone in eCommerce.
One way to reduce that and make more sales is by using sales funnels. They guide a customer to a purchase from the moment they arrive and can be very effective at reducing cart abandonment.
CartFlows can help you create WooCommerce sales funnels, but it’s up to you to monitor and improve them so you can make more money.
In this article, we’ve broken down what a WooCommerce sales funnel is and shared some tried and tested strategies to optimize them to convert more.
Let’s dive in!
What Is a WooCommerce Sales Funnel?
Before we explore the strategies, let’s first discuss what a WooCommerce sales funnel is.
A sales funnel is marketing speak for the customer journey. It’s a process designed to convert a visitor into a paying customer using a series of stages to help the buying decision.
Those four stages are:
- Awareness: This is when people first become aware of your brand or your products. This can be through social media, paid ads, word of mouth, email campaigns, or something else. The key here is to drive them to your WooCommerce store.
- Intent: Now they are on your site, the next stage is to spark interest in your products. This can be done through product descriptions, product FAQs, blog content, and general research.
- Desire: Visitors now show a desire to buy at this stage. You can influence them to make a choice by using promotions such as buy 1 get 1, free shipping, volume discounts, free returns or sales techniques.
- Action: Now is the time to take action. Do everything you can to make it easy for a visitor to buy. Use simple checkout, offer guest checkout, use simple purchase forms and other techniques to encourage that purchase.
A well-designed WooCommerce sales funnel ensures a smooth shopping experience, which can help you convert a visitor into a paying customer.
So that’s what a sales funnel is all about. You can see why it’s important and how it can increase sales in a WooCommerce store.
Now let’s explore ways to improve its performance.
7 Sales Funnel Optimization Strategies
We think there are 7 things you can do to improve your sales using funnels. If your sales funnel isn’t performing as well as it should, try some or all of these.
Solid Branding
One of the most effective ways to boost the awareness stage of the funnel is by having strong branding.
Branding is why you associate that shade of green with Spotify, or why you can recognize an IKEA poster even if you don’t see the logo.
Branding can be divided into two elements – visual identity and brand identity.
Visual identity is composed of your logo design, color scheme, typography, art style, or photography style.
Brand identity is your image. Do you come off as fun and playful? Chic and sophisticated? All-natural and eco-friendly?
This is derived from the overall way you present your brand as well as how you write your communications (also known as brand voice).
Having a distinct and memorable brand should be a priority as it helps in brand recognition, brand recall, and eventually, sales.
Customers prefer buying from brands that they recognize and solid branding helps with that.
So how do you create a great brand?
- Start with brand identity: What do you want to be known as or for? What kind of image will resonate with your audience? Do you want to be relatable or aspirational? From there you can decide the direction of your visuals.
- Create a logo: Your logo is your main visual identifier – you’ll be using it in your WooCommerce store, on social media, packaging, and everywhere you can think of. You can do it by editing it on your own, hiring a graphic designer, or using logo maker tools.
- Pair it with a suitable color scheme and typography: Color and typography work as a pair. For example, Chanel sticks to a black and white color palette and an elegant cursive font to emphasize the luxury feel of their brand.
- Use your brand everywhere: Use the color scheme on your website, take product photos that match the vibe of your brand, design packaging that fits with your style, and make it part of everything you do.
- Match it with your written content: If you’re aiming for playful branding, try to write witty and funny product descriptions. Going for a sporty vibe? Writing strong, direct sentences with a lot of action words can help.
Write Great Product Descriptions
Ever seen a great pair of clothes, but when you click on them, you can’t find any information? No size, no measurements, no materials, nothing at all?
How likely are you to buy when you don’t even know what you’re buying?
Great product descriptions can help with that and take your WooCommerce store to the next level.
Remember, people are seeing your products online. They have to rely on you to let them know what the product is – how it feels, how they will look wearing or using them and so on.
If they can’t envision how the product will work, the less the chances of them buying it.
Optimize your product descriptions by:
- Providing complete information: Might seem obvious, but this is important. Add all important details such as size, material, product care, or specifications.
- Making descriptions easy to read: Write short and clear descriptions. You can also separate them into bullet points for easy scanning.
- Or making them fun: You don’t need to just list details like a robot. You can add a touch of personality to make them more engaging to read. Some incorporate slang or reference pop culture. So long as it fits the image of your brand, you can do it.
Take Stunning Product Photos
High-quality product photos have a higher conversion rate than low-quality ones.
Beautiful product photos can make products look more appealing and show them in the best light.
Think of all the food commercials you’ve ever seen. Notice how they make the food look so appetizing that it entices you to buy?
The same goes for your product photos.
Provide different types of product shots. Take a studio shot with a white background so customers can see every detail. Then take a lifestyle shot so customers can see the product in action and visualize how it could fit into their everyday life.
Finally, take a scale shot so they can see how small or big the product actually is.
Product photos, like your product descriptions, can also help envision the product more clearly in your mind and help you make informed decisions.
They both can help in the Intent stage of the funnel.
Leverage scarcity marketing
Want to nudge your customers into clicking that buy button? Try incorporating some product scarcity strategies.
Scarcity marketing is when businesses increase the perceived value of a product by reducing its supply.
Notice when you see that there’s only one item left, or when time is running out on a flash sale, you tend to want the product more?
That’s scarcity at work.
Some ways to incorporate it into your WooCommerce store are:
- Show stock availability: When people see that there are only a few items left in stock, they tend to act fast since they fear they will miss out. You can do this by saying things like “Only X items in stock”, “Hurry – stock is running out!”, or “Almost Gone!”.
- Flash sales or time-limited discounts: While sales and promotions are effective at convincing customers to buy products, they are even more effective when you make them time-limited. Adding a countdown timer on the product page can also help as you can see the time running out.
- Product drops: Product drops are only available for a limited time or have limited stock.
Nike uses product drops a lot, where they release special sneakers or one-off collabs that are available for a limited time only. This generates buzz around the product, as well as entices customers to buy before stock runs out.
The exclusivity of the product, the fact that only a few people can have it, increases their interest.
Show Real-Time Sales and Activity
An even more subtle way to optimize a sales funnel and showing social proof at the same time is by showing real-time sales activity.
These can be by showing a counter of how many people are on site right now, by showing page activity (ex. “17 people are also viewing now”, “X is also looking at this”), or by showing purchase activity (ex. “20 people have also added to cart”, “X has also bought…).
You can see this strategy in action on travel sites. For example, you can see how many people booked this specific room today or when the last booking was made.
Why is this effective?
Two reasons – scarcity and social proof.
While you don’t directly state the product is running out, you encourage that thought. If so many people are looking at it, won’t they get the product before you?
At the same time, since a lot of people are looking at it or buying it, the product is popular and therefore of good quality.
Provide a Seamless Checkout Experience
Frictionless checkout is a core part of sales funnel optimization.
Imagine there’s a product that you are so excited to buy… only to face a 10-step checkout process. Chances are, you’ll just drop this product and look for somewhere else to buy it, right?
A short and simple checkout is the best way to go. This helps reduce cart abandonment and encourages more sales.
But how do you actually simplify it?
- Have a guest checkout option: If customers have to sign-up and create an account before buying anything, you’re just giving them more chances to change their mind. This also takes more time and effort that the customer might not be willing to invest in you just yet.
- Make checkout short: Condense all the information you need in one page as much as possible. Just ask for the essential information you need for the purchase. The shorter the process is, the better.
- Show a progress bar: Can’t put a form on one page? Then add a progress bar instead. This gives customers a clearer view of what they need to accomplish as well as give them an end goal. Psychologically, it also gives us more satisfaction as our brains are wired to want to complete tasks.
- Offer multiple payment options: Offering different payment methods makes the checkout process more convenient and accessible. Aside from the typical credit and debit card, include digital payments like Paypal, Stripe, Google Pay, or Apple Pay. Take the location of your customers in mind too. For example, if you sell to China, you should include popular payment methods there such as AliPay or WeChat.
Provide Reasons To Return
A purchase is not the end of the sales funnel. Nurturing existing customers is just as important as creating new ones.
There are many ways to nurture customers. How about sending them a thank you email for their purchase? Or set up a loyalty card program?
You can also give out discounts or promos for returning customers.
Don’t underestimate the power of good customer service and great product returns either.
If someone is dissatisfied with the product, give them the help they need so they leave your store with a positive impression.
Fair returns policies also provide reassurance, another essential ingredient of conversion.
Conclusion
That’s a wrap! We hope the steps above can help you optimize your WooCommerce sales funnel to convert more visitors!
If you want to make optimizing your WooCommerce sales funnel a lot easier, why not check out CartFlows?
It has everything you need to create high conversion sales funnels, frictionless checkout and more. It could seriously improve conversion rates and store profits!
