Find Out How a Web Funnel Can Increase Your Online Sales

What should you do when your online sales are stagnating? If you have been having difficulty attracting new customers or generating new sales leads, a web funnel could be the solution you are looking for. Funnels include a combination of landing pages, online offers, and email auto-responders to “funnel” your potential customers towards the purchase of a product or service.

Learn more about these funnels and how you can use them to increase your online sales.

What is a Web Funnel?

A web funnel is essentially a series of different web pages, forms, and email auto-responders that are designed to point a potential customer in the right direction. The funnel is typically divided into several stages, with the ultimate goal being a sale. Here is a quick look at the primary stages of a standard web funnel:

• Stage 1 – provide a free offer to your potential customers
• Stage 2 – offer an upgrade to the free item or a discount on other items
• Stage 3 – offer your core product or service

When you first offer a potential customer something for free, such as an eBook or access to an instructional video, the customer will be required to submit their email address. This allows you to add them to your email marketing list. You can then follow up with auto-responders, sending automatic emails to the customer to remind them of the benefits provided by the offer in the second stage.

The goal of the funnel is to move the website visitor from the free offer to your core product or service. After accepting an offer, auto-responders are used to direct the visitor to the next offer.

Planning Your Web Funnel to Increase Conversions

The first step in creating a funnel is to plan it. Start by defining your core product or service. This will be the product or service that you offer on the third landing page. If you have multiple products or services, choose one to focus on for your first funnel. Once you get used to the process of planning and building a funnel, you can create more for your other products and services.

Next, create a “sample offer”, which is essentially a discounted product or service related to your core offer. For example, if you operate a landscaping company, your core offer could be $80 a month landscaping services. An example sample offer could be edging their yard for $7. The sample offer will be presented on your second landing page.

Once you have a core offer and a sample offer, you can decide on the freebie. This is typically a digital item, such as an article, a PDF, an eBook, or some type of instructional video – something that can be downloaded or accessed online.

Make sure that you take the time to create professional landing pages. All of your offers, including the freebie, should provide real value. If you need any help with any of your design needs, you could outsource some of the work using online services, such as fiverr.com.

Building Your Web Funnel

After carefully planning your web funnel and deciding which offers, products, and services you want to promote, you can get started on building your funnel. Start by creating three landing pages. Create one for the freebie offer, one for the sample or discount, and one for the core offer.

You should include a payment option on the pages you are selling a product or service, so customers can make a purchase directly from your website. PayPal and Stripe are a couple of the best options for small businesses and individuals that want an affordable way to accept credit card payments.

Setup Your Auto-Responders

Once your landing pages are created, setup your auto-responders. There are plenty of cost-effective options for setting up your auto-responder, including GetResponse (my service of choice), Aweber, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and many others.

For a standard web funnel, you will create three separate auto-responder campaigns – one for each step of the funnel. You will create a campaign for people that said “yes” to the freebie, another campaign for people that accepted the sample offer, and a third for people that purchased the core offer.

When setting up the first campaign, for people that accepted the freebie offer, create an email to provide the download link or access code for the free offer. After a visitor accepts the freebie offer and enters their email address, they will automatically receive this first email.

Create a second email to send out to these visitors. The email should be scheduled to send on the second day and should remind the visitor about the second offer (the sample offer). Explain the benefits of this offer and include a link to the landing page. The goal here is to move the visitor along the funnel to the next step.

After creating the second email, create two more – one for the third day and a “last chance” email to send on the fourth day. If the visitor ignores all four emails, then their email address should be moved to a newsletter list – where they can receive email announcements of new offers in the future.

For the second auto-responder campaign, you will follow the same steps as the first campaign, except the goal is to move the customer on to the core offer.

The third campaign can vary, based on your products or services, but is generally used as a thank you email for those that purchased the core offer. This email could include additional information about the product or service.

Time to Create Your First Web Funnel

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Hopefully, I was able to shed some light on the concept of using a web funnel. The overall concept is fairly simple, but implementing it will require a bit of work. If you need any help with the creation of your first funnel system, then visit mhwebsolutions.com/funnels and click the “Get Started” button. For those that are ready to do it themselves – visit the same page and click “Get Funnel Template”.

Creating a web funnel is an effective way to increase your conversion rates and make better use of your space on the web. It is not a trick or scheme, but a useful system for attempting to convert visitors into customers, by providing items of real value and worth. If you want to increase your online sales, it could be time to create your first web funnel.