Congratulations on launching your sales funnel. So, what next? Should you sit down and relax and watch as your pockets swell. Or isn’t it a bit too early for that?
If anything, optimising your sales funnel should be an ongoing process, not a one-time job. You have to keep on looking into the system, and making necessary calibrations where necessary until you achieve perfection.
Plus the market keeps changing, and when it does the only option you have is to adapt. This demands that you keep on analysing it from every possible angle, and at every stage. It’s by analysing the funnel that you’ll be able to know what to improve on and the direction to take in maximizing your conversion rate.
Not an easy process, but it’s doable, and this is how you go about it.
Step 1: Assign Numbers to each stage
You can start by going through each phase of your funnels to find out how many people it has. Look at the number of people that are landing on your homepage. How many are they?
Of course, the number will be narrowing the further you move. However, your concern should be with the number of people that are dropping at each stage before progressing to the next one.
The number you assign for each stage doesn’t have to be accurate, but a ballpark figure. At this point, we’re assuming you have an internal metric or tracking system that you’re using to monitor the results.
If not, look into the possibility of integrating the funnel with Google Analytics. This should help you with keeping track of the number of visitors that are arriving at each stage.
Step 2: Find out How Big Your Market is
Don’t choke leads where there’s none. Imagine a scenario where everyone in your market decided to buy from you, how many sales will you make in total?
Of course, you can’t come up with an accurate number, but it’s possible to make a rough estimate based on the statistics that you have.
This estimate can be reached at on purely statistic terms – using demographics and elementary statistics.
Step 3: Make a percentage estimates
Based on the number you came up with, you can do some quick math to find the percentage number of people that are making to the next stage. Just get the number of people that make it to the next stage and divide it by the number of people that are on the stage you’re in. That’s the conversion rate of that particular stage.
It’s simple math that shouldn’t confuse you one single bit.
Here’s a real-time example to help you understand this better:
Assuming your site is attracting 1, 000 people. That’s the number you write down for unqualified prospects. Now go to the next page, probably the awareness stage of your funnel. Find out about the number of people that made it to that page. In our case, let’s assume it’s 400.
That means, for the first stage, your sales funnel would have a conversion rate of 400/1000 = 40%.
If in the third stage the number drops further to say, 300, then the conversion rate for the second stage becomes 300/400 = 77%.
You should calculate the conversion rate for each stage, all the way to the last one. This should give you some clues on the effectiveness of each stage.
Step 4: Identify the Transition to Improve
Now that you’ve established the conversion rate at each level, the next thing you want to do is use that information as your baseline. Use it to identify the transition to improve on. Do you need to create more awareness? Do you need to work on loyalty? Or what can you do to increase the desire your leads have?
Is the conversion rate lowest at the order stage? That could mean your price is a little over the top and that you should do something about it. Or it could mean that your leads still don’t trust you enough to go through with a purchase.
At some point, you’ll have to look at your sales funnel holistically. But now you want to pay attention to individual levels. That alone is enough to clue you in on next best course of action.
Improving one level of the funnel should result in the overall improvement of the funnel. Or it could push the problem elsewhere. No need to worry though. Just keep improving one level at a time until you’ve succeeded in ironing out all the bottlenecks.
Step 5: What should you do to Improve on the Levels with lower Conversion rates?
You’re done with identifying weaker points in your sales funnel. The next thing you want to do at this point is to focus on the action. You can start by making a list of all the things you’re supposed to do to impact the conversion rate at each level.
Make a list of all the changes you need to make. Figure out if there are new processes to be implemented. And most importantly, try to involve your think tanks in coming up with fresh ideas that you think might help you improve the results you’re getting.
Be sure to assign all the listed course of actions to their appropriate stage. Next, you want to prioritize them based on the returns they’re bringing. It’s also crucial that you assign a cost to each one of them.
You can start with ideas that cost you nothing; yet improve the conversion rate by a significant amount. Now start executing the ideas one by one, beginning with those at the top of your priority list. Remember to measure the impact of the actions you take to avoid messing up your sales funnel further. For all we know, the only way to see if you’re doing the right thing is by testing it thoroughly.
That said, here are some ideas on how to improve your sales funnel:
- The easiest way to grow or convert unqualified prospects into active leads is by introducing them to a new product. Always have something unique about your product features or its uses that you can sell to them.
- The best place to grow awareness is through social media, advertising, and PR. If the problem appears to occur at the awareness stage of your funnel, these are some of the areas you should be focusing on. You grow interest by improving your website and running a thorough email campaign.
- You grow consideration by running a series of promotions conflated with exclusive offers.
- Intent is best grown through inbound and outbound sales processes or by creating a sense of urgency. Another trick would be to offer discounts or run promotional literature.
- The easiest way to increase sales is by coaching and having different pricing plans. Also, try to make sure that your checkout system is both smooth and seamless.
- For loyalty, you might want to consider introducing membership programs or embracing the concept of communities. Also, consider coming up with exclusive offers.
But most importantly, improve on your customer service and run a series of online surveys to find out how your past customers feel about your services.
Other Ways to Analyse Your Sales Funnel
Funnel analysis is a never-ending process. Even after following the above steps and improving on all the areas we’ve suggested, you still have to keep looking at your funnel to find out if there’s any room for improvement.
Use Pathfinder to identify all Conversion Routes
It’s easy to work on your sales funnel if you know the steps users follow to take action. This is something you can’t guess. Luckily, there are tools that you could use to track it for you?
In comes pathfinder – a tool that has been specifically designed to walk you through the actions of users from the point they land on your site to the point they proceed to take action.
With Pathfinder, you’ll be shown all the paths that different users followed to complete their journey. It even allows you to view the paths on an individual level or on an event or session-level.
You can even segment your users based on the paths they followed. This should help you identify the most common path based on the number of users using that particular path.
The Final Thought
Analysing your sales funnel shouldn’t be that much of a hassle if you understand its core features. What’s important is for you to make sure that you’re one with your leads in terms of reasoning and behaviour. In other words, everything you do must be goaded by what a user would prefer.
You’re trying to win a user here. Offer them a solution they cannot resist – and above all, making everything less complicated and a smooth process for all.
This should help you analyse your sales funnel to the best standard possible. But that’s not to say you can’t talk to us for more guidance or help. Give us a call or email us at MediaOne Marketing today, and let’s reason out together on how we can best make your business a success.
