The internet is a universe of 1.5 billion websites. And only a small fraction of those websites are getting consistent traffic.
In this internet-driven world, everyone knows you need a website for your business. And when you start creating a website for your online business, you have to scratch a lot over your head as well as on paper building web strategies that are sales-oriented and market specific.
Once you are finished creating the website, you either hire a digital marketing team or a digital marketing agency for SEO for generating organic traffic or invest money in Yahoo and Google ads.
After all of this, did you get the results you expected from your website for your business?
Not much!
Why?
Let’s learn this firstly!
What Is A Website?
A website is generally made up of five to twenty or more online pages of content including the about us page, menu of services or products, a dedicated blog which is supposed to be updated regularly.
This is a Traditional Website which basically has the goals to attract visitors on web pages turning visitors into customers specifically.
How does a visitor turn into a customer on a traditional website?
When a user visits to your website he or she usually sees the home page first, which appears like a multilane highway and the different pages on your website correspond to highway entrance and exit gates.
Such visitors, also referred to as web traffic, move from the homepage to various pages similar to cars exiting the highway. Some of them take the off ramps to visit the about page, while others browse through the product catalog and some prefer reading blog posts or other contents. Some of them see the product catalog and want clear information and desire to buy. A few of them purchased or made an order for your product or services after putting an extra effort. But your website fails to guide maximum visitors what they are looking for and consequently, majority of visitors leave your website and probably move to your competitor’s website for the same goal.
This is the reason you decided to invest more in search engine optimization (SEO) so that your website gets high ranking and visibility on Google as well as other search engines. Through this paid SEO strategy, you demonstrated your visitors that you are serious about having a strong digital presence.
The conclusion to the above whole story is that maximum number of websites offer too many options but little direction. As a result, visitors get confused by all these multidirectional pages and find it difficult to navigate the website for their specific goal. It is almost like you have turned on many traffic signals simultaneously and diverting the car driver with no clear vision.
This is why your website fails to achieve its business goals. Here, in this post, we will discuss why choosing a funnel over a website can bring impressive market results for your online business and how a website builder can help you create a great funnel.
All e-commerce websites or online business portals have the ultimate goal of generating leads and turning them into paying customers, either by promoting buy online or encouraging visitors to buy from the company’s offline stores.
While a website is a multidirectional freeway, a sales funnel is more like a unidirectional or one-way road. Everything is designed to guide website traffic toward a specific direction- converting a sale.
What is a Funnel?
A funnel directs the series of steps a user takes from becoming aware of a product or service as max as possible to convert them a paid customer, and eventually a loyal customer.
Though effective web design is also customer-focused and helps creating sales conversion, funnels offer higher usage in terms of their goals and target audience. A typical funnel would instead concentrate on a certain buyer persona or customer avatar and a specific conversion goal.
Moreover, funnels give a defined path for users to follow leading the customer or prospect via all the stages of user’s journey from awareness to consideration and later converting them into your permanent customer who will back again.
What are the steps in a funnel?
Awareness Stage: The users may not be well aware of their problem. A funnel’s goal is to be resourceful and informative while helping them learn about their problem or concern.
Consideration Stage: The user is researching, exploring and considering all possibilities to resolve their concerns. A funnel’s goal is to help them understand why your offering is best for them.
Conversion Stage: Now, the user is more interested and ready to become a customer or signs up for subscription, newsletter or online purchase. And this is the point where your funnel succeeds.
Loyalty Stage: The goal of funnel is to foster a long-term relationship with customers and keep engaging them with attractive content, offers or rewards so they remain with you for the lifespan of your business. You want to inspire the customers become your loyal advocates and become word of mouth for your expensive advertising.
What is the difference between a website and a funnel?
The Traffic Flow
The key factor that differentiates a website from a funnel is the traffic flow. On a website, traffic flow is non-directional or multidirectional, which lets user decide what they want to view either directly clinking on tabs or buttons whatever they find easier.
Whereas the funnel is one-directional built up with the purpose to lead the audience through a defined or stepwise series of stages mentioned above, so they can make a purchase successfully at the end.
Conversion Rates
Conversion rate means how much per cent of landed web traffic decides to make a purchase. This ratio of viewership to purchasing is leveled up through conversion rate optimization. This process adds to the proportionality of your how much audience makes a purchase.
In this context, a traditional website without a landing page, product catalog, shopping cart and payment system and other essential steps for passing the loyalty stages, struggles to achieve the business goals. And a sales funnel paves the way for everything you need to optimize your conversion rates.
Analytics
Not all page views can give you the idea on understanding buyer persona through a traditional website. Sometimes they often leave subscription link and don’t put their email address for signing up for your newsletters. Also, it is difficult to understand the interest of user what they are exactly looking for on your conventional website.
But a funnel allows you to perform easy A/B test. You can change some parts of your web page to inspire visitors sign up for subscriptions.
What are the types of Funnels?
There are many types of funnels for making your sales or business online. Each funnel has its specific goal. Here are the following categories of funnels that can help your sales conversion grow faster.
| Type of Funnels | Goals |
| LEAD GENERATION FUNNEL | To generate leads |
| SELF-LIQUIDATING OFFER (SLO) | To generate leads and sales |
| THE LEAD MAGNET FUNNEL | To get email address of visitors |
| THE HOMEPAGE FUNNEL | To turn home page into a lead generating funnel |
| AUTOMATED WEBINAR FUNNEL | To make sales through a live webinar |
| ORGANIC CONTENT MARKETING FUNNEL | To recognize potential customers |
| THE SQUEEZE PAGE FUNNEL | To get visitors email address |
| THE SALES LETTER FUNNEL | To sell from a long-form sales letter |
| THE MEMBERSHIP FUNNEL | To get visitors into membership sites |
| THE SURVEY FUNNEL | To collect data on who your visitors are |
| THE HERO FUNNEL | To collect data on who your visitors are |
Why you should build a funnel using a Website Builder?
Building a sales conversion website, that is a funnel, is faster and easier than building a traditional website, and you will end up with a great sales funnel that could generate more ROI than a conventional website today.
And to help you in this, our ESL Builder is here, which is an easy-to-use online tool that allows you create an effective funnel for your product, services or business.
Creating a funnel does not require you to buy a domain, pay hosting fees, plan webpages, nor other web development work. Just like a simple website, funnels contain forms, webpages, checkout, subscription and fulfilment process. Your funnel will be a fully functioning online store for your products, without any hassle.
You can create a sales funnel for generating leads, selling products online, getting sign-ups to your events, or be any other tasks, ESL Builder will help you create an impressive funnel so that you can offer a seamless web experience to your customers.
