Reimagining the sales funnel: how to improve conversion by adding steps

One of the most popular tools for measuring sales performance is the sales funnel.

The sales funnel shows the user journey from a starting point to an end goal, for example from entering a website to purchasing a product. They are typically depicted as a um… funnel.

The width of the funnel at the various stages represents how the volume of traffic decreases at each of the steps. For example, of the 100 people that visit a website, perhaps only 5 will purchase the product. The other 95 ‘fall out’ of the funnel at various points along the journey.

The problem with this visual representation is that funnels don’t actually work like this in real life. Material within a funnel doesn’t just magically fall out of the sides.

As we learnt in school, the purpose of a funnel is to take material from a large opening and deposit it into a smaller opening.

If you tried filling your milk bottle with a funnel and then found that 95% of the milk had spilt on the table, you’d head straight back to K-mart and ask for a refund.

A more accurate sales funnel might look more like a strainer.

Another way to visualise the fall-out at each of the funnel gates is by depicting the funnel as a series of stepping stones. If a lot of people fall-out at a certain step, the distance between the two stepping stones will be larger and vice-versa for smaller steps.

Visualising the funnel this way allows us to clearly see where the largest barriers exist within a sales funnel.

How might we convert the leaps into steps?

One technique is to create extra steps in between the bigger leaps to reduce the cognitive barrier of making a large leap. While this will add extra steps to the sales funnel, the aim is that it will smooth the process and encourage more people to complete your goal.

The web sales funnel portion which commonly has the most fallout is between the evaluation and purchase steps.

Many companies experiment with different techniques to try and soften the blow for customers having to pull out their wallet. A freemium model is popular where users might opt in to a free limited-time trial, or perhaps a restricted set of features to whet the appetite.

When a company uses a freemium model, what they are doing is adding another step to the funnel between evaluation and purchase.

Reducing the leap from email to website

Product marketing emails will often have an action button (CTA) encouraging the reader to purchase now. If the reader clicks the button, they are taken to the website where they can then go through a shopping cart process.

Research on email behaviour tells us that only 5% of readers will click links within an email. That statistic includes links that don’t even lead to sales funnels. We can imagine that if we were only to include purchase buttons in that number then the proportion would be much lower.

We could map this sales funnel out like this:

Just like in the freemium example, companies can reduce the leap by adding a smaller step in-between.

The goal is to encourage people onto the website at any cost. Once on the website, there are more opportunities to encourage a user to enter the sales funnel.

One way that marketers do this is by designing an email that contains a simple and engaging article. This article is typically the kind you would see on your social media or click-bait advertisements. For example, a top 5 list always has great pull.

The article in the email will countdown the top 5, but will only show the items 5, 4 and 3. For a reader to see the final top 2 items, they just need to click the action button in the email. The action button should look as least salesy as possible, e.g. a ‘Discover the Top 2’ link.

After clicking the button, the reader is taken to a product landing page. On the landing page are the top 2 items in the list, but there is also more product information or other ‘hooks’ to encourage continued engagement.

You may have also seen a similar technique in websites or emails that say, ‘Download our latest industry report’, but then ask you for your email address first. These companies are trying to move you softly softly down their own sales funnels.

Setting the right goals

It’s worth noting that converting a leap into two steps might not bring you any closer to converting a user. For example, if your users are simply falling out at the new step you’ve created then they’re not moving any closer to achieving your goal.

An example of this might be a freemium model where everyone signs up for the 1-week free trial, but no one ends up purchasing. Perhaps more steps need to be added still, or alternatively the target point might be unrealistic for most users.

The way to achieve success using the ‘adding steps’ technique is to concentrate on the ultimate objective and not become too distracted with the surrounding noise. Seeing your actions cause a change in user behaviour might be rewarding, but if it doesn’t affect your key metrics, it might just be an avoidable time crusher.