Conversion Funnels – Understanding the stages of conversion for your customers

In this post, we’ll cover the following:

• What is a conversion funnel?
• The stages involved
• Conversion funnel importance
• How EDGE can help

Every business that sells products or services online will have a conversion funnel. However, not everyone will understand the concept or benefits of them.

In this article, the conversion rate optimisation (CRO) experts at our digital marketing agency in the West Midlands will explain what conversion funnels are, how they impact your customer journey, and how businesses can use them to make informed strategic decisions.

What are conversion funnels?

A conversion funnel is a term used to describe the strategic journeys potential customers go through before becoming a conversion I.e. a prospect or customer

The aim is to attract and engage a potential customer through your funnel towards completing the intended action, be it a purchase or the inputting of data, using a variety of content and marketing strategies.

Funnels should be tailored towards how your customer buys, rather than how you sell your products or services, with a focus on providing a great experience throughout the user journey and convincing your audience to convert.

The stages of marketing funnels

There are typically three stages to a conversion funnel – awareness, consideration, and conversion.

Awareness

The top of the funnel is the first stage of the process, where potential customers become aware of your brand and engage with it for the first time through your website, marketing campaigns and / or consumer research.

Individuals are looking for purchases, resources, education, and insights that help them address specific needs and may not know much about your services at this stage, so the focus is on promoting brand awareness and expertise.

Blogs, infographics, Q&A’s and social media posts are good examples of top-of-the-funnel content as they are looking to direct your audience towards contacting you, I.e. visiting your website and learning more about you.

Consideration

The middle stage of the conversion funnel is all about building trust with your audience and helping individuals evaluate the benefits of what you have to offer over your competitors.

At this stage, the potential customer is aware of your brand and is now looking to find out more about how you can help satisfy their requirements and explore the product or service more thoroughly.

They could sign up to your email newsletter, follow you on social media, or download guides and other resources from your website.

Conversion

The final stage of the conversion funnel is about converting your audience into customers.

At this stage, you have got their attention, built trust, and developed a relationship with them. The focus is now on providing specific reasons for them to choose your brand over competitors.

A lot of the focus here is on your call-to-action, detailing what you want them to do. Depending on the product or services you offer it could be anything from making a purchase to an email signup, form submission or button click.

You can also utilise techniques to make it easy to convert here, such as offering a consultation, trial, estimate, or sending a discount to anyone showing hesitation at the final stage before conversion.

The importance of conversion rate optimisation

Conversion rate optimisation is the process of increasing the percentage of visitors who complete an intended website’s goal. When it comes to helping nurture your audience through the funnel, CRO is an invaluable way to assess how visitors interact with your website. You have so much data at your fingertips that you need to review on a regular basis to ensure the funnels are aligned.

Every aspect of your conversion funnel can be optimised to increase the number of successful conversions. This involves understanding what motivates and persuades people so that you can give them the best possible experience, as well as discovering the reasons why part of your audience is failing to convert.

Metrics such as cost per acquisition, bounce rate, customer lifetime value, conversion rate and conversion rate per channel can help measure your marketing funnel’s success and effectiveness.

How EDGE can help as a dedicated web agency?

As a leading web and SEO agency based in Sutton Coldfield, we have over 15 years of experience creating digital campaigns that actively increase conversions.

Our expert team are pioneers in using remarketing to boost conversion rates while raising your business’s reputation, visibility and bottom line. As a business, we aim to make every interaction with your audience a meaningful one.

Learn more about our approach to conversion rate optimisation and remarketing at CRO and Remarketing | EDGE Creative (edge-creative.com)