You’ve created a funnel, but it’s not working. Now what? If you thought you could set it and forget it, you’ve got another thing coming. That’s where funnel optimization comes in.
Maximizing your conversion funnel can only happen when you optimize the most important elements of the customer journey, dig deep into the analytics and then optimize the design and messaging.
In this article I’ll walk you through funnel optimization, including:
- Why funnel optimization is important
- Where you should start
- How to optimize content with artificial intelligence
- Tests you can run
- Answer many frequently asked questions
Why optimize content?
Think of it like having a lemonade stand. The path from seeing your stand, walking over, and deciding to buy a cup of lemonade is like a 'funnel.' Sometimes, people might see your lemonade stand, but then decide not to buy.
'Funnel optimization' is like making sure your sign is big and colorful so people notice it, putting your stand where lots of people walk by, and smiling and saying "hello" to everyone who passes. All these things make people more likely to buy your lemonade.
And if you can get more people to buy, you'll earn more money!
Make your store go from looking like this…
To this…
How big of a difference can optimization make? Well, you can bet that new lemonade stand does a lot more business than the old abandoned one! A HubSpot report highlighted that "companies who performed regular A/B testing and made changes based on results achieved 6x higher email conversion rates compared to those who didn’t.". How many tests should you run? Well Amazon runs over 12,000 experiments per year! Of course, you don’t need to run that many. If you can run one or two per month, you will start seeing positive results right away.
What should you optimize?
We recommend organizing as many of the customer-facing touchpoints as you can into one accessible file or location so you can see all of them at once. If you only have a few, you might do this by printing them and start organizing which ones get the most traffic. If you have more than 10 or 15, you may want to compile them as a list in an Excel spreadsheet. With one client, they had over 5,000 emails they sent per year!
Next you will want to select the touchpoints that are most important to your funnel. For example, your home page is almost always going to be a very important touchpoint. On the other hand, your “privacy policy” page is not going to impact your conversion rates. Here are the common touchpoints that often part of a conversion funnel optimization:
- Social Media Ads: These are often the first point of contact with potential customers and can drive traffic to the website or specific product pages.
- Landing Page: The page visitors arrive at first when they click on an ad or link. This page should be visually appealing, engaging, and effective at leading the visitor further into the site.
- Product Pages: These are the pages where customers view product details, such as images, descriptions, and customer reviews. These pages must be designed to provide all the necessary information and convince the customer to add the product to their cart.
- Shopping Cart: Here, customers review their selected items before proceeding to checkout. Elements such as clear pricing, availability of modifications (like changing quantity or removing items), and an easy transition to the checkout page can improve user experience and reduce cart abandonment.
- Checkout Page: This page should be streamlined, secure, and user-friendly. Offering a guest checkout option, multiple payment methods, and clear visibility of all costs (including shipping) can help to enhance conversions.
- Order Confirmation Page: This is where customers land after making a successful purchase. It should provide order details and expected delivery time, while also making it easy for customers to continue shopping or share their purchase on social media.
- Post-Purchase Email: After a customer makes a purchase, an order confirmation email is sent. This is also an opportunity to offer related products or request customer reviews.
- Retargeting Ads: For visitors who didn't make a purchase, retargeting ads can remind them of the products they viewed and encourage them to return and complete the purchase.
- Email Reminders: These could be for abandoned shopping carts, special offers, or new product releases.
- Chatbot: This serves as a resource for customers who have queries or face issues during their journey.
How to optimize your content with Artificial Intelligence?
Generative AI tools like Hype AI have the capability to greatly improve and optimize your content. We have designed a solution where you can input any text from any piece of content.
Simply copy and paste your current content into the Input field.
The important thing you are going to want to think about are the instructions or the “prompt” you input. Here are a few examples for common objectives you may have for your content.
- Brand Awareness: "Please optimize this blog post to improve brand recognition. Incorporate the brand name and values throughout the content in a way that feels natural and memorable."
- Engagement: "Optimize this social media post to increase audience interaction. Make it engaging, relatable and include a question or call to action that encourages comments, likes, or shares."
- Lead Generation: "Revise this landing page copy to boost lead generation. Make the value of our free ebook irresistible and encourage visitors to fill out the contact form to receive it."
- Education: "Enhance this user guide to make it more educational and user-friendly"
- Customer Retention: "Optimize this customer newsletter to increase customer loyalty. Offer useful tips to our customers."
- Authority Building: "Please rewrite this white paper to establish us as thought leaders in our industry. Include quotes from well known experts on the topic"
- SEO Ranking: "Optimize this webpage content to improve our SEO ranking. Incorporate relevant keywords and add high-quality external links."
- Traffic Generation: "Revamp this blog post to attract more website visitors. Make the title more catchy, include engaging visuals, and add a compelling call to action to share the post on social media."
Other tools to help you improve conversion
This is a fundamental tool for any marketer. It provides insights into your website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates. You can use it to identify pages with high exit rates or low conversion rates and then make necessary improvements.
This tool is excellent for running A/B tests on your website. You can test different versions of your web pages to see which one performs better in terms of conversion.
Hotjar provides heatmaps, session recordings, and customer feedback tools. It helps you understand how users interact with your website and where they might encounter issues that reduce conversions.
This is great for identifying which pages to focus on. You can understand how Google Search views your pages, which can be invaluable for SEO. It allows you to check which queries cause your site to appear in search results, view those queries' click-through rates, and more.
3M Visual Attention Software (VAS)
One of our favorites and one that isn’t well known. This tool uses an algorithm to predict what a viewer will likely see in the first 3-5 seconds of viewing an image or website. It can help marketers to design more effective advertisements, websites, and other visual content. By knowing what parts of your design are likely to attract attention, you can strategically place important information and calls-to-action in those areas, which can help increase conversions.
SurveyMonkey allows you to easily create and distribute surveys. You can use it to gather customer feedback, measure satisfaction, understand why customers are not converting, and more. The insights you gain can then be used to make necessary improvements to your website or marketing strategy, potentially increasing your conversion rates.
Frequently asked questions about optimizing funnels
1. How do I identify which touchpoints are most important for my business?
Identifying the most important touchpoints often depends on your business type, the nature of your products or services, and your customer behavior. Usually, the points at which customers make key decisions are the most important. For instance, a landing page where potential customers first learn about your offerings, or the checkout page where they decide to make a purchase, are crucial touchpoints. Analyzing customer journey maps, web analytics data, and customer feedback can help pinpoint these key touchpoints.
2. I have too many touchpoints. How can I prioritize them for optimization?
Start by identifying the touchpoints that get the most traffic and have the most impact on conversions. These are usually your priority for optimization. From there, consider the touchpoints that influence customer decisions, like product pages and checkout pages. Also, consider customer feedback and pain points to identify any areas that could be improved for better customer experience and conversions.
3. How can I tell if my optimization efforts are working?
You'll need to use analytics tools to track key metrics like conversion rates, bounce rates, session duration, and more before and after your optimization efforts. If you're seeing improvements in these metrics over time, your optimization efforts are likely working.
4. Do I have to optimize every touchpoint?
While optimizing every touchpoint can be beneficial, it might not be feasible or necessary for every business, especially small ones. Focus on the touchpoints that have the biggest impact on your customer journey and conversion rates. Once you've optimized those, you can move on to less crucial touchpoints.
5. How does AI fit into this process?
AI, specifically generative AI, can help optimize content across various touchpoints. It can help generate optimized headlines, CTAs, and other copy based on the objective you're trying to achieve, such as improving brand awareness or increasing conversion rates.
6. I've never used AI before. Is it difficult to implement?
Using AI for content optimization can be as simple as inputting a prompt into an AI tool and letting it generate optimized content. Many AI tools are user-friendly and designed to be easily implemented even by those with no previous AI experience.
7. What if the changes I make don't improve conversion rates?
Optimizing a conversion funnel is often a process of trial and error. If the changes you make don't result in improvement, don't be discouraged. Analyze the results, learn from them, and use that information to inform your next set of optimizations. A/B testing can be particularly helpful in understanding what works and what doesn't.
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