How User Guidance Can Rev Up Your Sales Funnel
Written by Toonimo
A sales funnel as it applies to your website is the process you want your users to experience as they go from being a prospect at the top of the funnel, to a lead, to a customer (taking action) at the bottom of the funnel.
Leave a user to his own devices on your website and you will likely have a “leaky” funnel - losing prospects along the way.
You want to guide users through your website to keep them engaged and focus their attention on your calls to action. To do so, you need your messaging to be directed to keep their interest along the way. A user guidance system does just this.
The Oil Funnel Analogy
Think of the user guidance system in terms of an oil funnel. The funnel’s purpose is to make the process of getting the oil into your car easy and clean. You want ALL of the oil to go into the engine without it spilling and leaking. Likewise, an effective user guidance system directs your users to the desired destination in a clean and easy fashion.
It’s All About AIDA
The sales funnel concept is based on a classic marketing model which uses the acronym AIDA:
- A: Attention or awareness - attract the attention of the customer
- I: Interest - peak the customer interest so they want to learn more
- D: Desire - convince the customer that the product or service you offer will satisfy their needs
- A: Action- lead the customer toward taking the desired action (purchase, call, sign up etc.)
An onsite guidance system is built with intuitive interface that responds to the users’ behavior. The user’s actions on the site will trigger targeted content to be delivered to promote each of the above stages and lead the user down the sales funnel toward the desired action. This guided experience creates more onsite engagement, reducing site and cart abandonment and increasing conversion rates.
Questions to Build Your Sales Funnel
TechWyse put out a great post about building a sales funnel on your website, outlining the main questions you need to answer:
- Who is your perfect website visitor?
- What product or service is most conducive to attracting their business?
- What imagery, and call to action can you place in the top banner to persuade the visitor to learn more?
- Once on the sales page what offer can you make to persuade them to complete the goal of the sales funnel?
- What further information can you offer the visitor once they have clicked through to your ‘sales page’?
- How do you want the visitor to contact you?
User Guidance will Supercharge your Sales Funnel
A user guidance system basically takes the sales funnel you create from answering these questions to the next level. Unlike a static website, the customized response and onsite guidance directs the user more like a person-to-person experience would. Now you have a personalized sales experience, based on input from the user, which results in significantly fewer funnel leaks and more conversions.
Remember, the goal is to keep users on your site. With each additional moment spent and page viewed the chances of conversion increase exponentially. User guidance directs the user based on intuitive clues to what he wants and needs, giving you the opportunity to direct your message and guide him smoothly from attention, to interest, to desire and ultimately to action!
