Be it a new visitor just browsing your website or a returning customer who wants to make a purchase again, creating a WooCommerce sales funnel will help you convert both of these user types.
Using a simple plugin, you can nudge these users in your sales funnel and convert them. What’s that plugin and how you can grow sales is what this blog about.
About WooCommerce sales funnel
Before moving to the plugin, it’s necessary to understand customer psychology and for that, you need to know the sales funnel.
This is your normal sales funnel. But since we want the funnel on our WooCommerce store, we will call it a WooCommerce sales funnel.
- What is a sales funnel?
- The sales funnel, also known as the revenue funnel or the sales order pipeline is a process in which your prospects or leads move from one stage to another in the funnel till they become your paying customers.
Understanding the sales funnel helps you identify where are you leaking money. As any normal funnel is wide at the top and narrows down at the bottom; the same way you have a lot of leads initially but in the end, they are just a handful.
If you are selling online; be it physical or digital products, you are probably having a funnel but the biggest loophole is that your funnel isn’t optimized for conversions.
The four fundamental sales funnel stages (AIDA) – Tracing the user’s journey in the funnel
There may be more or less than four stages and they differ from one prospect to another depending upon the buyer’s persona, your niche, and types of product you sell.
But we restrict ourselves to the main 4 stages which are almost the same for the majority of cases where your primary purpose is to guide your prospects from stage one to another.
Awareness
As the name suggests, the first stage begins with prospects/leads being pulled into your funnel when they become aware of your brand. This may be through organic search, referral links, social media promotions, or paid searches.
As the funnel progresses, your prospects will start reducing. Every stage of the funnel will give you more qualified leads leaving behind the unqualified ones.
Interest/Interaction
The second stage is the one where the prospects looks out for the solutions to their problems.
So the best way to hook them is powerful copy writing. This includes strong attention-grabbing headlines, how your product solves users’ pain, features, social proof, relevant call to action, aggressive pricing, etc.
Some leads may slip from the pipeline at this juncture if they couldn’t find what they were looking for or may return at a later stage.
Decision
Arguably, the most important stage of the funnel as the prospect likes your product and desires to buy it.
At this stage, the prospect will be looking for better packages or options or perks you might be offering to make the final decision and that’s the best opportunity to hit the jackpot.
Research says that prospects drop off this stage if they don’t find good enough offers to close the deal. Therefore our plugin will help in this case.
Action
The final stage where the prospect finally buys your product or products.
But you must not stop here. You need to bring them back to your store and for that, you must build a relationship with them.
Now, as mentioned above, the decision phase is the most critical and if you aren’t converting the almost converted leads here, you are leaving a huge pot of gold on the table.
To avoid that, you must nudge visitors with offers/perks/valuable products on the product, cart, checkout, and order received pages respectively.
And an all-in-one solution for it is Smart Offers.
Smart Offers – The best WooCommerce sales funnel plugin?
With Smart Offers plugin, you now have the power to build and run unlimited funnels and discount offers in WooCommerce.
Create and run targeted offers on autopilot. Upsells, cross-sells, BOGO, order bump, etc. You can also set up one-click upsells and direct checkout using Buy Now links with Smart Offers.
Here are the top five offer types you can create and run using Smart Offers to nudge customers 24*7 in the WooCommerce sales funnel.
Upsell offers
Offer customers an expensive or advanced version of the product they have already selected.
Example – As shown in the above image, the package costing 20 pounds is upsold with the package costing 5 pounds. Entire bundle and a BONUS, a way awesome deal right?
Here’s how to create and upsell WooCommerce product bundles
When users see the value in your upsell offer, they won’t hesitate to spend extra from their pockets. That’s the reason why the upsell offer works so well.
Note- Don’t jump directly in up-selling a $50 product on a $10 product. Upsell wisely.
Recommended read – Best upsell hacks to grow sales
Downsell offers
Downsell means to pitch an offer to the customers at a lower price to prevent them from abandoning your cart.
Example 1 – You were offered a subscription plan worth $100 but you decide to cancel it and hence you were shown an offer that offered the same plan at $80 but with fewer features.
Would you accept it? Preferably Yes.
Example 2- As shown in the above image, you were offered a $10 discount on the original price.
Note- You can also offer another product related to the original but at a lower price than the original.
Cross-Sell offers
Cross-sell generally implies you are offering related or complementary products along with the original product to increase your profit margins.
Example – As shown in the image above, along with burger and fries, you are offered a salad at a 50% discount.
Though up-sell and cross-sell are used interchangeably, both are effective in their own ways. You can even show upsell and cross-sell one after another. Smart Offers allows you to show multiple offers in the sales funnel based on targeting rules.
Recommended read – Ultimate guide on WooCommerce cross-sells
Order bumps
If you want to target offers on the checkout page, WooCommerce order bump is the best offer type. Since the checkout page is most crucial, order bump does the work of nudging without obstructing the visitor flow on the checkout page.
A simple cross-sell offer type like an extended warranty on your TV or laptop purchase can work wonders.
Learn more about WooCommerce order bumps
WooCommerce one-click upsell
Now after making a purchase, visitors trust you more. Then why not upsell the product on the order received page?
The user also doesn’t need to enter payment details again. Everything happens in a single click.
Steps to set up one-click upsell offers.
More Smart Offers’ powerful features
- Set-up a series of offers throughout the entire user journey in the WooCommerce sales funnel.
- Powerful targeting rules based on users.
- Target offers based on cart total, attributes, product categories.
- Enable direct checkout and one-click checkout using Buy Now buttons
- Support for popular WordPress page builders like Elementor, Beaver and others for creating more attractive offers.
- WPML compatibility
and a lot more…
How offers contribute to ‘Growth Hacking’?
Though growth hacking is not a new term, it surely ignites oneself.
- What is growth hacking?
- Growth hacking in simple words is a process to identify the best ways to grow a business. It involves marketing experiments that need to be performed and monitored regularly to make business decisions.
For all enthusiasts who wish to know about growth hacking, here’s the ultimate growth hacking guide.
Coming back to offers, since growth hacking involves experiments, pitching various offers is no less than an experiment.
Example – You offered an upsell and people accepted it; your experiment is successful.
You offered two upsells in succession, but the user accepted only the first; still it’s a success. Thus with more people accepting your offers, you are pocketing in more sales than ever before as well as indirectly contributing to your business growth.
How offers impact ‘Customer Lifetime Value’ (LTV)?
Some customers remain while some churn out. Hence more the retain customers compared to the churned ones, LTV will be higher.
Example- If the customer spends $50 per month on an average to you and 5% is the churn rate, the lifetime customer value would be $1000.
Once prospects accept your offer and you build a strong relationship with them, they would be happier to stay than churning out. In such a case, customers will turn into repeat customers contributing to increased lifetime value.
Recommended – How online businesses can increase customer lifetime value
Conclusion
The online world is full of competition and with so much pressure to acquire customers, there’s no dearth of offers by businesses.
But what they lack is how to pitch that offers the smart way in the WooCommerce sales funnel. Hence, here’s your chance to stand out among the crowd with the help of Smart Offers.