Sales Funnels. Are they Better than Websites? A Complete Analysis

We hear a lot of buzz around sales funnels. What is it? Is it better than having a website?

Let me tell you one thing before we go deep. Funnels are not an alternative to websites.

In a few places, funnels act individually carrying all the responsibility.

In certain cases, funnels compliment a website by supporting its content.

Sometimes, only a website can do the job.

Before deciding whether to have sales funnels or websites, you should figure out, in which category does your business fall. How do you do that? Let’s see.

Structure of a Website

We’re familiar with the concept, existence, and purpose of a website for a long time.

Let’s dissect the structure of a website to understand it better.

You can see the Header where the usual elements go.

1) The logo of the brand.

2) Name of the brand

3) Sub-menu buttons – Varies depending on the content of a website.

4) About the brand

5) Contact page

Below that comes the home page. It gives a short introduction about what the brand does, who its audiences are, and what are its goals. It is subjective in every sense, but the main idea is to give answers to these questions.

The home page will also be filled with details about their customers, testimonials, partnerships, goals they’ve achieved, and more.

At the bottom of the page, you can find the footer where the sub-menu sections and the brand’s social media links occupying a huge space.

If the brand is selling something, you can find its short displays on the main page, but the detailed information would be there in the sub-menu section.

Purpose of a Website

It gives detailed information about itself to the customers. It shows that the brand is stable which increases the believability of its product. Websites are such a wholesome experience to their viewers.

What is a Sales Funnel?

Horses have eyes on their sides. To use it for transportation, they need to be focussing their eyesight on what’s in front of them. That’s how the concept of tying blinders around the horse’s eyes came into practice.

The idea of Horse blinders matches with the ideology behind the sales funnel. The sole purpose of a funnel is to collect lead and sell a product. Sales funnels are purposely designed to sell.

Sales Funnels structure

A simple funnel consists of 3 parts/pages.

1) Landing page/squeeze page

2) Sales page

3) Thank you page

When you’re promoting a product, you write an article, create some videos, images, infographics and post it on social media of your preference.

While creating the ad, it is preferred to use the Hook, story, and offer template. ie an attractive headline that hooks the attention of the customer while scrolling down the social media pages, a story that connects with their problem and how your product solves it, and an attractive offer they just can’t neglect.

If you can design your ad in this format, your customers will come to visit your landing page.

The purpose of the landing page/squeeze page is to bring them to the sales page. But before that, we need to collect leads from the customer. By leads, it means their name, phone number, and email address. So that we can contact them in the future.

Would they want to give out their info? No.

We should attract them by giving away something valuable. It is called the lead magnet.

For example, if your product is about car cleaning and maintenance, give away car cleaning tutorial videos for free, if they submit their info.

We should make it look like, it’s a ‘Beyond fair’ kind of deal.

After they sign up on the landing page, make sure you sent them the lead magnet right away. They come to our sales page. This is where the magic happens. They’ll be bombarded with every information they’ll need, supposed to know to buy your product.

Without the diversion and clutters of a website, they’ll have a straight medium to buy the product.

It gives all the information about the product: features, advantages, and applications. The customers do not have to navigate between multiple pages to land on where they want to be. One-click and they are there.

Traffic inside the funnels takes the path you laid. Whereas in a website, the customers have an independent hand and that’s how they deviate. Funnels provide a streamlined traffic experience.

Sales Funnels Elements

Customer Testimonials

If you’re selling something, what instills confidence in the minds of a buyer?

More than your words, they’d value a fellow buyer’s review. Hence the customer testimonials dominate the funnel pages.

FAQs

A product will raise a lot of questions from the customers. Some might contact you to get the answers, most of them won’t. We shouldn’t take that chance.

You should preempt what kind of questions your customers might have and try to address all those in the FAQ section. It shows that you care and it increases the chances of selling.

Up-sell, Down-sell, and Cross-sell

When you’re using funnels to sell your product, it offers you the scope to introduce additional upselling, down-selling, and cross-selling opportunities.

The beauty is that you don’t have to deviate from your path in order to introduce these elements. They are made to incorporate genuinely.

Split tests

Funnels have the option to do split tests. It means you can create two different models for the same product you’re selling and depending upon the reception you get, you can pick which one to use for the long term.

People’s opinions are subjective. It varies for everyone. In these split tests, we can experiment with different headlines, use different pictures and copies.

By analyzing the data we get, we’ll have a broader understanding of what the public wants.

Doing a split test wouldn’t be possible in the case of websites, as websites come with a permanent domain. Also, the website contents are huge and we cannot experiment on that scale.

Dedicated Multiple Sales Funnels

If you’re selling multiple products, you can create multiple funnels for them. It also gives you an option to prepare short-term funnels. You can create a funnel specifically targeting custom audiences during the holiday season without affecting your website. Once the holidays are over, you can delete the funnels, and go back to your original one.

A Hubspot report says, ‘Companies that create 30 or more landing pages get 7 times more leads than those that use fewer than 10.’

Sales Funnels VS Websites

If you’re still not convinced with the efficiency of funnels, let’s discuss some statistics.

A research study published by the Harvard Business Review says, ‘Companies that create an easy buying process are 62% more likely to win a high-quality sale.’

As we discussed the whole motto behind creating funnels is to simplify the buying process, removing clutters if any, and presenting a seamless experience to the customers.

Conversion rate of a sales funnel

Above all the advantages of choosing a funnel over a website, there is one very important aspect you should know about.

The conversion rate ie if you’re spending some x amount of money on the ad to promote your content, how much return do you get from that.

Conversion rate is the monetary term and it determines your future in the business.

Between funnels and websites, those who use funnels get more conversion. It doesn’t mean just by simply designing a funnel, you’ll get more return on investment. It’s an experimental process in which you need to change things constantly to get a great output.

Integrating Sales Funnels with Websites

Can we use funnels and websites simultaneously?

Yes, you can. By integrating funnels into your website, you can gain the advantages of both platforms. While your website will take care of the basic information you want to convey to your customers, your funnels will concentrate on just the selling process.

But it doesn’t mean everyone should have a website and a funnel. If your business is selling one product at a time, or update often you can prefer having a funnel. If you’re going to deal with multiple products you can have a stable website and create funnels according to the occasion.

In conclusion

There are 22 different types of funnels that can be used for almost any marketing/sales situation. Websites simply don’t have that flexibility. As we mentioned figuring out which should you use is the tricky part. If you’re still not clear about it, contact us. We’ll guide you to analyze your business and take you forward setting your funnel/website.

If you’d like to learn about how to set up your websites, choose your domain and hosting, check this article here.

If you want to explore the possibility and opportunities of the digital marketing world, check this page here.

Check out Groovefunnels, here.