Measuring & scaling your ecommerce marketing funnel

The ecommerce marketing funnel illustrates the path customers take from the instant they hear about your business to their first (and ideally, subsequent) purchases. In this in-depth guide we'll explore the ecommerce funnel, tools to maximize conversions in each stage, and how to make the most of your marketing efforts.

When was the last time you purchased a product the moment you found out about it? If you're like most people, the answer is rarely.

According to the classic marketing rule of 7, customers must see or hear about a brand a minimum of 7 times before making their first purchase. This is especially true for businesses that sell online — people on the internet are inundated with countless ads daily.

That's where the ecommerce marketing funnel comes in. It depicts the journey customers take from the minute they learn about your business till they become paying customers and loyal brand advocates.

Ahead, we'll discuss what the ecommerce marketing funnel is and its key stages. Along the way, we'll share top tools to maximize conversions across various touchpoints. Finally, we'll wrap up with top strategies and tactics to track and supercharge your ecommerce funnel.

First things first, let's answer the most fundamental question:

What is the marketing funnel in ecommerce?

An ecommerce marketing funnel (also called the ecommerce sales funnel or simply, ecommerce funnel) is a strategic framework that visually describes the path potential customers take from the moment they discover your brand to when they make a purchase — and ideally, become repeat buyers.

It plots the key touchpoints that make up the buyers' journey and helps you optimize marketing efforts at every stage. Unlike traditional sales models, modern interpretations of the ecommerce marketing funnel recognize that customers interact with a brand through multiple touchpoints before making their first purchase decision.

Stages of an ecommerce marketing funnel

There are 5 distinct stages in an ecommerce marketing funnel, namely:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Desire
4. Action
5. Retention

Read on for a deep dive into each along with strategies, tactics, and tools to effectively nurture customers to advance through the stages.

Stage 1: Awareness

Also known as the "top of funnel" (or TOFU for short), the awareness stage comprises potential customers who aren’t necessarily looking to buy from you. They are seeking information, solutions to problems, or simply exploring interests.

Your goal here should be to get in front of the right-fit customers, capture their attention, and pique their interest enough for them to want to engage further.

Strategies and tactics to reach customers in the awareness stage

Organic content marketing

Publishing first-rate content helps position your brand as a trusted authority in your industry and attracts potential customers through valuable, engaging, and relevant information.

You can create written and video content — think: beginner guides, product and feature overviews, how-to articles, etc. — that answer common customer questions and are optimized for search rankings.

Social media

An estimated 5.24 billion people (roughly 64% of the world's population) use social media platforms to connect with other people, participate in trends, and get recommendations. This makes it a powerful channel to reach potential customers.

To successfully create awareness through social media marketing:

• Share a mix of relevant, interesting content. Think: product showcases, user-generated content, behind-the-scenes videos, educational posts, etc.
• Partner with influencers and creators whose audiences align with your brand to bolster your reach.
• Consistently engage with people online to build a thriving social community: reply to comments, ask questions, and use interactive features like polls and quizzes.

Paid advertising campaigns

Unlike organic content and social media marketing which takes considerably longer to deliver results, paid ads can drive immediate traffic to your ecommerce store.

You can run paid ads on Google and Microsoft's Bing targeted at people searching for products like yours. Similarly, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and other social media platforms enable you to show ads to people who match your target audience.

Recommended tools for the awareness stage of the ecommerce funnel

• Yoast SEO (WooCommerce & Shopify). Yoast SEO is a search engine optimization tool for Shopify and WooCommerce that optimizes your entire ecommerce store — product pages, blog content, and meta descriptions to improve rankings on search engines like Google.
  

  

Stage 2: Interest

People advance to the middle of the funnel (or MOFU) when they begin actively engaging with your content and exploring your products. People at the "interest" stage are curious but not yet convinced to become paying customers.

The goal here is to cultivate customers' interest and strengthen their trust by providing additional value that moves them closer to making a purchase. Otherwise, you risk them forgetting about your brand and moving on to a competitor.

Here are 3 winning strategies to capture and nurture interest:

Lead magnets

Lead magnets are in-depth resources with actionable advice that offer near-immediate value to customers in exchange for their email and contact information. They can be in the form of:

• Ebooks and guides that show prospective customers how your products solve their problems.
• Live or pre-recorded webinars and product demos that demonstrate relevant features of your offerings.
• Interactive quizzes and assessments that help people find the right product in your catalog.

Email marketing

Obtaining visitors' email addresses — whether through a lead magnet, a discount offer, or a newsletter sign-up — gives you a direct line to reach them. You can then deploy a sequence of welcome emails and educational content to enlighten them about your company, its mission, team, products, etc.

Shop and product detail pages

People interested in your brand tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time on your Shop and product detail pages. They handle most of the heavy lifting, so you need to make them count.

At a minimum, you must:

• Add compelling product descriptions. Beyond basic specs, product descriptions should highlight key benefits, unique selling points, and sensory product details.
• Use high-quality visuals. Showcase products from different angles and in various settings with the help of multiple images, close-ups, lifestyle shots, and videos.

Recommended tools for the interest stage of the ecommerce marketing funnel

• Klaviyo (Shopify). This platform offers advanced email automation, segmentation, and personalized campaigns to keep prospects engaged. You can use it to capture email leads through popups and forms, automate abandoned cart recovery emails to bring back shoppers who didn’t complete their purchases, segment customers based on their behavior to personalize messages, and more.
  

  

• WooCommerce Product Table (WooCommerce). This plugin presents products and product information in a structured, simple-to-digest table layout. Shoppers can use the instant search bar to find specific products easily, sort by price, category, or popularity to quickly compare options, and add items to their cart without navigating through multiple product pages.
  

  

• WooCommerce Product Filters (WooCommerce). This plugin enables shoppers to filter products by attributes like size, color, price, ratings, etc. and shows results instantly which makes for a seamless browsing experience.

  

Stage 3: Desire

The second phase in the "middle of funnel" caters to people who progressed from general interest in your brand to seriously considering making a purchase.

Here, customers are browsing your product catalog, comparing options, and actively weighing their choices. Your objective here is to cultivate a sense of urgency, reinforce your value proposition, and get rid of lingering doubts preventing them from taking the next step.

Here’s how you can capture and convert customers in the desire stage of the ecommerce marketing funnel:

Promotional offers

Well-timed discounts and promotional campaigns — think: first-time buyer discounts, flash sales, combo deals, etc. — can drive a sense of urgency to purchase.

Social proof

Customer testimonials, influencer endorsements, and other kinds of user-generated content help make your brand appear more legitimate. Sprinkle them throughout your site, marketing emails, and social media profiles to remove any hesitation about the efficacy of your products.

Product customizations and personalized assistance

Implementing interactive elements, for instance, enabling customers to zoom in and out and choose from multiple variations increases the depth of their interaction with your brand.

Recommended tools for the desire stage of the ecommerce funnel

• Judge.me Product Reviews (Shopify). This app helps you automate review requests via email and SMS, display verified reviews with photos/videos to build credibility, and show star ratings throughout your site to instantly signal that customers trust your business.
  

  

• WooCommerce Discount Manager (WooCommerce). This powerful plugin enables you to run a wide range of discount promotions, including simple percentage offers, volume discounts, BOGO deals, etc. Plus, you can customize prices based on user roles, first-time versus repeat customers, and more.
  

  

• WooCommerce Product Options (WooCommerce). This advanced plugin enables shoppers to select product attributes (think: colors, materials, sizes, etc.), variations, and free and premium add-ons from a delightful visual interface on product detail pages. The final product prices are updated in real-time so customers get a clear idea of the costs.
  

  

Stage 4: Action

People who make it to this stage are at the "bottom of the funnel" (or "BOFU"). They have explored your product catalog, weighed options, and are ready to commence checkout. Now, all you have to do is make sure they complete the purchase by eliminating friction and making the buying process as seamless as possible.

Here are key strategies to capture and convert customers in the "action" stage of the ecommerce marketing funnel:

Simplify the checkout process

A complicated or lengthy checkout process can kill your conversion rates. These tips will help you remove obstacles to checkout:

• Allow guest checkout — forcing customers to create accounts to checkout can cause them to drop off.
• Minimize form fields to only ask for essential information.
• Autofill customer details (names, addresses, phone numbers, etc.) where possible.
• Offer various payment options credit/debit cards, PayPal, and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options like Klarna or Afterpay.
  Showcase security badges to reassure customers their payment information and personal data is safe.

Recover abandoned carts

No matter how seamless your checkout process is, a fraction of customers will still abandon their carts. Use automated emails and text messages to remind customers to revisit their shopping carts and complete their purchases.

Recommended tools for the action stage of the ecommerce funnel

• ReConvert (Shopify). ReConvert enables you to offer time-sensitive, one-time upsells immediately after checkout, customize the thank-you page with a “Recommended for You” section based on each customer’s order history, and prompt customers to join your rewards program for future discounts.
  

  

• Shop Pay (Shopify). Shopify's one-click checkout solution eliminates unnecessary steps in the checkout flow and auto-fills payment and shipping details for returning customers so they can complete their purchases in seconds.
  

  

• WooCommerce Fast Cart (WooCommerce). This easy-to-use plugin upgrades WooCommerce's standard, clunky checkout flow to a sleek instant pop-up or floating cart from which shoppers can complete checkout from any page of your ecommerce store. Plus, you can recommend related and complementary products inside the cart to further boost your revenue.

  

Stage 5: Retention

The retention stage completes the bottom of the funnel. The goal here is to turn first-time buyers into frequent customers and ultimately loyal brand advocates. From a lifetime value (LTV) standpoint, retaining existing customers is proven to be more profitable than acquiring first-time buyers.

These strategies will help you succeed at retaining customers:

• Send personalized, automated, thank-you emails after each purchase to reduce the probability of buyer's remorse.
• Offer fast and helpful support via multiple channels — live chat, email, social media, etc. to reduce frustration and improve customer satisfaction.
• Make your store's return and exchange process hassle-free with a clear, no-fuss policy.
• Send post-purchase surveys to ask customers for their honest feedback about their experience and respond to both positive and negative reviews.
• Where possible, make adjustments based on customers' feedback and communicate the changes to show customers you care.
• Create robust, value-focused loyalty programs to reward customers for repeat purchases.
• Recommend related and complementary products based on customers' past purchases.
• Beyond, sales-focused emails, routinely send marketing emails focused on communicating your brand values to build strong, positive associations with your business.

Recommended tools for the retention stage of the ecommerce funnel

• Smile.io (Shopify). Smile enables you to create a solid loyalty program with point-based rewards, tiered membership levels, and a generous referral system that drives long-term brand advocacy, boosts customer lifetime value (CLV), and reduces churn.
  

  

• WooCommerce Subscriptions (WooCommerce). This powerful plugin's suite of features empowers you to create a reliable, recurring revenue stream for your online business. You can offer multiple bill cycle dates, automatically process recurring payments, set up an automated notification system to keep customers informed about processed payments, etc.
  

  

How to measure your ecommerce marketing funnel

It can be useful to depict the ecommerce funnel as linear, with customers moving seamlessly from one stage to the other. However, in reality, most customers don’t follow a straight path from product discovery to their first and subsequent purchases.

Some customers may find your business through organic search and view ten different ads over the span of six weeks before they check out your product catalog. Others will learn about your products from a family member, head to your site, and make a purchase on the same day.

There are a million and one potential paths to purchase. So you must monitor every stage of the marketing funnel to identify what’s working, where customers tend to drop off, and how to improve conversions.

Metrics to track

Combine data from your site's Google Analytics (GA4), customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and marketing automation tools to keep tabs on the important KPIs throughout the ecommerce marketing funnel.

• Traffic sources and volume. How many people visit your store daily, weekly, or monthly? What channels are they coming from — organic search, social media, paid ads, referral sites, or email campaigns? What percentage of the traffic consists of first-time visitors discovering your brand compared to past visitors coming back?
• Conversion rates. How many visitors subscribe to your emails or SMS list? What is the product page views to add-to-cart rate? How many people add products to their shopping carts and then leave without completing checkout?
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC). What is the total marketing spend compared to the number of new customers acquired? Which sources bring in customers at the lowest cost? What is the overall cost of acquiring customers across all paid and organic channels?
• Lifetime value (LTV). How much does a customer spend per order? How often do customers return? Which retention strategies are most effective at keeping customers around?

How to scale your ecommerce marketing funnel

These tips will help you make the most of your ecommerce funnel:

• Use heatmaps and session recording tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg to show where users struggle on your site, then optimize the content.
• Segment your audience and personalize marketing campaigns based on customers' purchase history and browsing behavior using CRM and email marketing tools.
• A/B test different email headlines, landing pages product detail pages, calls to action, ad creatives and copy, and other elements of your marketing funnel to see what improves open and click rates.
• Diversify your marketing channels to reach customers through influencer partnerships, affiliate marketing, third-party marketplaces, etc.
• Improve your site's performance and usability by optimizing website speed, enhancing mobile UX, simplifying checkout, and adding trust signals throughout.

Optimize your ecommerce marketing funnel

It would be ideal if the instant people learn about your business, they head to your website, make a purchase, and then become loyal brand evangelists — and they sometimes do.

However, for the most part, people must be repeatedly exposed to your business across various channels and touchpoints before they turn into loyal customers.

Understanding how the ecommerce marketing funnel works and how customers progress through it empowers you to make the most of your marketing efforts.

Barn2's suite of powerful Shopify and WooCommerce tools can help you optimize your marketing funnel and nurture customers through each stage so you can boost your ecommerce store's revenue and customer satisfaction rates.