Internet Marketing Blog | Search Consulting Service

Sales people are always thinking about their sales funnel. A sales funnel describes the conversion of prospects into stages from inquiry through to the final sale. Prospects start at the top of the funnel and convert into a sale at the bottom. The success of this conversion reflects the quality of prospects at the top of the funnel and the sales skill at each conversion stage.

Sale Funnel and E-commerce

All these concepts apply to an e-commerce web site. That is, what is the quality of your prospects and how are you informing them so that they can “funnel” down to a sale? I use the navigation bar to describe the key components of the funnel. What would an ace salesperson say to a prospect first – that is, what should be on the farthest left of my navigation bar. What would they say next? And finally we have the buy tab on the far right. I am not suggesting that this is how sites should be displayed, but I am suggesting that all the steps should be on your website in a logical order.

The Sales Funnel and SEO

One of the best ways to build useful search engine content is through your sales funnel.  Suggest a path for your prospect. They can always choose to skip a component. This is the beauty of the self-help e-commerce system.

An Example

Let’s use an inn as an example of building content using the funnel. If someone were to call the innkeeper for information, what would the innkeeper say? Maybe the innkeeper would like to tell their prospect about themselves, then a little about the town they reside in, then about some upcoming activities, then maybe describe their rooms, then say which rooms are available and their rates, and finally ask them the information that is required to book the room. That is the sales funnel. At each step we have a potential conversion, which leads to the booking of the room. This is the method of building a logical set of web pages that inform a buyer throughout their buying process.

Adding Quality Prospects

But how do we insure that we have the right “quality” of viewer looking at this information? By using the right tools we can increase the quality of the prospects. If we see that visitors that arrive from a specific website are staying longer, viewing more of our web pages, or booking more rooms, we either increase our presence on that website or find other, similar sites to have a presence on. Search engine optimization done correctly is more about marketing than it is about technology.

Ahh, the funnel of love.