The sales channels and how to build and develop them are among the most lucrative concepts that an entrepreneur can master. Turning someone into a paying customer involves several steps.
What are sales channels and how do they work?
Sales channels are a series of strategic relationship-building experiences that turn unaware prospects into paying customers through an automated process. A “channel” is a depiction of the overall journey, where traffic flows from your target audience and high-value customers emerge from the other side.
When the average conversion rate of an e-commerce site is below 3%, the sales channel is the way that helps you create, capture, nurture, and convert buying intent reliably by establishing a conversion path.
The channel starts from the moment customers become aware of your brand and continues until they purchase a product and become advocates for your business.
At a high level, sales channels consist of three parts: the top of the funnel (ToFu), which is your target audience that is not currently in the market to buy from you. The middle of the funnel (MoFu), which consists of potential customers who have visited your site and are considering products or services like those you sell. The bottom of the funnel (BoFu), which includes new and current customers who are ready to buy from you with the right push.
You can create sales channels for a single product, an entire range, or a specific target audience. If you don’t have the budget to support multiple channels, you can focus on building one sales channel for your flagship product. Regardless, sales channels work best when they address the needs of buyers at every stage with relevant content and calls to action.
Example of a sales channel: You see an ad on Instagram for a new pair of sneakers from a brand you’ve never heard of before. You’re part of their target audience, so you’re naturally interested. You click “Learn More” to check out the company’s website. Now you’re a prospect. When you leave the site, you get a pop-up for a 10% discount if you sign up for the newsletter. You enter your email. Now you’re qualified. After seven days, you receive an email reminding you of the 10% discount, along with testimonials from happy customers. You decide to buy the shoes and become a new customer. You get another email five days later asking you to leave a review and share a picture on Instagram and tag the brand. You do both and also purchase a pair of recommended shorts in the email because you loved the shoes, and you become an advocate and repeat customer. The cycle continues.
This is how sales channels work in practice. They are pre-planned stages that the company follows all the way to the purchase and also include customer retention tactics to encourage repeat purchases and support.
Stages of the Sales Channel: AIDA Framework
The AIDA framework – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action – is a sales channel model that represents the thought process of the consumer at each stage of the funnel. Many e-commerce brands start with this buying funnel because it’s easy to implement and build upon.
The AIDA framework helps you identify what buyers need at each of the funnel stages to deliver the right content and call to action.
Let’s take a look at the four stages of the sales channel, with examples of how to apply them to your online business.
Awareness
The awareness stage is when you capture the attention of a potential customer. It can be an ad, a YouTube video, an Instagram post, a recommendation from a friend, or any other connection to your brand or products.
In this first stage, focus on three things: making buyers aware of your products and services, developing a marketing and communication strategy, and creating messages that resonate with the target audience.
Your goal
is convincing potential customers to visit your site and engage with your brand. People who are hovering at the top of your funnel are not interested in product information. They often browse casually and come across your brand.
Content is key here. You want to create non-promotional lead-generation content at this stage, such as: informational videos, TikTok videos, stories and posts on Instagram, ads on Google Shopping or Instagram or Facebook, podcasts, collaborations with influencers, “About Us” pages, and blog articles.
Let’s take an example of a sales funnel: you see an ad on Instagram for a new pair of sneakers from a brand you’ve never heard of before. You are part of their target audience, so you’re naturally interested. You click “Learn More” to check out the company’s website. Now you’re a lead. When you leave the site, you get a pop-up offering a 10% discount if you sign up for the newsletter. You enter your email. Now you’re qualified. After seven days, you receive an email reminding you of the 10% discount, along with reviews from happy customers. You decide to purchase the shoes and become a new customer. You receive another email five days later asking you to leave a review and share a picture on Instagram, tagging the brand. You do both and also purchase a pair of recommended shorts from the email because you loved the shoes, and you become an advocate and a repeat customer. The cycle continues.
Interest
In the interest stage, leads are doing research and comparing your products with those of other brands. You will begin to build a relationship with them and learn about their pain points and goals.
The areas to focus on during this stage are: solving potential customers’ problems related to your products, creating content that supports leads in their buying decision, showcasing social proof and testimonials, and making product information easy to find and read through text and video.
Your goal here is to help shoppers make informed decisions, provide assistance, and establish yourself as an expert in the field. The content you create here should be more detailed. Why? Because you are proving that you are the best solution for customers.
This stage is also a great opportunity to capture leads for future marketing with lead magnets such as: interactive content like quizzes and calculators, downloadable files like checklists or eBooks, customer case studies, comparison pages, and webinars or live events on social media.
For example, Beardbrand sparks interest through its interactive quiz. Visitors can find out what type of beard they have through this type of customization on the website.
The quiz asks a series of lifestyle and needs-related questions, such as “What activity do you prefer doing most?” and “What facial hair style are you looking for?” To get your quiz results, Beardbrand asks for the customer’s email address, which also signs you up for their marketing communications.
Once you enter your email address, you’ll be directed to a landing page where you find a description of your Beardsman style along with related products to match it.
Desire
People are ready to purchase in this third stage of the funnel. They know there’s a problem to solve and are actively searching for the best solution.
Ask yourself the following questions when planning for this stage: What makes my product desirable? How will I follow up with qualified leads? How can I build an emotional connection with leads (live chat, email, SMS, tips, and advice)?
This is where you promote your best offers, whether it’s free shipping, discount codes, or free gifts. Your goal is to make your products so tempting that leads can’t refuse them.
Action
The final stage is where leads decide whether or not to purchase your product. Examine where calls-to-action are placed and where they should be positioned on your product pages. Make it easy for potential customers to reach out to you if they have any hesitations or questions.
Whether
to ensure that this notification is updated in real time as users add or remove items from their cart. This can enhance user experience and increase conversion rates.
How to Create an Effective Sales Funnel for E-commerce
Brands attract traffic from ads and email directly to their product offer pages as a primary method for generating sales. Some brands also include collection pages, pre-sale articles, and other touchpoints along the way. But the strong funnel that governs it is the one-page funnel.
For this reason, building a reliable sales funnel starts with optimizing the product display page.
Here’s a process for designing a product page for e-commerce that attracts and converts:
1. Decide on the Design
The first step in designing a product page for e-commerce that converts and captures attention is determining the overall page design. You have three basic designs to choose from: a traditional e-commerce product page, a long-form e-commerce product page, and a small product website.
This step is relatively straightforward. Ask yourself: is there a lot to say about this product?
If the answer is no, there isn’t much to say, you likely want to go with the traditional product page. This is the case for many easily understood or very visual products, like clothing or sunglasses, like the example from Hawkers below.
But if the answer is yes, there’s a lot to say about this product, you’ll want to use the long-form product page or a small website. This is usually the case when you have stories to tell, technology to explain, benefits to reveal, or objections to overcome.
For example, Boosted Boards showcases a lot of details about their electric skateboards on this long-form product page:
The only real difference between a long-form page and a small website is how the content is organized. In the long-form design, everything is laid out on one long page. With a small website, the same content is presented over several short pages that are interlinked and easy for the shopper to navigate.
Either way, both designs can be incredibly effective, so you can’t go wrong.
Action: Decide on the design for your e-commerce product page.
2. Format the Header
The header is a very important element in any e-commerce product page design. So, let’s talk about it for a few minutes.
The header is the top part of your website. It’s where you typically place your logo, navigation menu, shopping cart, and any other links or important information you want to have on every page. When formatting your site’s header, here are some tips to help you enhance your conversion rate optimization:
- Keep it slim and showcase your logo: When it comes to the header, it should not cover the main content of the page. You should aim to make the header as small as possible to allow for as much display space as possible. On your desktop site, try to ensure that the header does not take up more than 20% of the height of the site, just like Harry’s does here by keeping their logo prominent:
And on mobile, where screen space is more limited, try to ensure that the header does not take up more than 10% of the height.
- Always provide a link to the shopping cart: If you have an e-commerce store and a shopping cart page, you should place a link to it in the header on both desktop and mobile. People are accustomed to it. They expect it. And if you don’t include it in the header, there’s a chance they’ll feel frustrated trying to find their cart and leave without completing their purchase. You can even add a notification displaying the current number of items in the cart, just like M.Gemi does here:
You will need to ensure that this notification is updated in real-time as users add or remove items from their cart. This can enhance user experience and increase conversion rates.
your standout testimony. This is different from reviews. You still want to have a section for testimonials with lots of people saying how much they love your product.
But what we’re talking about here is one standout testimony that you place within your checkout box. This will be a quote from a prominent customer, so make sure it’s good.
Why do you want to add a standout testimony to your product? Because it improves your conversion rate.
BOOM! tested this. They took their original checkout box, which looked like this:
and tested it against this version:
The only difference is that one version had the product name at the top, while the other used a standout testimony.
The addition of the testimony increased the conversion rate by 5.25% and boosted the average revenue per user by $1.25. BOOM! retested this test multiple times, and the testimony won each time.
This shows the importance of using social proof on your product page.
Some tips for choosing the right standout testimony:
- Choose testimony that enthusiastically endorses the product. It may seem obvious, but this should be one of the best quotes you can find about your product.
- Keep it short. Because if it’s too long, people will skip over it. The image below is a great example of a brief and effective quote.
- Choose
Testimonial from your largest customer segment. If the percentage of female buyers is 75% and male buyers is 25%, use a testimonial from a woman. You can’t rotate this standout testimonial, so make the most of it by having it represent your most common buyers.
Action: Select a standout testimonial for your product page.
4. Select Product Display Images
Now it’s time to add product images to your product page design.
Online shoppers cannot touch and examine the product themselves. They must rely on your images to give them a good idea of the actual product.
In general, there are two types of product images: pure product images and context/lifestyle images.
Pure product images show the product itself on a pure white background (or another colored background).
Leave a Reply