Optimizing Your Shopify Sales Funnel Through Web Design and Development

Optimizing your Shopify sales funnel by focusing on web design and development is an essential stage in the evolution of an ecommerce business. Most people think that by simply just launching a website is enough to ensure that you are going to generate sales. Unfortunately, the truth is that the majority of ecommerce sites are not performing as well as they can because their owners aren't familiar with the optimization process.

With this article, the Saikai team is trying to solve that problem!

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is a technique used by businesses to guide potential customers towards a purchase decision. They begin when a customer is made aware of your products or brand and end when the customer places an order. The more natural, intuitive, and simple this process is, the more likely it is people will buy your products.

What are the benefits of optimizing a Shopify sales funnel?

There are tons of points we could mention here. In the interest of keeping things brief, we'll hit you with the highlights!

Here are a few of the many benefits of optimizing a Shopify sales funnel:

• It increases your conversion rate. When you optimize your Shopify sales funnel, you start to maximize the number of people that go from discovery to checkout.
• It increases brand loyalty. Optimizing a sales funnel leads to positive experiences that turn customers into loyal, repeat customers.
• It increases traffic. People want to visit websites that provide them with real value. That's why optimizing your sales funnel can generate momentum that results in more organic traffic.
• It makes it easy to customer collect data. When you know what type of content resonates with your visitors, it's easy to optimize future marketing efforts. A sales funnel makes it easy to collect information that you can then feed into follow-up marketing campaigns and retargeting campaigns.

4 Ways to Optimize Your Online Store's Sales Funnel

Optimizing your Shopify sales funnel is all about improving the UX of your store. You want the process of moving through the various sales funnel stages to feel easy, natural, and—dare I say—fun!

Here are some actionable tips for accomplishing this:

Visual Design

Visual design is at the center of user experience—thus, it's also at the center of sales funnel optimization. Research tells us that people's first impressions of your online store are almost entirely based on the visual elements and characteristics of your landing page.

Here are some things it needs to include:

• Simple Navigation: Visitors need to immediately understand how to navigate your website. That means clear product categories, a visible search bar, and an intuitive menu setup.
• Clean Design: Visual clutter increases the cognitive load of using your website. That's not a good thing. Everything included on your landing page needs to be there for a reason.
• Strategic Color: Humans use color to determine what areas of a page are important. You need to use color strategically to direct attention to your CTA, value proposition, and branding.

Branding

Your brand isn't just your logo—it's the visual elements that tie everything on your website together. You need to think about consistency, cohesion, and unified branding.

Here are two of the ways effective branding can help with sales funnel optimization:

• Developing Trust: Customers are more likely to buy from brands that seem like cohesive entities. That means maintaining branded color pallets, typesets, and formats.
• Developing Reputation: If you don’t have any of the recognizable elements of a brand, you’re just another anonymous ecommerce business. Being recognizable opens up the door for recognition, which in turn allows you to develop a reputation. Reputation is a powerful tool when it comes to getting leads through your sales funnel.

Website Speed

People hate slow websites. People love fast websites. That's why increasing your website's speed is one of the most effective sales funnel optimization tools you have at your disposal.

Page Insights by Google - Saikai Performance Test

Let's look at some examples:

• Walmart: A 1-second decrease in page load time led to an increase in conversions of 2%.
• Google: A 2-second increase in page load time increases bounce rates by 32%.

There are lots of factors that can affect website speed, so improvement is often a matter of trial and error. However, many websites are slowed down by excessive HTTP requests, having large assets, and synchronous file loading.

Messaging and Copy

The messaging on your website and content plays a critical role your success—after all, they provide the context for what you're delivering (and why).

Here's some insight into how you can optimize your messaging and copy:

• Create A Brand Personas: When you feel like your brand has personality, they begin to connect with it on a more personal level.
• Make Unique Value Propositions: Once you know who you're talking to, determine what makes your brand unique. Use that information to create a powerful value proposition.
• Social Proof: Quality messaging and copy should always be supported by customer testimony. This will give your website more credibility and increase its trustworthiness. Takeaways

The number one way to optimize your Shopify sales funnel is by focusing on the design and development of your store. This includes things like having a clear value proposition, choosing the right colors, and finding ways to increase website speed. However, product messaging and copy also play a crucial role in sales funnel optimization—so don't neglect them!

For more guides aimed at developing profitable ecommerce businesses, don’t forget to check out Saikai’s blog. For more information about how we can help you design and develop a beautiful (and highly effective) online storefront, feel free to have a look at our creative process.