Are you looking for excellent ideas for online sales funnels?
Sales funnels are the go-to marketing model for online services and products. The most popular brands use them as much as mom-and-pop operations, the only difference being their marketing budgets.
There are marketing software products that help level the playing field. ClickFunnels is one of the most popular ones, making digital marketing less of a chore for small businesses. We will explore how you can use ClickFunnels to create an effortless yet effective sales pitch.
Many entrepreneurs have great ideas and products but lack the marketing know-how to cater to an online audience successfully. Most people aren’t intuitively familiar with the concept of sales funnels — which is why we’re going to go over the basics of consumer funneling first.
The perception of digital marketing as free-form art is dead wrong. This is a highly data-driven field. Among competing niche businesses, the one with the most detailed marketing plan and the most accurate metrics tends to win.
You need to have a clear roadmap for the entire interaction with your customers and a marketing plan that will present them with the right content along the way. That’s what sales funnels are for — a marketing model that plans out your entire website.
When you’re pitching one main product or service, you don’t want an abundance of content and clutter. According to The Guardian, short bursts of online content have shortened our attention spans.
No-one wants to spend a lot of time navigating around websites. Consumers will likely go elsewhere if they have to make an effort to understand what you're offering — even if the offer is reasonable. A sales funnel gives your website the right marketing structure:
Sales Funnel Structure | |
Website Page | Purpose |
Landing page |
|
Content page |
|
Offer page |
|
Transaction page |
|
Content blogs or online stores with more extensive offers leave a consumer with the freedom to "roam around" the website without much structure. Sites for specific products opt for this funnel design more often, because it gives customers less room to think and decide to forgo purchasing.
Image source: searchcustomerexperience
The interaction between a vendor and a buyer is a journey. Funnels try to eliminate any deviations on this journey that could potentially lead to a missed sale. Designing a professional funnel website is not easy without the right content management platform, SEO tools, and marketing experience. ClickFunnels’ goal is to help with all of the above.
Anyone looking to construct a website manually would have a long way to go before seeing their first sale. This process entails dealing with:
Web programming
Website hosting
Graphic design
Funnel modeling
Website maintenance
Most online vendors don't build their sites from scratch. A vast majority of all e-commerce vendors use platforms such as WordPress to simplify the technicalities. However, CMS akin to WordPress are catch-all solutions — ClickFunnels is better tailored for funnel marketing.
Image source: strategnetic
ClickFunnels tries to streamline every part of the funnel design process that we’ve outlined above. The platform’s main attraction is a drag and drop page editor, doing away with any coding or programming knowledge.
ClickFunnels gives its subscribers hosting options, as well as a template marketplace. You can download free templates for individual pages and entire sales funnels, or purchase premium content offered by other members of the community.
Professional marketers find this a nifty option for additional revenue. Many of them offer a variety of services and rebranded white label marketing software on their websites. A hand-made sales funnel is a handsome upsell offer.
Many entrepreneurs who want to create a standout brand still opt for crafting their funnels.
Some also choose to use a third-party solution to create a unique and professional blog on ClickFunnels. This allows for a fully-featured modern blog that helps strengthen the brand image. Moreover, it presents additional SEO optimization features to improve rankings in search engines.
Being original is important, but it never hurts to see what some of the most successful online funnels look like. We’ve prepared an overview of some of the most prominent online brands that use sales funnels with this in mind.To give you a glimpse of what sort of landing pages you can create with ClickFunnels, we have selected several best performing pages created with the platform.
ClickFunnels Landing Page
The titular funnel building platform wouldn’t be worth its salt if it didn’t have a professional funnel of its own.
Niche: Funnel building
Funnel type: SaaS funnel
ClickFunnels' website is perhaps the best example of the work you can achieve on this platform. The company needs to show its funnel-building chops by creating the best possible funnel for its product. Suffice it to say that the ClickFunnel development and design teams have pulled it off, with a few caveats.
It should be noted that, similarly to Netflix, ClickFunnels' marketing strategy doesn't just rely on its website. The platform has one of the most extensive affiliate marketing campaigns on the Internet, garnering a lot of fame and goodwill from professional marketers eager to promote it.
ClickFunnels does not opt for a simple description on its landing page, contrary to many of the minimalist templates found within its software suite. The home page contains plenty of information and seems to scroll on forever through multiple sections. Crucially, every part is broken up by flashy CTA copywriting and buttons that offer a two-week free trial.
Those who decide to click the button at some point are greeted with a detailed pricing page. There are three subscription options:
ClickFunnels Subscriptions | ||
Package | Features | Price |
ClickFunnels |
| $97 |
ClickFunnels Platinum |
| $297 |
ClickFunnels Collective |
| $1497 |
Once you choose a suitable plan, the only funnel stages that remain are the sign-up page and the billing page. When you enter the required information, you are immediately taken to the ClickFunnels dashboard, where you can begin working on your first product funnel.
ClickFunnels’ landing page takes the riskier approach of dumping all of the service information on leads at once. This is not a surprise considering its business plan, however. The platform wants to market itself as a complete software solution for digital marketing. That’s why its marketing team has opted for highlighting as many features as they could right away, with intermittent CTAs.
A Sweet Pea Chef Landing Page
A Sweet Pea Chef is a classic example of how small businesses and entrepreneurs use ClickFunnels to construct a professional-looking landing page.
Niche: Cooking
Funnel type: Product funnel
This website represents a combination of a recipe blog and a shop selling kitchenware and organic ingredients to an online audience. The funnel has an excellent hook for customers, because it draws them in by presenting the end result first — the tasty recipes. Once people see the kind of meals they can prepare using the ingredients and kitchen items found on this website, they are more likely to make a purchase.
Daniel Burrus Landing Page
Daniel Burrus is a strategic consultant for corporate conglomerates, and a public speaker on the side. His website was originally designed in WordPress, but the pages of his sales funnel were imported from ClickFunnels.
Niche: Entrepreneurship
Funnel type: Public speaking
Burrus has used ClickFunnels to design an excellent landing page. As soon as visitors enter the website, they are greeted with a quick description of what Burrus does. The page is dominated by a hero video that shows Daniel at a jam-packed public speaking engagement, showcasing him as an industry veteran.
The funnel takes its time to gradually present all of his skills and services before leading website visitors to an online shop where Burrus sells his books and personalized software.
If you need some more ideas and inspiration, check out some other effective landing pages built with various builders.
Hulu Landing Page
Hulu is one of the most renowned content streaming and video-on-demand platforms. Their website is another case of a streamlined funnel that provides ample conversion rates.
Niche: Content streaming
Funnel type: Media platform funnel
It takes Hulu no more than four pages to convert its leads into paying customers. The platform’s funnel layout is identical to the one employed by BuilderAll. It should be noted, however, that Hulu relies much more on both retail and online advertising and its brand strength.
Hulu's home page boasts a no-nonsense design — the point of the platform is apparent right away. It offers movie and TV show streaming for a low monthly price, with an enticing free trial offer being front and center. Hulu even manages to cram in upsell offers within its single-page funnel without seeming cluttered — there are additional packages for cable networks such as HBO.
The reason why this funnel works is two-fold. First, it doesn't leave any leeway to its customers. You can either register an account on the website or leave — nothing to distract you from making a decision. Second, the home page manages to steer leads towards subscribing by showcasing the most popular content found on the platform, along with bonus offers.
Image source: growthdrivendesign
The ingeniously simple funnel design employed by Hulu was first created by another streaming service — Netflix.
Niche: Content streaming
Funnel type: Media platform funnel
The weight of the Netflix brand cannot be overstated when talking about its online marketing. This is a pioneer in movie and TV streaming — the company that brought us the concept of binge-watching. Its funnel was effective even in the days when the platform wasn’t a global phenomenon.
The landing page starts with a simple offer — a 30-day free trial. Once that period is done, Netflix starts billing you for the subscription package of your choosing. This information is conveyed in less than 100 words of copywriting — Netflix even manages to advertise a reminder of the imminent expiration of your free trial. You receive a notification before it's done to prevent automatic billing for a service you don't want.
The funnel wastes no time. Netflix makes an offer in four sentences, while less optimized funnels would take entire pages to do the same. The call-to-action is presented with a simple red button that takes you to the pricing page.
The combination of red and black visuals and a strikingly simple font helps Netflix distinguish itself from similar brands. This is an integral part of creating a sales funnel for the products of an established brand — the funnel website needs to coincide with the wider graphic design.
The final parts of the Netflix media funnel maintain the overall simplicity. There are two pages for filling out the personal and billing information. Once the email confirmation is completed, Netflix has converted you into a paying customer.
There are many brands whose niche and industry aren’t as flashy as VOD and streaming platforms — CrazyEgg is one of them.
Niche: Marketing analytics
Funnel type: SaaS funnel
Digital markets use plenty of SEO audit tools to make their website optimized perfectly for maximum conversion rates. CrazyEgg is a service that helps businesses surmise how leads and customers interact with their websites. Their funnel has these stages:
Landing page
Free trial page
Billing page
This is the most streamlined funnel we’ve examined yet. CrazyEgg can be a complex and multifunctional analytics tool — but it doesn’t market itself as such right away. The landing page can be described in one word: soothing.
CrazyEgg Landing Page
Image source: Screenshot
The font is curvy but not flashy, and the hero image in the background is a simple drawing of a meadow and a couple flying in a hot air balloon—all of the graphics points towards ease of use and simplicity. The copy is virtually non-existent on the landing page, except for a single sentence.
This short description showcases the flashiest CrazyEgg feature — heatmaps. These maps can show businesses where customers click on their websites most often and what elements they spend the most time interacting with.
There are more options within CrazyEgg, but their sales funnel doesn't make the mistake of pouring them all out at once. Users who want to learn more can expand the bottom of the landing page instead. Those who have already been convinced can go straight to the registration page for a month-long free trial.
MailChimp Landing Page
MailChimp is a popular tool for email marketing campaigns.
Niche: Digital marketing software
Funnel type: SaaS funnel
Email marketing is a widely-used source for online leads. The scope of most target audiences on the Internet is too wide to manage manually — that’s why most businesses and marketing professionals employ some sort of email marketing software.
White label solutions resold by marketers may often turn out to be a more cost-effective solution, but many users also choose external services like MailChimp. The latter’s online funnel is designed with a combination of an old-school font and a retro graphic design, but one that doesn’t obscure the clarity of presentation.
The funnel works because it’s simple, but the importance of the visual design should not be underestimated. MailChimp cleverly chooses to present a rustic design that’s evocative of dependency and sturdiness.
Coursera Landing Page
Coursera is an education platform for online courses.
Niche: Course platform
Funnel type: Upsell funnel
The Internet is a treasure trove for education. Coursera is a platform that tries to make learning more accessible by offering structured online courses and resources for all kinds of knowledge. There are even options for earning an actual degree — something that the homepage points out right away.
Coursera’s funnel starts with a long landing page similar to ClickFunnels. It wants potential leads to know about the wealth of opportunities offered by the website right away. The copywriting doesn’t focus on the courses themselves, but on what they mean for the user — a roadmap to career success. The entirety of the funnel looks something like this:
Landing page
Registration page
Course selection
One of the main draws of this type of funnel is that it doesn't attempt to close a sale right away. It attracts leads by offering free courses first and then upselling on bonus offers. Once the users realize the value of the platform and the affordability of most classes, they are quick to purchase some of the premium ones as well.
BuilderAll Landing Page
We’ll finish this list of examples with the best landing page builder that isn’t ClickFunnels — BuilderAll.
Niche: Digital marketing
Funnel type: SaaS (software as a service) funnel
BuilderAll is a ClickFunnels look-alike and competitor, offering similar functionalities for the construction of a sales website. Its website also takes the form of a funnel with the following parts:
Landing page
Registration page
Pricing page
Billing page
The first impression BuilderAll gives to prospective consumers is a landing page that manages to be informative without too much clutter. It starts with a simple definition of what the company does and goes on to describe the services in more detail as leads scroll down.
Once you enter the sign-up page, there are precise forms for entering the required information, and then you can choose among different pricing plans. This is an excellent example of a well-designed sales funnel because it doesn't drown website visitors with an abundance of information right away.
Platforms such as BuilderAll have plenty of features because they’re intended to be a comprehensive digital marketing solution. Making the mistake of overwhelming leads with too many details is a mistake BuilderAll’s funnel successfully avoids.
Many of the funnel examples we've described above are for mutually different brands and companies. There are some common traits of a quality sales funnel that we can surmise from this.
High-converting funnels don't have a lot of pages. They either present most product information right on the landing page or contain another feature page — but rarely more than that.
The most successful funnels are the ones that are straight to the point and present a clear offer to the users right away. The minimalist design helps, but websites like Coursera or ClickFunnels itself show that even a long-form landing page can be useful if you want to seem more professional.
Just follow our battle-tested guidelines and rake in the profits.