ClickFunnels: An In-Depth Review and Walkthrough

Are you thinking about using ClickFunnels to build your website? 

We’re going to provide you with a detailed review of the platform, allowing you to make an informed choice and be sure that ClickFunnels is what you need. This is a SaaS software suite that helps you construct websites more quickly, but it's not for everyone. 

ClickFunnels is a niche marketing software platform that's meant for small business owners who want to get into e-commerce or online marketers who want to improve the efficiency of their work. ClickFunnels claims to be the most useful piece of marketing software found online. But before we dissect the legitimacy of their claims, there's another question to ponder — why do you need online marketing software at all?

All businesses can benefit from a high-quality online presence. This goes double for consumer-facing companies. Retail advertisements are still widely used, but they’re not as efficient at generating and converting leads as online marketing is. 

It’s 2020, and people have gotten used to the idea of finding all of their services and products online. Even if they want to buy something in a retail store, customers will first search for brands and shops online. 

The number of small businesses, startups, and individual entrepreneurs is more significant than ever before. According to Oberlo, these kinds of business entities make up more than 90% of the global economy. Such a staggering number leads us to one conclusion — regardless of your niche, the competition is fierce. 

Digital marketing has become equally competitive, as small differences in crucial metrics can decide which brand ends up gaining the most customers. This field is intensely data-driven, and automation via marketing software products is becoming more and more critical. The company with the right toolset for online marketing is going to come out on top, even if the nearest competitor has an objectively better product. 

Considering this, where does ClickFunnels fit into the picture? And is it worth your time? 

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ClickFunnels 101 — Why ClickFunnels?

ClickFunnels was made to help marketers, e-commerce store managers, and local business owners. All of these people need the ability to create and edit a sales website, but most of them don’t have the technical knowledge to do it properly. 

An entrepreneur who manufactures hand-made clothing or organic produce isn’t likely to know a lot about PHP and HTML. Hiring web programming professionals is always an option, but not every startup budget is capable of handling the cost of another employee. 

ClickFunnels takes all of the web programming details and keeps them "under the hood." The platform's users instead interact with a drag and drop page editor that is far simpler to use. You can create amazing-looking websites without ever learning a single line of code. The platform pitches itself on these two basic principles:

• No coding

• Creation of beautiful sales pages

These are only ClickFunnels' fundamental features. The platform offers plenty of other digital marketing tools to be your only software suite for such purposes. 

We’re going to examine the value of ClickFunnels by reviewing the platform’s:

1. Legitimacy

2. Features and cost-effectiveness

3. Value when compared to the competition

Is ClickFunnels Legit?

Everyone searches for products and services on the Internet, and ClickFunnels is no exception. What sets it apart from its competition is the number of extremely positive reviews from professional affiliate marketers — almost making it sound too good to be true. Seasoned web enthusiasts are likely to be suspicious about this, even going so far as to question the legitimacy of the platform. 

ClickFunnels is not a scam. This is a legitimate platform for funnel building and digital marketing. The reason why so many affiliate marketers are eager to recommend it is its comprehensive affiliate marketing program. 

ClickFunnels Affiliate Marketing

The elementary tenets of affiliate marketing aren’t complicated. There are three key players in an affiliate marketing campaign:

1. Producers

2. Affiliate marketers

3. Consumers

The people who manufacture a product or offer service (in this case, ClickFunnels) hire affiliate marketers to promote these online. Affiliate marketers use their blogs or other personalized media to share positive experiences about the products, and the consumers decide to buy them as a result. The marketers earn a commission in the form of a certain percentage of each sale they make. ClickFunnels’ affiliate marketing campaign is one of the most successful ones on the entire Internet, which is why you’ll see such strong impressions from marketers. The ClickFunnels program offers its affiliates:

• Training and tutorials

• Materials and graphics for advertising

• Full transparency

• Sizable commissions

• Brand association 

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Affiliate Commissions

The legitimacy of ClickFunnels is not just important from the perspective of its customers, but the affiliate marketers who cooperate with it as well. Affiliates who resell digital products are most often concerned about being scammed out of their commissions. That’s why they carefully choose which brand to associate themselves with.

ClickFunnels is a legitimate platform in this sense, too, as it treats its affiliates more than fairly. 

It's important to note that ClickFunnels is SaaS, meaning there's no single payment to make and deduce a commission from. Instead, users pay a monthly subscription, and affiliates get a percentage of that if the user came from them. 

The ClickFunnels commission structure is incredibly generous, giving affiliates 40% of each subscription they bring in. That’s 40% every month, not just the first one. There are two basic ClickFunnels subscriptions, and a third one added recently for agencies and larger companies:

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ClickFunnels Features

We have established that ClickFunnels is a legitimate platform that does not mistreat its users and affiliates. Now, we will examine what the platform does and what its defining features are. 

ClickFunnels’ first feature was a landing page builder. In 2020 there are many drag-and-drop page builders out there, but ClickFunnels was a pioneer in this field half a decade ago. It allowed people to make entire online sales funnels without using HTML, PHP, or other less intuitive solutions such as LeadPages. 

ClickFunnels' intuitive page editor allowed any business owner to come up with fast:

• Upsells

• Downsells

• Entire funnels

• Membership sites

• Landing pages

The developers expanded on this initial feature with useful integrations — such as those with major payment processors and shipping companies. ClickFunnels gained traction immediately, becoming a catch-all digital marketing service for business people and marketers alike. 

The platform maintains its focus on sales funnels even today. You cannot manage an online store efficiently, or create blog posts that are going to be as good as on WordPress. If you want to take a single product and go through the entire online marketing process on a single platform — ClickFunnels is still the best option. 

It takes the sales funnel model and brings it to an online world with near perfection. Along with its Etison page builder, the platform also offers all kinds of analytics software for the tracking of essential metrics. 

The most crucial features of the platform are:

1. Images

2. Social media integration

3. CSS editing

4. Form elements

5. Multimedia content

6. SEO tools

7. Membership sites

8. Content marketplace

Images

ClickFunnels was launched back in 2014. That may not seem like a long time, but in terms of technology development, that's eons ago. The same is valid for web design trends — a lot has changed in how both consumers and designers perceive the quality of a website. 

In 2020, so-called “hero images” are one of the most often seen website layouts — one large image across the entire background, dotted with smaller blocks of text and content. ClickFunnels is definitely on point with new trends, providing its users with a wide selection of background images for almost every conceivable niche. The color palette and background images are all highly customizable, ensuring a visually unique user experience. 

Social Media Integration

ClickFunnels wants to eliminate the need for any other digital marketing software products and become the only suite its users require to conduct a full campaign online. 

There is no marketing without social media these days, and ClickFunnels recognizes this. That’s why the platform offers options for social media marketing, in the form of integrative elements for tweets, Facebook comments, etc. Every popular social media website can be represented on your ClickFunnels website via buttons and graphic links. 

CSS Editing

Funnel builders similar to ClickFunnels have a single purpose — to make website construction for marketing purposes easy. Most people who set out to create their online presence are wary of coding and web design. That's why this platform has its visual editor for easy page construction.

ClickFunnels doesn’t want to alienate more advanced users either. Each of the elements included with the visual editor can be meticulously edited and adjusted to suit your specific needs. For users more familiar with HTML and CSS, all of the funnel and page templates included with the platform can be edited in detail. 

Forms

The point of having a website for your sales pitch isn’t just to present your content to prospective leads — that could be done with a simple video. The main reason why a website increases sales is its inherent interactivity. Any business owner and marketer needs to keep this in mind. A sales funnel mustn’t play out like a show that visitors can’t interact with. 

ClickFunnels enables you to make your funnel as interactive as you want, specifically with lead generation purposes in mind. The page editor offers plenty of form elements that users can click on and interact with. These exist primarily to drive lead generation, with options for opt-in newsletters, surveys, and even SMS text chains. 

There are also ClickFunnels forms that serve to facilitate purchases, such as those for entering addresses and other shipping information. 

Multimedia Content

The visual representation of your website extends beyond hero images in your background. Each part of your sales should contain a variety of pictures and videos that break up the text and make the page more visually appealing. 

ClickFunnels understands this, giving you easy access to online stock media repositories. You can use the platform to find copyright-free content without ever leaving the ClickFunnels platform. You can choose from a wide variety of images provided by ClickFunnels itself, or browse:

• IconFinder

• Unsplash

• Canva

• Pixabay

There are also integrative options for videos from the following platforms:

SEO Tools

Website owners and managers who want to use the sites for lead generation must perfect their search engine optimization. According to 99firms, less than 10% of Internet traffic doesn’t go through search engines. Any sales website needs to be optimized to receive as much traffic from search engines as possible. 

ClickFunnels is aware of this, which is why the platform offers extensive SEO options and integration with primary SEO tools. For instance, you can preview the SERP snippet of your website within ClickFunnels, or export your page to WordPress and use the Yoast plugin there. 

Membership Sites

Opting for higher subscription tiers with ClickFunnels has a couple of tangible benefits. One of them is the ability to create your membership website. This is a feature that is used primarily by digital marketers. 

Professional marketers who want to build their own business or offer freelance services tend to explore multiple revenue sources. Working for just one client or providing a single function is rarely a good idea — professionals in this niche want to appear as knowledgeable as possible. Many of them are authors of books and guidelines on proper marketing practices, or they offer courses and webinars to teach their craft to others. 

Membership sites are a great way to provide additional value to your customers. High-paying VIP consumers can gain access to paywalled content, containing other features or premium lessons. 

ClickFunnels supports this option within their funnels if you're paying for an Etison or Collective membership. You can structure your paywall however you want — in the form of a continued subscription or a single payment. The appropriate upsell page templates accompany these. 

Other ClickFunnels Features

ClickFunnels has one significant feature we have not explored yet — its content marketplace. This funnel platform doesn’t just have an enticingly simple page editor. The developers have implemented another crucial quality-of-life feature: the ability to share every piece of content you design on the platform. 

There are pre-built pages and entire funnels, and templates for individual elements. The marketers and entrepreneurs using the platform can share their work freely, or offer it up for purchase. Other members of the community that don’t want to create entire funnels on their own can import these and rebrand them easily. 

It's an excellent way for marketers to earn additional profits as well. They can even make their funnels a part of their own sales pitch, as a bonus feature offered on an upsell page. 

This is the most significant standout feature that helps ClickFunnels trump similar funnel and page editors. None of them have such a populous community of creators who have made funnels for every product and niche you could think of. 

ClickFunnels and WordPress

ClickFunnels is the most popular funnel builder out there. That title brings prominence, but it comes nowhere close to the widespread usage of WordPress as a content management platform. According to Digital, around 35% of the entire Internet is built on WordPress. It offers a more extensive library of website plugins than any other platform. That's why most people who construct their website want the ability to make a switch to WordPress at some point. 

ClickFunnels realizes this, which is why the platform has options for full integration with WordPress. Transferring your entire funnel from ClickFunnels to WordPress is not difficult — all you need is the ClickFunnels plugin for WordPress. Once you install it and verify the API connection, you can choose which individual pages to transfer with a simple click of a button. 

Is ClickFunnels Worth It?

With all of these features, the question is — can your business benefit from paying a ClickFunnels subscription?

Yes, in a lot of ways. 

Any individual or business with a product they want to bring to an online market will find ClickFunnels useful. This platform is versatile when it comes to digital marketing tools, providing more than a simple page builder. If you have a product, ClickFunnels has everything else you need to present it to consumers online successfully.