An Outline Of Website Sales Funnel Architecture

Online retailers spend a lot of time and money drawing traffic to their site. Once visitors arrive at the site, it is extremely important that the site be organized to retain those visitors and guide them into the sales funnel. Here is a simple description of web architecture and the sales funnel.

Home Page or Landing Page:

The home page or landing page is the first page a visitor comes to on your site. That page should be inviting and the information should clearly respond to the keywords or ad that brought the visitor to the page or you will experience a high bounce rate, i.e., the number of people who visit one page of a site then leave divided by the total number of visitors to the site.

The landing page should incorporate a call to action step that sends the visitor to either a product page or to a category page. A category page is a page that subdivides your visitor into a selling segment. For example, visitors may arrive at your site to buy classic DVDs then click on a category such as romance, drama, comedy or horror.

Category Page:

The category page responds more specifically to the visitors needs with information, insight and call to action. When a visitor comes to your pet supply landing page, they will click on small mammals. The small mammal category page may provide a call to action that sends the visitor to the products page for cages or substrates, or it might send the visitor to the gerbil or hamster or mouse product page.

Product Page:

The product page should have wonderful product photos, rich media attributes if possible (3D viewing, zoom, coloration) clear descriptions and listing of benefits and a method for the visitor to add the item to the cart.

Shopping Cart:

The shopping cart should have options to look at the contents, change quantities, visualize products and calculate shipping and handling. The call to action in the shopping cart should be either 'add another item' or 'proceed to checkout.'

Check Out Page:

The check out page should include the information gathering necessary for billing, shipping information and so on. There should be an ability to move backwards through the shopping process without losing information already entered (except possibly credit card info). The check out page should point customers to placing the order and moving to the confirmation page.

Confirmation Page:

The confirmation wraps up the order and pushes the customer to return to the site to take advantage of special offers available only to those shopping that day or spending over a certain amount of money.

Other Content Pages:

Of course you have other pages on the site. You may have a good deal of informational content, for example. The goal of these pages is to inspire a sale so these pages should include a call to action that moves the visitor to a product page.

The more carefully you can craft this flow, the better your conversion rate will be.