How to Build a WordPress Sales Funnel

If only I had counted how many hours we’ve spent cooped up in the conference room trying to create the perfect sales funnel. Don’t get me wrong, brainstorming and developing an efficient sales funnel is another level of satisfaction but looking back, had I known some basic principles, my life would’ve been so much easier. Jokes aside, in this article, I want to share with you some key principles that will help you build a kickass WordPress sales funnel. But before we move forward, per usual, let’s get our definitions straight.

I personally love RingDNA’s definitions:

The sales funnel (also known as a revenue funnel or sales process) refers to the buying process that companies lead customers through when purchasing products. The definition also refers to the process through which a company finds, qualifies, and sells its products to buyers.

The WordPress sales funnel has stages and just like with any other marketing term or concept, there is no consensus on what these four or five stages are. There are some variations of sales funnels but the underlying logic is the same. Here is how I define sales funnel stages:

• Attract – make your product/service known to your audience, attract their attention.
• Convert – use lead magnets to convince prospective customers to make a purchase.
• Close – guide them towards making a purchase.
• Delight – maintain your relationship with the clients so they become loyal ones.

For all the visual learners out there, this is what it looks like. Thank you Hubspot Academy for the chart.

This chart also shows what you can in each stage but we'll cover that in more detail soon.

Why do you need a WordPress sales funnel?

When I was making my first steps in marketing, I thought that sales funnels are completely unnecessary. I used to believe that there's no need to systematize the stages and write a whole strategy around it, we can simply ask each team (Social media, SEO, etc.) to present their own strategy, put them together, and voila, we are ready to move to implementation. I couldn’t be more wrong. Sales funnel is an excellent tool that brings together the sales people, the marketing team, and even the C-suite folks together and allows them to forge a path toward sales.

WordPress sales funnels help sketch out and understand the customer journey and direct marketing efforts toward each and every step of that journey. It’s an irreplaceable framework that is extensive enough to allow you to analyze your business and your customers, and succinct enough that you don’t get overwhelmed and confused.

You can go back to your sales funnel at any stage, analyze the results, and identify areas that need improvement. Sales funnels are not set in stone, they’re rather flexible, and you can modify them as you go. And last but not least, sales funnels are excellent sounding boards. Give it a try and you’ll thank me later.

Which kinds of businesses is the sales funnel ideal for?

I won’t lie or exaggerate if I say that sales funnels are ideal for virtually any business regardless of the industry. Each business needs customers, and sales funnels are essentially the mapping of what the customers do and what you offer them. Whether it’s a B2B or a B2C, a clear and concise sales funnel can work wonders for you. Be it a plumber, a tech company that makes VR sets, or a small online shop for handmade jewelry, every business needs a sales funnel.

Sales funnels are particularly excellent for ecommerce stores, so if your business is an ecommerce, drop everything that you’re doing and start working on your sales funnel. But first finish reading this article, of course, it’s got some valuable advice.

What is a WordPress sales funnel?

The definitions are not over. Since the focus of this article is WordPress sales funnels, let’s understand what it entails. There are a number of different ways you can build a sales funnel, and WordPress is one of them. So basically, a WordPress sales funnel is any sales funnel that you build using a WordPress website. WP has proven to be an excellent foundation for sales funnels thanks to its flexibility and the availability of integrations.

Plus, a sales funnel is practically useless if you don’t have the tools to analyze and optimize it. WordPress is a goldmine of such tools and gives you the opportunity to optimize your sales funnel to your heart’s content.

The stages of a sales funnel

The first stage is user acquisition. This is usually done through social media posts, online advertising, SEO efforts or perhaps blog posts. Once again I want to emphasize the importance of having a well-designed digital marketing strategy where all the steps are predefined in advance. Driving traffic to your website takes effort and you don’t want that effort to go in vain. So when you get people to visit your website, make sure you get their email addresses, so you can communicate with them. Going back to our Hubspot sales funnel (see above),we start off as strangers then we convert them into visitors, and once we have their contact information, we can start working toward sealing the deal and making them customers. I recommend reading my previous article on getting more leads, where you’ll get more ideas on how to do all of this.

Now let’s talk about all the technical things you need to create that funnel.

What are some key WordPress sales funnel components?

Okay, so what role does WordPress play in the sales funnel? It is a very simple and at the same time, critical role: WordPress helps you create an environment (your website),where you can easily walk the customers through all stages of the funnel.

Getting your website ready

First of all, you need a website, and to build a website you need to get a domain (the name of your website) and hosting (where your website is stored to be available worldwide).

Once you've configured those two and connected them, it’s time to start building your website. Shameless plug: 10Web can help you handle all of those settings in a matter of minutes on a powerful hosting powered by Google Cloud that will ensure that your website is fast, secure, and has a 99.99% uptime guarantee. This will really help boost your SEO ranking, which in turn contributes to your visibility (hint: attraction stage of the funnel) and then conversion. We can also help you with the next step which is selecting a theme.

Choose your theme

When choosing your theme, it’s first of all important to understand what kind of features you're going to need on your website. You don’t want to jump ahead and grab the first theme that you like. 10Web has many designer-made templates included, but you can also choose and upload any theme from the internet. Check out this YouTube video where we discuss common mistakes and steps to selecting the best WordPress theme for your business.

One of the key aspects here is selecting a theme that will work with a WP website builder of your choice, for example, Elementor or Oxygen. We at 10Web also have our builder based on Elementor, which has a bunch of premium features added for free.

When you're done creating the basis of your website, it’s time to start working on your funnel. So, let’s see what you need to do.

Installing plugins for the landing page

Let me demonstrate how plugins and sales funnels relate with an example. You’ve got your website up and running and you need to attract customers and convert them into leads. One of the ways to do so is through a landing page. There are so many WordPress plugins that allow you to build a landing page and drive traffic to it. If you've read my previous article on getting more leads, you know the importance of A/B testing the landing page. And again, WordPress plugins come to your rescue.

P.S. Instead of having forms on your landing pages, you can have popups, but I personally do not recommend using them.

To nurture your leads, you need to be in touch with them, and the best way to do so is via email. That's why you need to have forms on your website, so people have somewhere to fill out their contact info. Another shameless plug, you can try 10Web Mobile-Friendly Drag & Drop Form Builder. To be able to use these emails efficiently, it’s important to have a form builder that has integration with the email marketing tool you prefer, so it sends the data of your new subscribers directly to the tool.

Create a Thank You page

Once you're done with creating your landing page, it’s time for the logical next step: Figuring out what happens when your website visitors submit a form. It's key to remember that your goal is to guide your potential customers to do the next steps of the funnel. In this case, it can be, for example, asking them to verify an email address or to check their email for the ebook you promised, or simply telling them that you'll be sending them weekly newsletters from now on. All of that usually happens on a “Thank You” page that opens when a form is submitted. Of course, you can also do this by automatically changing the text of your landing page.

After your new “Thank You” page is ready, all you have to do is simply connect your landing page to it. I'll show you how to do it using 10Web’s Form Maker plugin, but you're free to use other WP sales funnel plugins as well.

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After installing WordPress Form Maker, click on the plugin in the left section of your WP admin, add a new form, customize your fields, and publish it. Once your form is published, go to the settings as shown below, and select “Actions after Submission.” Here you can mark the “Page” option and select the “Thank You” page you created before.

Sales funnels, WordPress, and e-commerce

Do you want to create a sales funnel for your ecommerce shop? First of all, great idea, you should totally do that, and second of all, you can build an ecommerce website and its sales funnel using WordPress. For this, you’ll need another plugin, WooCommerce, which easily transforms your website into an ecommerce shop where you can add products and manage all aspects of your business directly from the WP dashboard. WooCommerce also has integration with payment gateways like PayPal or Stripe.

Tracking the success of your WordPress sales funnel

I’d like to quote myself here:

A sales funnel is practically useless if you don’t have the tools to analyze and optimize it. WordPress is a goldmine of such tools and gives you the opportunity to optimize your sales funnel to your heart’s content.

To be able to capitalize on your sales funnel, you need to track it, analyze the results, and use that data to improve your implementation. This may sound like a lot of work, which it is, but thanks to Google Analytics integration, it’s much simpler. Check out our latest tutorial on how to install GA4 on WordPress, and get the ball rolling.

That’s it, now get to work

Creating a sales funnel is a must for any business, so if you’ve been procrastinating, take this as a sign from the universe to start working on it.