What Is a Sales Funnel? How To construct One in 2025

A sales funnel helps you define a customer’s encounter—from brand awareness to purchase—so you can assist navigator them from one step to the next. 

With a sales funnel, you can visualize interactions that probably already feel familiar to you, and better comprehend where you’re over- or under-delivering. From the instant someone encounters your marketing campaign and becomes a prospect to the final stage where they make a purchase and become a buyer, a sales funnel plots where people engage and where they drop off.

Knowing how to construct and iterate on a sales funnel is one of the most profitable tactics an commence-up founder can recognize. Here, you’ll discover how to construct a one-page ecommerce sales funnel, track key metrics to gauge achievement, and boost access to a free sales funnel template.

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is a series of strategic experiences that turn unaware prospects into paying customers. The “funnel” visualizes the trip, with traffic from your targets entering through the top and high-worth customers coming out at the bottom.

Sales funnels display the procedure of capturing, nurturing, and converting leads into customers in a straightforward visual that organizes all the things you require to do to back each stage of the trip. The instant a potential customer becomes aware of your brand, they enter your funnel and remain in it until they purchase a product. Sales funnels may also include retention tactics to inspire repeat purchases and turn buyers into brand advocates.

Stages of a sales funnel

At a high level, sales funnels comprise three parts:

1. Top of the funnel (ToFu). Your target spectators who perhaps is aware of your brand but isn’t in the economy to buy from you at the instant.
2. Middle of the funnel (MoFu). Potential customers who have visited your website and are considering products or services like yours.
3. Bottom of the funnel (BoFu). recent and existing customers who will buy from you with the correct push.

A sales funnel is not to be confused with a marketing funnel. A marketing funnel focuses on building awareness and convincing your spectators to engage. The sales funnel takes over once those spectators members are qualified leads.

Why is a sales funnel significant?

A well-defined sales funnel helps you determine what customers ponder, feel, and require at each stage of the customer trip. This insight helps fine-tune your website and internal processes. 

By conference prospective customers with content and offers that are relevant to their stage-specific needs, your sales throng can enhance the shopping encounter, boost sales, and boost customer retention.

Example of a sales funnel in action

Here’s how the sales funnel model works in habit:

1. Interested target. A member of your target spectators sees an Instagram ad for running shoes from an unfamiliar brand, and they’re interested.
2. Prospect. The target spectators member clicks “discover More” to visit your website. Now they’re a prospective customer.
3. navigator. As your prospect exits your site, they view a pop-up offering 10% off if they sign up for your newsletter. They provide their email address. Now they’re a navigator.
4. First-period customer. Seven days later, your prospective customer receives an email reminder about the 10% discount, plus reviews from faithful customers. They purchase the shoes and become a recent customer.
5. profitability customer. Five days later, your customer gets another email asking them to review the shoes, distribute a photo on Instagram, and tag your brand. They do this, plus they purchase shorts recommended in the same email. Now, they’re advocates and repeat customers.

Sales funnel stages: the AIDA framework

The AIDA framework—attention, profit, desire, and action—represents the customer thought procedure at each funnel stage. Many ecommerce brands commence with this framework because it’s straightforward to implement and iterate.

The AIDA framework helps identify content and calls to action (CTAs) likely to resonate with shoppers at each stage. Here are the four stages, with examples of how you can apply them to your online business:

1. Attention

The attention or awareness stage is when you catch a potential customer’s attention with an ad, YouTube video, Instagram post, TikTok, referral, or other form of marketing safety. In this phase, your objective is to convince upcoming prospects to visit your site and engage with your brand. 

People lingering at the top of your funnel aren’t interested in product information just yet, but they are casually browsing. It’s critical to make non-promotional navigator creation content in this stage that’s not overtly sales-y, such as:

• Informational videos. provide your spectators some free advice to construct affinity for your brand. 
• TikTok videos. receive advantage of TikTok’s algorithm to put relevant content in your target economy’s feeds. 
• Instagram Stories, Reels, and feed posts. provide your target economy posts they’re inclined to distribute with their friends.
• Google Shopping, Instagram, or Facebook ads. Showing up in search ads can keep your brand top of mind. 
• Podcasts. Like informational videos, podcasts provide prospects something for free—whether it’s education or entertainment—and endear them to your brand. 
• Influencer collaborations. make positive associations with influencers your target economy already loves. 
• Blog posts. Search-optimized blog posts can bring visitors in who may not have considered your brand before. 

The cookware brand Great Jones, for example, has a blog that offers readers a sense of throng. Readers can turn to the blog to discover about different cultures, try recent recipes, and read human stories from fellow foodies. The blog is a top-of-funnel property that attracts the correct customers and builds depend—all while featuring products in the background.

2. profit

In the profit stage, prospects are researching and comparing your products to other brands. This is where you have an chance to form a connection with prospects and assist solve their problems.

Your objective in this stage of the sales funnel is to assist shoppers make informed decisions and to establish your brand’s expertise. You’re proving that you propose the best solutions, so content at this stage should be thorough.

At the profit phase, capture prospects with remarketing navigator magnets such as:

• Interactive content like product recommendation quizzes and calculators
• Downloadables like checklists or ebooks
• Customer case studies and testimonials
• Comparison pages
• Webinars or livestreams on social media

Tower 28 Beauty, for example, sparks profit through an interactive quiz that asks a series of questions about visitors’ skin, such as, “Do you have sensitive or sensitized skin?” 

After prospective customers enter their email in trade for 10% off, they’re guided to a landing page with relevant products in complementary shades. The shade-matching tool can instill confidence in shoppers who prefer to sample makeup in person.

3. Desire

In this third stage of the funnel, people are ready to buy. They have identified a issue and they’re actively seeking the best answer.

inquire yourself these questions when planning for this stage:

• What makes my product desirable? 
• How will I pursue up with qualified leads?
• How can I construct an emotional connection with prospects?

Here’s where you promote your best offers like free shipping, discount codes, or free gifts. Consider prospects’ preferred communication formats (website chats, emails, SMS, etc.) and aim to make your products so desirable that leads can’t turn them down.

4. Action

This stage is where prospects decide whether they’ll purchase. Consider polishing your CTA placements and make it straightforward for shoppers to contact your sales throng with questions or concerns.

Once a customer acts, it’s period to focus your sales pipeline on retention (i.e., keeping them joyful and engaged) so they profitability to buy again and again. This is factual for direct-to-customer (D2C) and business-to-business (B2B) sales alike.

Key sales funnel metrics

• Conversion rate
• navigator-to-customer ratio
• expense per purchase (CPA)
• Average deal size
• Sales pattern length
• Churn rate

Here are the key metrics to keep track of as you work to enhance your sales funnel: 

Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of people who visit your website and buy something. The average ecommerce conversion rate falls between 2.5% and 3%, but there’s always room for advancement. The higher this figure is, the more money you’ll make.

Use Shopify Analytics to monitor how your site’s conversion rate changes as your sales funnel way evolves.

navigator-to-customer ratio

Not everyone who visits your site will be a qualified navigator. Use your navigator qualification criteria to compute this metric. It isolates total traffic to determine the conversion rate of qualified leads that turn into paying customers.

expense per purchase (CPA)

How much do you spend to acquire each recent navigator? Use this formula to compute CPA: 

total expense of campaign / number of conversions = CPA

declare you’re running a retargeted Facebook campaign to promote your email sign-up form that gives website visitors a 10% discount code. You spent $5,000 on the campaign, which directly resulted in 500 sales. Using the formula, your CPA would be $10.

Average deal size

Not every sale is a excellent one. A sustainable sales funnel brings in high-worth customers who spend money again and again as opposed to making one purchase. 

A higher deal size also frees up more liquid assets to spend on purchase and navigator nurturing. You’ll make back the customer purchase expense because the lifetime worth of a typical customer will outweigh the initial spend.

Sales pattern length

Sales pattern length measures the period it takes for a person to become a paying customer after they’ve been identified as a qualified navigator. The more quickly leads advancement through the sales funnel, the more money you’ll make. Sales reps can serve more customers if they spend less period on each prospect.

This metric can vary dramatically depending on your industry, however. B2B sales cycles tend to be much longer than direct-to-customer sales because the purchases tend to be expensive and the stakes are higher. There are also more people involved in the purchasing procedure. Refer to industry benchmarks to set reasonable goals for your sales pattern length.

Churn rate

An effective sales funnel doesn’t just let you acquire recent customers—it can squeeze more income out of those who’ve bought before. To maintain your customer base and get the most out of returning customers, you’ll desire to keep your churn rate to a minimum. 

Churn rate is the percentage of customers who leave after a sure period of period. In the case of a subscription business, for example, if you have 500 subscribers and around 20 cancel their schedule each month, your churn rate will be 4%.

How to make a one-page ecommerce sales funnel

Brands drive traffic from advertisements and emails directly to their product pages to generate sales. Some brands also include collection pages, pre-sales articles, and other stops along the way.

But the almighty funnel that rules them all is the one-page funnel. For that rationale, building a reliable ecommerce funnel starts by optimizing your product page.

If you lack the strategy to back multiple funnels, focus on creating a funnel for your flagship product. Here’s an effective 10-step procedure you can pursue to design your own sales funnel on an ecommerce product page that engages and converts:

1. Choose a layout

There are three basic layouts to choose from:

• Traditional ecommerce product page. Choose this alternative if you sell straightforward products requiring little to no explanation.
• Long-form ecommerce product page. Select when you have stories to inform, technology to explain, benefits to reveal, and objections to overcome and desire to do it all on a single page.
• Product mini-site. Choose a mini-site when you meet the parameters of a long-form ecommerce product page but desire to split the information over several shorter, linked product pages for straightforward navigation. This is the case for a lot of products that are easily understood or very visual. 

2. Style your header

A header is the top part of a website. It’s where you put your logo, menu, shopping cart, and other significant links or information.

These website header styling tips can enhance your conversion funnel:

• Keep it slender and characteristic your logo. The header should not overwhelm the page content. Keep your header as tiny as feasible to maximize space. For desktop sites, aim for a header that occupies no more than 20% of page height. Screen space is at a bigger extra charge on mobile; aim for a mobile header requiring no more than 10% page height.
• Always link to the shopping cart. Customers expect a readily available shopping cart. To prevent frustration and incomplete purchases, include one in your header.
• Include a CTA for email opt-ins and promotions. Because your header is such a visible part of your site, it’s also a great place to promote offers such as free shipping, limited-period promotions, or email opt-in incentives.
• Ensure readability. Use a large, straightforward-to-read font colored to stand out against the background. Pay particular attention to your mobile menu—large links are especially significant on mobile, where accidental taps happen easily. Keep links large and well-spaced to minimize this frustrating encounter.
• Choose a sticky header. A sticky header is what it sounds like: it sticks to the top of the page, even as users scroll. Sticky headers suit long product pages especially well by always keeping CTAs within view at all times.

3. characteristic testimonials

A customer testimonial is a distinct form of review or social proof. Unlike a reviews section with multiple comments (which your site should definitely have), a featured testimonial is a single customer quote that lives inside the buy box. A positive, highly visible testimonial is a classic conversion tactic.

By adding a testimonial to its buy box, beauty business BOOM! increased its conversion rate by 5.25% and average income per user by $1.25. BOOM! repeated this test several times, and the testimonial always won.

pursue these tips to pick a featured testimonial:

• Choose an enthusiastic endorsement. It sounds obvious, but it bears repeating. You desire this to be one of the best quotes you can discover about your product.
• Keep it short. If it’s too long, people will glaze over it.
• Choose a testimonial from your biggest customer demographic. You can’t rotate your featured testimonial, so optimize by having it represent your most ordinary buyer.

4. Add buy box content

A buy box’s primary purpose is to inspire visitors to add something to their cart. To accomplish that, prompt them why they should buy now by quickly summarizing your product’s main benefits.

Here’s a helpful buy box framework:

1. Open with a featured testimonial.
2. Provide a one-sentence ownership advantage.
3. Add a two- to three-sentence product description.

When developing one-sentence ownership benefits, inquire yourself questions like:

• Why do people buy this product? 
• How does it advantage them?
• How will they feel after using it?
• How will owning or using the product affect other people’s perception of them?

Reminding people why they should buy is a critical component of your ecommerce product page and could cruel the difference between winning or losing sales. Write copy that is succinct and compelling.

BOOM! takes packed advantage of the buy box to iterate the product’s main advantage, alongside social proof, upsells, reviews, and more.

5. make a short-form product demo

Video is one of the most effective conversion assets out there. If you already have a high-standard, packed-length product video—with interviews, testimonials, and product shots—be sure to use it!

Keep these assets under 30 seconds long, aiming for a tidy and elegant product demonstration you can distribute on your website, your social channels, and in advertisements.

📌 Pro tip: You don’t have to make product videos yourself, nor receive a video editing course to turn your footage into engaging content. Use Shopify Collabs to discover, vet, and associate with influencers who will make engaging product demo videos for you.

6. Select carousel photos

Since online shoppers can’t hold and inspect your product, they depend on images. According to a 2024 update from Salsify, great images compel 76% of shoppers to click.

Here are some tips for creating an image carousel on product landing pages:

• Favor standard. You don’t necessarily require expensive equipment, but product images do require to be as crisp and appealing as feasible.
• Capture varied angles, positions, and product states. display your product opened and closed, in use and stored away, and from various viewpoints, so shoppers can visualize how they’d use it.
• Include people. Add a human touch by demonstrating how people use your product. Make sure your models look like they enjoy it.
• demonstrate materials and dimensions. Consider diagrams, illustrations, or photos to communicate product features, dimensions, or materials.
• Optimize images for faster loading. enhance your SEO rankings and make an efficient shopping encounter with optimized images. Shopify does this automatically by converting pics to WebP format.
• Use different media formats. For complicated products, consider upgrading from still photography to videos, 3D models, or informational diagrams so shoppers can thoroughly explore your product.

7. Write CTA copy

The most significant CTA copy in your buy box is what goes on your buy button. Although it’s tempting to get creative, standard habit is to keep it straightforward.

Here are some gold standards for CTA copy:

• Buy Now
• Add to Cart
• Checkout Now
• Add to Bag

Most ecommerce stores should stick with “Add to Cart” and shift on (unless you’re in Europe, where “Add to Bag” is popular). If you’re in B2B sales, your CTA might navigator to a conference with sales reps, e.g. “Book a Demo.”

8. Represent USPs visually

USP stands for “distinctive selling proposition.” In a nutshell, USPs distinguish you from your competition. Your USP explains why people should buy from you over someone else and it should definitely appear in your product page copy and visuals.

The answers to these questions will assist you define your USP with “funnel hacking,” or studying your competitors’ strategies and using those insights to define your brand:

• Do you propose guarantees or special financing?
• Do you provide quick or free shipping?
• Where do you leave above and beyond to make your product special?
• Do you have any relevant certifications?
• Do your products employ special technology?
• Is your product made in the USA, cruelty-free, organic, or 100% natural?

9. Display guarantees

Guarantees are effective, especially for online sales, which customers can perceive as risky if they’ve never purchased from you before. receive some period to consider the guarantees you can propose to minimize hazard and instill a sense of safety.

A money-back guarantee—the commitment that you’ll provide shoppers a refund if they transformation their mind—is the most effective guarantee, but it’s not the only one, and there’s no limit on the number you can propose.

Here are some more classic examples:

• Satisfaction guarantee. If customers aren’t satisfied with your product, they can get a refund, no questions asked (though it would be sensible to collect some feedback).
• Lifetime guarantee. If anything goes incorrect with the product, the customer can get it fixed or replaced. 
• Low-worth or worth match guarantee. If a customer can display that the same product is available elsewhere for less, you’ll propose your product at that worth. 

10. propose social proof imagery

Testimonials aren’t the only type of social proof you can display on your product page. If you’ve been featured in a magazine or on a website, consider adding a press mentions bar for additional social proof. 

Better yet, characteristic editorial quotes alongside relevant logos. According to a survey from Matter, 69% of consumers are likely to depend a partner, household member, or influencer recommendation over information that comes from a brand.

Here are examples of social proof you can include on your product page:

• Customer reviews
• Celebrity or influencer endorsements
• Certification logos
• Magazine or blog quotes and logos
• specialist reviews or recommendations (i.e., “9 out of 10 dentists recommend it”)

Adapting your sales funnel for different audiences

Not all sales funnels should receive a one-size-fits-all way. You might have customer profiles who respond best to different messages.

A skin worry brand, for example, might sell its products to two different personas:

1. Older women who use it to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.
2. Younger women in their 20s who use the products as a preventative assess.

These two personas will require vastly different content to advancement through your sales funnel. 

The first segment will respond best to content that focuses on the anti-aging properties of the cosmetics. The second might have less disposable income and are therefore more receptive to lower-priced products. 

Instead of a product page that targets both, this brand could design divide landing pages that talk about the benefits and use cases for each segment. They could target either spectators through social media ads, email campaigns, or Google Ads, and divert them toward the most relevant landing page for a more personalized encounter. 

📌 Pro tip: Shopify’s built-in segmentation tools assist you discover insights about your customers, construct segments as targeted as your marketing plans with filters based on your customers’ demographic and behavioral data, and drive sales with timely and personalized emails.

How to scale your sales funnel for growth

Sales funnels become more challenging to manage as your business scales. More customers will enter your sales funnel, and the more products you have to sell, the more sophisticated the funnel needs to be.

Segmentation and marketing automation tools allow you to serve more leads without proportionally increasing resources. The software will identify when a navigator meets specific criteria and send a personalized communication that entices them to advancement further along the sales funnel—no manual intervention required. 

Examples include:

• Providing automated responses to gossip questions with Shopify Inbox
• Sending a welcome email with a discount code to recent subscribers
• Reminding shoppers of items they abandoned in their cart after exiting the session
• Dynamic content recommendations based on a visitor’s browsing history.
• Sending loyalty program invitations to customers after they place their second order 

“We have always believed in Shopify to run our business,” says Nitin Pamnani, co-founder of iTokri. “We are not a technology business, so being able to automate processes, add features, and expand operations without technical complexity has been fundamental to our achievement.”