Ecommerce Marketing Funnel Guide: From Awareness to Retention

An ecommerce marketing funnel is a series of steps that guide potential customers from initial awareness to becoming loyal advocates of your brand.

The funnel starts with the awareness stage, where 70% of potential customers are introduced to your brand through social media, online ads, and content marketing.

At this stage, it's essential to grab their attention with engaging content and compelling offers, as 60% of customers will make a purchase based on a recommendation from a friend or family member.

The next stage is consideration, where 40% of customers start researching products and evaluating their options.

An ecommerce marketing funnel is a map of your customers' journeys, consisting of five stages: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Post-purchase, and Customer. These stages represent how you attract, convert, and maximize value.

The funnel begins with Awareness, where someone experiences your brand for the first time. This is a critical stage, as it sets the tone for the entire customer journey.

The five stages of an ecommerce marketing funnel are:

Understanding these stages is crucial to creating a user-friendly and worthwhile customer journey, ensuring potential visitors become repeat customers.

An ecommerce funnel is a map of your customers’ journeys, consisting of five stages: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Post-purchase, and Customer.

The Awareness stage is where someone experiences your brand for the first time.

Traffic sources are a balancing act between net-new audiences and product-fit shoppers. The former is about incrementality, while the latter is about profitability.

The five stages of an ecommerce funnel are not linear, but rather cyclical, with each stage influencing the others.

Here are the five stages of an ecommerce funnel:

The top of the ecommerce marketing funnel is where it all starts. This is where you attract new customers and get them to notice your brand for the first time.

Site visitors are exploring and discovering what's on offer, and they may not yet have a clear sense of their needs or goals. They're likely looking in many other places as well as your site.

Acquisition is the lifeblood of growth, which makes traffic sources a balancing act between net-new audiences and product-fit shoppers. The former is about incrementality; the latter, profitability.

To drive traffic and brand awareness, marketers work on creating engaging content, like quizzes and opt-ins, that capture users' attention. For example, a quiz for finding the perfect coffee can attract 10,000 visitors from one influencer's content.

Here are some examples of top-of-funnel marketing strategies:

These strategies help you drive traffic and build awareness, setting the stage for the next stages of the funnel.

At the awareness stage, potential customers have low-to-zero awareness of your products and brand, and demand generation occurs primarily through paid social with a focus on Meta. Paid social ads are like billboards, general and broadly targeted, and loaded with your brand's overarching message or value proposition.

To reach increasingly wider audiences, DTC brands like HexClad create binge-worthy cooking content on YouTube, TikTok, and TV commercials, directing visitors to best-selling collections or long-form landing pages. A long-form landing page typically includes reasons why "you'll love" it, us-versus-them comparisons, and the same video as seen on TV.

Paid social ads can also target people who need more information about your brand, and in such cases, organic content and social ads go to your brand's homepage. For example, Ten Thousand's homepage includes general information about its mission, lifestyle imagery and videography, and multiple products from its collections.

As people move from the awareness stage to the interest stage, they become interested in your brand's story or the pain point you may be solving. At this stage, people are "considering" your product and may have realized they have a problem in your awareness stage content. They may subscribe to your newsletter, download your content upgrade, or connect with you on social media to learn more.

The Awareness stage is where potential customers have low-to-zero awareness of your products and brand. It's the top of the funnel (ToFu), and demand generation occurs primarily through paid social with the lion's share on Meta.

Think of these ads like billboards: general, broadly targeted, and loaded with your brand's overarching message or value proposition. HexClad, for example, creates binge-worthy cooking content on YouTube, TikTok & TV commercials.

To expand the awareness stage and reach a wider audience, consider creating content that's engaging and informative. This could be in the form of edutainment, like HexClad's cooking content, or simply providing general information about your brand and products.

For instance, Ten Thousand's homepage targets cold audiences with a general message about its mission: "To create gear that's built to perform." This type of content helps to build awareness and establish your brand's identity.

Here are some common characteristics of the Awareness stage:

The goal of the Awareness stage is to introduce your brand to potential customers and establish your brand's identity. By creating engaging and informative content, you can build awareness and attract new customers to your brand.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a key strategy for increasing traffic to your site without increasing spend. SEO improves your products' organic discoverability on search engine results pages (SERPs), most notably Google.

By honing off-page SEO, you can select the right words in terms of monthly search volume and improve your domain authority through high-quality backlinks to your site. Great on-page SEO demands placing your keyword into the right places, such as the URL, H1-H4 headings, alt texts on images, and variations throughout the body copy.

Pages and blog posts that answer specific questions can make your brand the first result when someone is looking for a product to solve their need. For example, Filterbaby ranks for queries like "water filter skincare" and "best water filter for clean skin".

Here are some key aspects of SEO to keep in mind:

Review sites, such as mindbodygreen and Reddit, can provide trusted, third-party validation via listicles or first-person advertorials. This can help potential customers get a better sense of your product's value and quality.

The consideration stage is where visitors start to think about whether your product or service is right for them. This stage is crucial, as it's where you need to build trust and showcase the benefits of your product.

Ten Thousand takes a three-pronged approach to the consideration stage, using a combination of long-form landing pages, product-description pages, and short-form landers. Their ads are broadly targeted, with messaging like "Workout gear that moves with you."

Visitors to the product-description page (PDP) come from slightly more specific ads, such as "Shorts for every workout." On the PDP, you'll find detailed product information, immediate purchase options, and social proof.

User-generated content (UGC) is also a key part of the consideration stage. Filterbaby's landing page uses interactive data, scientific research, and case studies to show how their product helps reduce impurities.

To move visitors from consideration to purchase, you need to convince them that your company is the best choice. This can be done by highlighting better price, features, user experience, or product selection.

Glossier's cosmetics and beauty ecommerce funnel is a great example of a successful consideration and purchase stage. They don't center on a single hero product, instead dividing their range into two primary categories: skincare and cosmetics.

Here are some key elements of Glossier's successful consideration and purchase stage:

By having congruence between their ads, landing pages, product pages, and carts, Glossier is able to effectively move visitors from consideration to purchase.

Retention and Loyalty is a crucial part of any ecommerce marketing funnel. By rewarding repeat customers and creating a sense of community, you can increase their lifetime value and get them to come back for more.

To start, consider implementing a loyalty program that offers credits, exclusive access, and other perks. For example, Starbucks' rewards program is iconic, while Peach & Lily's Peach Perks doles out points for new purchases, reviews, and social media shares. Obvi's Club Obvi offers an all-encompassing discount and free shipping, gifts, and access to new products, but charges a membership fee to ensure only the most devoted customers are part of it.

Here are some tools to increase lifetime value:

These incentivize more spending, gamify the customer experience, and get current customers excited about sharing your brand with friends and family.

Customer Retention is key to a successful business. You want to keep your customers coming back for more, and one way to do that is through loyalty programs. By rewarding customers with credits and exclusive access to new launches, you can increase repeat purchases and maximize their lifetime value (LTV).

Think of Starbucks' iconic rewards program, which has been a huge success. Similarly, Peach & Lily's Peach Perks program offers points for new purchases, leaving reviews, and sharing on social media. Obvi's Club Obvi takes it a step further by charging $129 for membership, but offering discounts, free shipping, gifts, and access to new products.

Customer retention can also be achieved through community building. Jones Road Beauty's JRB Roadies Facebook Group has over 45,000 superfans who share beauty tips, exchange ideas, and come together in one place centered around the JRB ethos. This intimate community helps to build brand loyalty and encourages customers to return.

Here are some tools to increase lifetime value and customer retention:

These tools incentivize more spending, gamify the customer experience, and get current customers excited about sharing your brand with friends and family. By implementing these strategies, you can increase customer retention and drive repeat purchases.

Adapt Naturals is a great example of a company that's nailed retention and loyalty. They offer a Core Plus Bundle that's been adopted by thousands of their followers, who have become repeat customers.

Their email marketing is key to this, with a daily email for the first two weeks and beyond. This is a great way to keep customers engaged and informed.

Adapt Naturals' landing pages are also worth noting, with lengthy, information-rich copy and explainer videos that teach and persuade with a scientific tone. They even have a dedicated FAQ section on their product pages.

Their product detail pages (PDPs) are clean and easy to navigate, with clean product images, ingredient lists, and clickable star ratings. They also offer comparison tables and lifestyle photography.

Here's a breakdown of what makes Adapt Naturals' PDPs effective:

Their cart is also designed to suggest supplements that match the customer's previous selection, and automatically applies discounts at checkout. After the customer submits an order, they receive a confirmation page with opportunities to increase customer value, such as review requests and replenishment reminders.

This is a great example of how Adapt Naturals uses a post-fulfillment flow to keep customers engaged and loyal. They also offer personalized thank yous and continued brand building, which helps to build trust and loyalty.

The sales and optimization part of your ecommerce marketing funnel is where the magic happens. You've got your potential customers flowing through the funnel, and now it's time to make sure they actually make a purchase.

The customer is in control of whether they progress down the funnel and at what stage, if any, they drop out. But as a business, there's a lot you can do to improve the chances of an ecommerce site visitor moving through the stages and deciding to buy.

To optimize your conversion funnel, start by running a funnel analysis to identify the stage most in need of improvement. Then, run a deeper funnel analysis on that stage to pinpoint the exact step that's causing the problem.

A/B testing is a great way to fine-tune your conversion funnel. It involves making a hypothesis about the step causing the problem, trying to disprove it, and then repeating the process until you find the solution.

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Here are the general steps to optimize your conversion funnel:

The conversion funnel has four main stages: awareness, interest, desire, and action. The awareness stage is all about making people aware of your brand and capturing their attention. The interest stage involves sparking interest in your products. The desire stage is about nurturing a relationship of trust and desire to buy. And the action stage is the final step to achieve your goal.

To improve the profitability of your business, you need to make tweaks at every stage of your funnel. Here are 5 key strategies to boost your funnel's success:

If you're not using retargeting as part of your marketing campaign strategy, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to engage with your target audience and bring them back to your sales funnel.

Retargeting allows you to reengage users who have shown interest in your products but haven’t converted, building a bridge back to their shopping journey and the opportunity to convert. By implementing strategic retargeting campaigns, you can bring back lost leads and guide them towards completing a purchase.

To improve the profitability of your business, you need to make tweaks at every stage of your funnel. Here are 5 key strategies to boost your funnel’s success:

To outperform the competition, consider the example of The Honest Company. They sell healthy, chemical-free cleaning products, beauty products, baby products, and more.

Their product pages feature guarantees, trust badges, and awards that build trust with potential buyers. This is a key factor in convincing visitors they're better than their competition.

The Honest Company's approach shows that highlighting your unique selling points can be a powerful marketing strategy. By focusing on what sets you apart, you can attract and retain customers.

Identify your most popular or highest-profit products and use them as a starting point for building trust with potential buyers.

Search Engine SEM is a highly effective marketing strategy for ecommerce businesses.

You can target specific keywords that answer your target search intent, such as "best + CATEGORY".

Popsmith goes hard on SEM through Google Shopping and Amazon because it's a niche product that targets specific searches with high intent.

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SEM is one of the most direct response stages of an ecommerce funnel, where you bid on branded keywords like "BRAND + CATEGORY".

To succeed with SEM, focus on targeting specific searches with high intent, rather than broad searches with low intent.

The use of "teaser" screens, such as binary questions that prompt visitors to continue with a click, can be an effective way to engage users and increase conversions.

Popsmith, Simple Modern, and HexClad each use this strategy to great effect.

Organic social media is a powerful marketing tool that can be produced and distributed in-house or earned from outreach, relationships, and product seeding.

Facebook and Instagram are the largest platforms for paid marketing, so it makes sense to harness that same network for organic reach, particularly short-form Reels.

TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat are also great platforms to consider, depending on your target audience.

Earned social media comes from influencers or micro-influencers, creators, and customers who post about your products to their followers.

Product seeding is one of the quickest ways to gain fans and build relationships, and it's a simple gesture that returns long-term dividends in awareness, consideration, and even conversion.

Content from unsolicited posts makes for top-performing paid creative because it's authentic and natural.

Retargeting in your strategy is a game-changer. It allows you to reengage users who have shown interest in your products but haven't converted, building a bridge back to their shopping journey and the opportunity to convert.

Retargeting campaigns can be implemented strategically to bring back lost leads and guide them towards completing a purchase. This is especially effective when combined with personalization.

By targeting users who have already shown interest in your products, you can increase the chances of conversion and reduce the cost of acquiring new customers. This is a key advantage of retargeting over traditional advertising methods.

Here are some key benefits of retargeting:

Retargeting can be used in conjunction with other marketing strategies, such as social media advertising, to create a comprehensive marketing campaign. By targeting users across multiple channels, you can increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and drive more sales.

Building trust with potential customers is crucial, and one effective way to do this is by providing social proof.

The Honest Company showcases trust badges on their product pages to build trust with potential buyers.

Reviews and testimonials from happy customers can help build confidence in your business, just like The Honest Company does.

Positive customer feedback is a great asset, and you can showcase reviews, testimonials, and satisfaction ratings throughout your customer experience to instill confidence in potential customers.

Showing social proof can be as simple as highlighting awards your products have won, like The Honest Company does.

Customer reviews and ratings can be a powerful tool to build trust and increase sales, especially for high-profit products.

By showcasing social proof, you can validate a potential customer's decision to purchase from you and build trust in your business.

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Carnivore Snax is a prime example of a successful food CPG marketing strategy. By leveraging social proof at every step of its funnel, Carnivore Snax establishes its uniqueness and validates its premium price.

To achieve this, Carnivore Snax relies on Google Shopping and sponsored ads, as well as securing the top spot in organic search results for queries like "best carnivore snack" and "best carnivore meat snack." This organic result leads to its homepage, where new visitors are greeted with an endorsement from Joe Rogan, taste testing videos, and a plethora of customer reviews.

Carnivore Snax's shopping ads stand out from competitors due to the high quality and quantity of ratings. Its blog covers a range of search-friendly topics, including the carnivore diet, and even addresses objections and competitors.

To align its creative, audiences, and offers across social platforms, Carnivore Snax replicates socially native content, focusing on sensory experiences and customer reviews. This approach is reflected in its product-centric, UGC-heavy videos and long-form, complimentary videos on landing pages.

Here's a breakdown of how Carnivore Snax matches its demographics, products, and offers across social platforms:

By hosting its collection grid and product pages through FERMÀT, Carnivore Snax enables seamless navigation and reduces friction in the shopping experience. Its "Add to Bag" feature goes straight to cart with free-shipping thresholds, related upsells, and options for immediate checkout or proceeding to its Shopify store.

To incentivize recurring orders, Carnivore Snax emphasizes subscriptions with deeper discounts on product pages and in the cart, alongside its Hunt Membership. A final add-to-purchase product is positioned below free shipping, and affiliate offers are presented on the thank-you page, along with email and SMS campaigns between confirmation and delivery.

Your website's user experience (UX) is crucial for ecommerce success. Pave the way to conversions by making your site easy and enjoyable to use on desktop or mobile, and providing the best possible accessibility for all users.

A clear and compelling call-to-action (CTA) is essential for guiding users towards the desired action. Effective CTAs should be strategically placed throughout your funnel to prompt visitors to take the next step in their journey.

To showcase product features and benefits, use a variety of content types such as video, images, infographics, blog posts, and feature editorials. This will help consumers understand your products better.

Tracking website sessions by individual product pages can reveal which products get the most traffic. Use this information to inspire campaign and product development.

To optimize your conversion funnel, you need to identify the stages that need improvement. A/B testing is a great way to fine-tune your funnel and improve performance.

Mobile users expect a seamless and frictionless user experience when shopping online. Ensure your site is responsive, loads quickly, and has a seamless checkout process on mobile devices.

A/B testing your entire website's UX is crucial for ecommerce companies. Test elements such as button colors, button type colors, global language, pop-up size, load speed, font size, and cart icon versus bag icon.

Easy navigation is key to a successful ecommerce site. Plan out your customer journey and make sure there's a clear path for visitors to follow from start to finish.

Each step of your conversion funnel should be designed to provoke a specific action. Keep your stages simple and focused on the ultimate goal.

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To measure the effectiveness of your ecommerce marketing funnel, you can use specialized funnel analytics and measurement software to track progress through your funnel according to your own definition.

Using software that offers a bird's-eye view of your entire funnel and its components is a great way to keep track of performance. It can help you understand which areas of the funnel need work and identify the non-converting stages.

A conversion funnel analysis shows you which area of the funnel needs work by giving you insights into what percentage of users make it from one step to the next. This can help you find and improve the non-converting stages through conversion funnel optimization.

Data is your compass in optimizing your conversion funnel, and it can help you understand your customers, build better campaigns, and identify the shortcomings and strengths of each step in your customer journey.

Some top metrics to analyze and optimize your funnel include conversion rates, bounce rates, and user behavior. You can also collect metrics across multiple funnel stages, channels, and campaigns to get a comprehensive view of your funnel's performance.

Benchmarking your typical conversion rates from email blasts is essential, with the conversion rate for the apparel and accessories subset of the ecommerce industry being 0.09%, and boosting to 0.12% during the winter holiday months.

To analyze your marketing funnel, you'll want to monitor and analyze key metrics regularly, such as conversion rates, bounce rates, and user behavior, to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to enhance performance.

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Let's take a look at some real-life examples of ecommerce marketing funnels in action.

No Sailor, a popular TikTok creator, incorporates Popsmith into a trending video featuring Dune's sandworm popcorn buckets. This is a great example of how to leverage social media trends to drive traffic to your website.

The Honest Company is a great example of a brand that uses a full-circle marketing funnel. They start by creating informative content on their blog, which helps them show up in search results and builds trust with their readers.

One of the key elements of The Honest Company's funnel is their use of free trials and product bundles to drive interest and sales. They offer free trials of their products on their blog and homepage, and also have product bundles that allow customers to save money.

Here are some examples of what's in the consideration stage of an ecommerce marketing funnel:

These are just a few examples of how brands are using ecommerce marketing funnels to drive traffic, sales, and customer loyalty. By understanding these different stages and how they work together, you can create a more effective marketing strategy for your own business.

To create an effective ecommerce marketing funnel, you need the right tools and techniques.

Email marketing automation is a powerful tool for nurturing leads and driving conversions. It allows you to send targeted and personalized messages to customers at each stage of the funnel.

A/B testing is a technique used to compare two versions of a page or email to see which one performs better. This can help you optimize your marketing efforts and improve conversion rates.

Segmenting your audience is key to creating targeted marketing campaigns. By dividing your customers into groups based on their behavior and preferences, you can tailor your messaging to each group.

Retargeting ads can help you reach customers who have abandoned their shopping carts or visited your website but didn't make a purchase. These ads can be highly effective in driving conversions and recovering lost sales.

The average order value (AOV) is an important metric to track in your ecommerce marketing funnel. By increasing AOV, you can boost revenue and improve overall performance.

By using these tools and techniques, you can create a marketing funnel that effectively guides customers through the buying process and drives conversions.

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Retention and Referral is a crucial part of the ecommerce marketing funnel. It's where you keep customers coming back and encourage them to bring in new business. Referral programs work well for high-ticket items, as seen with Lomi's "Refer a Friend" program, which offers $50 for successful referrals.

To get customers to refer friends, you can make it easy for them to do so by asking for their friends' names and email addresses, like Burrow, Jack Archer, and Casper do.

Referral marketing is a hands-off approach to word-of-mouth marketing, which is a valuable asset for any business.

Here are some examples of customer retention strategies:

These strategies show that customer retention is about more than just making sales – it's about building relationships and loyalty with your customers.

The abandoned cart and recovery process is a crucial part of the ecommerce marketing funnel. Abandoned cart emails can be set up to remind customers they've left your site without finishing their purchase.

A staggering 75% of customers will abandon their cart and not complete the checkout process, making it a key area to focus on. This metric is what's considered a lever, and by improving it, you can improve your overall conversion rate and the success of your entire marketing funnel.

Your cart recovery rate measures how frequently abandoned checkouts are later completed, typically within a 14-day period. Aim for a conversion rate of 18% from your cart recovery emails to see significant improvements.

By recovering more carts, you can improve your conversion rates and ultimately boost sales. In fact, a 18% conversion rate from cart recovery emails is a realistic goal to strive for.

The key to successful cart recovery is to make your email offer more enticing. Test different email opt-in offers, such as flat-rate discounts versus percentage of the sale, to see what works best for your customers.

A 8% product page conversion rate is a benchmark to aim for, so make sure to regularly test and optimize your product pages to improve this metric.

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Email marketing is a crucial part of an ecommerce marketing funnel, and it's surprising how many businesses don't utilize it effectively.

You can set up abandoned cart emails to remind customers they've left your site without finishing their purchase, which can help recover lost sales.

Aim for an email opt-in conversion rate of 1.95% or higher to grow your email list and increase the number of leads in the middle of your funnel.

To improve your email opt-in conversion rate, regularly test different email opt-in offers, such as flat-rate discounts versus percentage of the sale.

Tempting customers with targeted offers can show them you understand their tastes and can offer what they're interested in, which can lead to higher conversion rates.

Your cart recovery rate measures how frequently abandoned checkouts are later completed, and aiming for an 18% conversion rate from cart recovery emails can improve your overall conversion rates.

Analyzing the funnel of a specific campaign can provide valuable insights, such as an email sign up rate of 11% and a purchase conversion rate of 1.3%.

A conversion funnel is a path you've designed for customers to follow through your site. It's essential to make your site easy to navigate, and conversion funnels can help with that.

To optimize your conversion funnel, start with the primary sections of the funnel and then drill deeper into the section that needs the most work. This top-down approach can help you identify problem areas and make improvements.

A conversion funnel should have stages designed to provoke specific actions. Your site should be easy to navigate, and your testing should be continuous to make sure your funnels are delivering the most value.

To analyze your conversion funnel, make a hypothesis about the results of your analysis and then try to disprove it. This approach can help you identify areas for improvement and validate your changes.

Here are some key takeaways to keep in mind: