The natural focus of optimization efforts for ecommerce sites is the sales funnel, which is usually comprised of the steps -or screens- that go from the shopping cart to the thank you page.

A lot of companies have teams dedicated to optimizing the funnel. Some even have one team per step of the funnel.

But sometimes this excessive focus on the funnel keeps organizations from finding funnel improvement opportunities that lay precisely outside of the funnel.

After all, the purchase is a process. And many times it stops way before reaching the cart. That is why in order to improve the funnel you need to look at the entire process, not just the funnel steps.

An example

While doing usability testing for a Client that sells electronic products who wanted to improve their sales funnel we discovered that on the product page the financing options were not clear to users. And we also learnt that this was key for deciding the purchase because of the price of the items.

So customers ended up going to competitor’s sites where finance information was much clearer.

Now, once on the funnel steps we did find some room for improvement in terms of usability and clarity of information, but these were minor details that did not significantly influence the purchase decision.

As we can see from this example, sometimes the biggest opportunities for improvement on the funnel are actually outside the funnel. If we had focused exclusively on the funnel, as the Client requested, we would have missed this key insight.

In the end, by tweaking the design and text of the financing options on the product page, we were able to significantly improve the amount of users who got to the funnel.

How did we solve the funnel problem?

In the first place, by talking to users. And this is not a trivial thing. We see a lot of companies dedicating a lot of effort to A/B tests and infinite analysis of analytics, but very few of those take the time to talk to users.

Quantitative tools are invaluable, but in and of themselves don’t show the whole story. Analytics tools tell us what’s happening (30% of users enter the funnel, 12% of users drop off on step 3), but they don’t tell us why that is happening. And if we don’t know why they’re dropping off, we can’t fix the problem.

Let alone doing A/B testing. What design alternatives (which are ultimately solutions to a problem) are we going to test if we don’t know what the problem is? Maybe that’s why a lot of those tests involve testing color variations and button sizes or placement.

Secondly, we fixed the problem by testing the entire process, not just the funnel, as the client originally requested.

The most effective way to improve the funnel is by talking to users and testing the whole purchase process. This is the only way to discover what problems are having the users, where they are encountering them, and how to fix them.

Other factors that affect funnel performance

There are other factors that affect funnel performance that aren’t even related to the site, but rather to the general purchase process and mental models.

• Not all clients come to the site to purchase. Some come to learn more about the product, some to compare prices.
• Not all clients want to buy online. Especially when the product is expensive, some choose the online channel to choose where to buy, but they prefer to finish the process in person.

It is important to keep these things in mind when working on funnel improvements. That’s why it is only by talking to users that we can not just understand what problems they have while using our site, but also their mental models, reasons for visiting, buying preferences and other things that affect the purchase process as a whole, both within and outside of our website.