What Characterizes Sales Funnels And Websites?

Before comparing sales funnels vs websites, let’s first define what the tech world means with these two terms.

Websites

Business owners can create several web pages about its content consisting of information about the products it offers, the relevant sources regarding the sales and discounts, and the contact details of the business besides other information. All these webpages are integrated under one platform under a common domain name and given the tag of a website. People across the globe can get access to the website through their servers and communicate with the business end to purchase products and services from the website.

Sales Funnels

A sales funnel is more built around leading the visitor to a specific path, with a clear end goal. That end goal could be to collect a lead, get a sale, or any other action that the sales funnel maker has decided on beforehand. Today you will most often find that people using advertising campaign on Google or Facebook is using some kind of sales funnel. It’s simply better to use in order to maximize return.

A sales funnel usually includes these steps:

1. Awareness stage – When the potential buyer is getting relevant information about the product and the business.

2. Consideration stage – When the potential buyer is finding the need to purchase the product.

3. Conversion – When the buyer decides to get the product or service and makes a purchase.

4. Loyalty – When the buyer keeps engaged with the business as a part of a sustainable relationship.

In that matter, landing pages, shopping carts, quick features and links, email sequencing, and contact buildup are some of the integral components of making the process complete. Read more on sales funnel stages.

Sales Funnel VS Websites

Both of them are serving as a platform through which you make your business known to the world and make it running. However, the basic difference lies in the fact that while a business website serves as an open book for a different audience to come and see, the sales funnels are solely intended to make the sell and purchase actions running. One thing presents, and the other thing acts.

The Traffic Flow

The traffic flow on a website is non-directional, which means the audience gets to decide what they want to view either directly through intentionally clicking on tabs or indirectly through opening links of a website. The funnel is unidirectional built up with the intent to make the audience go through a stepwise series of the stages mentioned above, so they make a purchase at the end.  

Conversion Rates – Sales Funnel VS Website

Conversion rate means how much your landed traffic decides to make a purchase. This viewership to purchasing ratio is leveled up through conversion rate optimization, a process that adds to the proportionality of your audience to make a purchase. If you are looking to increase your ROI and solely rely on profit earning, then paying attention to this term, also known as CRO, is necessary.

While this is not achievable using a conventional website without a landing page, shopping cart, and steps for passing the Loyalty Stage, a sales funnel gives you everything you need to optimize your conversion rates.

As the audience can go through dozens of webpages on your website via multiple ways, the funnels, in short, have a predefined pathway that leads the potential buyer to make a purchase through leading them through well-organized stages to the ultimate goal.

Unless you are working on something that involves more than just making sales, such as providing information for a cause, a sales funnel is enough to get you the products to the consumers so you can get your business flowing.

Does It Mean Websites Are Useless Now?

A website is not useless. Not at all. It has its place. Although websites are not good enough for growing an optimized business. There are some positives by having a website in addition to a funnel for collecting leads or do the selling, and these positives are:

1. Medium and large scale organizations and businesses need a website as a virtual contact for representation.

2. Websites leave a good impression for B2B communications and for developing the trust of the targeted audience.

3. Websites serve as great platforms by attracting organic traffic on the website through SEO and backlinking.

4. They serve as a comprehensive platform for delivering all your products or services along with your business portfolio.

Can Funnels & Websites Go Well Together?

Yes, a business that integrates both things that come with added benefits at all grounds. Firstly, the integration leaves an impressive impression on your audience with the features and efforts involved in the business.

This holds especially more conducive for businesses that solely depend on the Internet and have no on-land retail outlet. A bit more investment in the way you present your business can go a long way.

However, if you have a limited budget, you can replace your website with social media accounts and simply develop a sales funnel and landing pages for your products or services. This makes sure you still get to have the advantages of having a website (at least to some extent) and also make sales through funnels. Startups and small businesses can take up this path to kick start their business.

Final Words on Sales Funnel VS Website

We hope this article served as a good baseline for learning the differences between sales funnels and websites. Here’s a quick summary of what we have been discussing:

Use a website if your main goal is just to create a blog or company information page and you don’t care about collecting any type of lead or sale. If you do want leads and sales coming to your business, then you are most likely better off creating a sales funnel.