Chapter 2: The Shopping Funnel
HOW GROWING CUSTOMER BROWSE IS RE-SHAPING THE SHOPPING FUNNEL
The shopping funnel is a concept that there are stages of a session that move closer to purchase. It begins with all of your sessions, and they slowly narrow down step-by-step, resulting in conversion (purchase) as the final stage. Session usage is often applied to shopping funnel steps to track this progression.
The funnel is broken into 3 parts:
Upper funnel - Navigation
Though the assumption is this is just related to the home page, by way of actual pages being viewed, navigation also includes sessions with events in search or the main menu. They are choosing a path to enter on the site.Mid funnel - Browse
This is the biggest portion of the funnel, encompassing all of your PLP and PDP activity where a customer explores what your offer is. It can be filled with decision indicators of what a user wants (and doesn’t want) provided they continue browsing after their first page.Lower funnel - Purchase
The most sensitive phase of a journey is commitment to purchase. You will still find lots of drop-off here as just because a customer views their shopping bag or enters checkout, it does not mean they will complete a transaction. Reasons for drop-off can be nuanced with shipping options, promotional prices, or just a bit more consideration.
The ideal shopping funnel
Now, it is a “funnel” because in its most idealistic state, customers start at step 1 and progress naturally (and in order), but this is just the happy path. The reality? Customers enter your site at various stages and many who convert don’t see your home page, or don’t browse and just checkout with a basket they saved from a previous session. There is less influence over what they will do within their session, but you can rely on the assumption that the further down the funnel they go, the higher their intent to purchase.
Marketing strategies need to adapt to the actual funnel which includes many entry pathways but also less pressure to complete a purchase in a single session. Customer need to browse is increasing the number of sessions to purchase.
The actual shopping funnel
We will cover each step of the funnel in the following lessons, helping you to optimise each part and understand the user needs. It’s important to remember that there are endless types of user journeys that start and end at various points, and so your strategy should always be supporting various pathways so the user can decide where they want to go next on your site.
As user browse increases, it is also common to see more sessions per user before they finally purchase. Sessions get shorter and users are digesting short bursts of content for them to think about and then return later. Sessions can even begin in the lower funnel when a user is finally ready to commit to purchase! As there would then be fewer sessions that convert, you could see the drop-out rate from PDPs to checkout increase as well as session usage of PLPs and PDPs generally surge as users browse more without intent to purchase.
LESSON SUMMARY
The shopping funnel is visually described that way because it’s assumed that in an ideal state, sessions taper off as users progress to each step
The actual shopping funnel does not progress in a linear way and actually most sites see higher entry mid funnel, changing the shape of your overall traffic patterns
This chapter will explore each section of the funnel, from the upper (navigation), mid (browse) and lower (purchase) section of your site.