How to Create a WordPress Sales Funnel: The Ultimate Guide [2022]

Tavleen Kaur
January 5, 2022
How to Create a WordPress Sales Funnel: The Ultimate Guide [2022]

A WordPress Sales Funnel generates leads for your business and converts them into buyers.

While your website showcases different products, a sales funnel focuses on a select few.

Funnel components, such as order bump (checkout page offers) and post-purchase one-click upsells, help increase the average order value.

In this post, we'll look at how a funnel works, the components involved, and how you can set up a Sales Funnel in WordPress.

Let's begin.

What is a Sales Funnel?

Imagine, you’re away for a vacation. In the mountains, on the bay. Anywhere and everywhere you wish to be.

But what about your business in the meantime?

There is a way for you to keep generating leads and sales, even when you're away.

Just put up a Sales Funnel in place!

WordPress Sales Funnel representation

A Sales Funnel is a multi-step process that takes visitors on a distraction-free, well-planned journey.

First, they sign up for a free offer, then you nurture them and direct them to a sales page to buy the paid product.

The entire sales process is fully automated - which is the best part!

Why Do You Need a Sales Funnel?

If you have invested your time and effort in ranking organically on Google, you know how hard it is!

Thanks to competition and an ever-changing algorithm, even quality content struggles to get on the first page.

On the other hand, the competition is raising ad costs, and turning ads into profits is getting harder.

With these competitive forces in place, a business that thrives is one that has a system to generate leads, drive conversions, and maximize its order value.

A sales funnel helps you do that.

While your website needs active promotions to convert visitors into paying customers, a sales funnel can generate more sales with lesser effort.

An ad for say, a free cheat sheet can help people sample your product. And these leads can be directed to the sales page to buy the product.

Further, the order bumps and one-click upsells can help boost the return on ad spends.

The best part about having your sales funnel run on WordPress is that you don't have to pay high monthly costs each month to be on a SAAS-based funnel builder.

How Does a Sales Funnel Complement a Website?

Often people think that having a website is enough, and they do not need a Sales Funnel to go along. But that is not the case.

While funnels work linearly from one point to another, websites don’t have any particular format for visitors.

Sales Funnels are like fixed roadmaps where each turn is predetermined. This is not the case for a website where the traffic moves anywhere and everywhere.

A website can be distracting because it promotes several products.

Even when a visitor lands on the product page, they see suggestions in the form of cross-sells and upsells. Take a look at this typical product page:

Sales page example

A funnel, on the other hand, is designed to direct the traffic through specific steps. It helps pave a guided path for the prospects to follow.

Your store/website can continue to serve as a catalog, while your sales funnel in WordPress focuses on getting more traction for your best-selling products.

You can create as many sales funnels as you like for different products that have some traction and social proof and use targeted ads to send traffic.

The Five Types of Sales Funnels You Should Know About

Sales Funnels come in all shapes and forms. There is no one definite way to design a Sales Funnel for your business.

Here we've listed five most converting funnels that you need to know about:

1. The Opt-in Funnel

An Optin Funnel consists of an Optin Page and a Thank You Page.

On the Optin page, you offer the users products of value, for free. This helps you capture attention.

They give you their email address to which you send automated follow-up emails to nurture them into buying your product.

Further through your pitch emails, you can send them to the sales page to buy the product.

Make sure that the paid offer is a perfect extension of the free offer and builds on it.

It is a great way to generate leads to launch other products down the lane.

2. Free Plus Shipping Sales Funnel

I’m sure you’ve seen ads of companies selling free products on Facebook or Instagram.

What you don’t realize is that it is not entirely free, and they are charging you for the shipping.

This is the Free Plus Shipping model. Here you offer the customers valued products for free, and they only pay for shipping.

Getting a product that actually costs money for free excites the customers enough to not be bothered about the shipping cost.

It is a great method to bring in customers and have them test your products.

Your aim is not to earn profits on this product but break even at the max. With the shipping cost, you just want to cover the cost of acquiring a customer. 

One-click upsells and order bumps help make profits at the backend.

3. Automated Webinars

Webinars are really popular these days. Especially with the pandemic, everything has shifted online, seminars being no exception.

As webinars are informative and of great value, it is a very good incentive to attract traffic to your page.

These can be both pre-recorded or live. You can inform the prospects of the date and time of the webinar on the signup page.

In case of a pre-recorded one, provide them with the replay video right after they sign up and hook them.

Your emails will help you build hype in the days leading up to the actual webinar.

You can set up a simple process on your website and let this WordPress sales funnel work for you.

4. Challenge

“Lose weight in 10 Days”, “5-Day Keto Challenge”, “Improve your cooking skills in 15 minutes every day”

Do these sound familiar?

These and so many more variants of challenges are all over the web.

Challenges are designed to rope in interested prospects by enticing them with the promise of a fixed result at the end of an activity.

The challenging part of the deal excites the users to test their limits and do better. As they say, "Challenge me and see me thrive".

They are like marathons. Here people do not compete against one another but make progress toward a shared goal.

Using this to your advantage, you can create a page where you ask people to take up the challenge.

This is an easy yet effective way to gain people’s attention and trust. It makes them feel you’re aligned with their vision.

5. Self-Liquidating Sales Funnel

The Self-Liquidating Funnel is a very popular front-end funnel that generates revenue at the backend funnel.

In this funnel, your main goal is to break even on your ad costs with the initial purchase.

You don’t need to match your product cost or even gain profits from this product. That will all be taken up in the backend funnel.

You just need to sweeten your way into your customers’ good books by giving them a heavily discounted product at first. Then engage them with complementary offers after they’ve made the purchase.

But make sure that your small offer is beneficial for your customers providing them with a quick win.

After the first sale, you can get the customers to spend more on upsells, downsells, or bundle purchases. Having relevant products that naturally follow suit with the initial offer is best suited for this funnel.

Self-Liquidating Funnel is a very efficient funnel to generate leads and gain profits from the said leads.

The Components of a High Converting Sales Funnel

There are various components of a sales funnel.

Your ad grabs their attention, the freebie builds interest, the paid product evokes desire, and of course, the upsells maximize the value of every sale. 

Let’s look at the different components of a sales funnel and see how they take people from getting interested in your offering to finally buying it.

Here are the components:

1. An Optin Page

This page is key to lead generation. You offer free products in exchange for the customer’s contact information, especially their email address.

This gets your foot in the door, and you can nurture your leads into buying customers over time.

Take a look at this opt-in page template in FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels):

Optin page template by FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels)

Offer them free courses, audiobooks, cheatsheets, one-time access to your webinar, or even a free sample of your new product.

This would get them excited and, in turn, give you their email address.

2. Sales Page

A Sales page is like the face of your brand, your money maker. It is what excites and convinces the customer to buy your product.

This has all the required information about the offered product for the site visitors so they can make an informed decision.

Include the benefits, testimonials, videos to convince prospects. Take a look at this sales page:

Sales page template by FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels)

You must have a clean and easy-to-scan sales page in place. A busy page will distract the customers and make them feel overwhelmed.

So keep it simple but attractive should be your mantra.

3. Checkout Page

Some would say that after a sales page, it doesn’t really matter how you design the checkout. But that’s not true.

The checkout page is your final bid to persuade your visitors into paying for the products they’re considering.

Everyone gets anxious before paying. Calming your prospective customers at this point is very crucial.

Take a look at this beautiful checkout:

Checkout page template by FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels)

A clean straightforward page doesn’t cause any confusion and reduces the level of anxiety.

Add a few trust-building components such as testimonials, bullets on why buy from you, and what they get, on the checkout page to win brownie points with your prospects before they pay.

You can customize the form fields and even add optimizations such as Google Address Autocomplete, Express Checkout, and more.

And all these customizations and optimizations are possible with our WordPress sales funnel.

4. Order Bump

Order bumps are the add-ons one makes before checking out and making payment. It is a way to advertise another relevant product on the checkout page.

It adds value to your existing product and increases the checkout total as well.

You can create rule-based order bumps so that shoppers see the offer that's right for them based on items in cart, cart total, etc.

Order bump offer on the checkout page

You can let the customers choose the variant of the product they wish to get. Or even offer some discount on the order bump product to make it a more lucrative deal!

5. One-Click Upsell

This is your chance to raise your order value with the WordPress Sales Funnel.

Till the initial sale, you would have made just enough to match the cost of acquiring the customer.

But to earn more profits in the same sale, you should offer your customers post-purchase upsell offers.

Since people can accept the offer with one click, it makes buying convenient. Take a look at the page:

One-click upsell template by FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels)

FunnelKit allows you to present rule-based one-click upsells so based on the user's order total, item bought, category of purchase, first order, and more.

What's more? You can have a series of upsell and downsell offers, the next offer in the sequence can show based on whether the user accepted or rejected the previous offer.

Offering related products to the bought item is a clear-cut way to sell more and earn more on the same order.

6. Thank You Page

This is your final interaction with the customer for this transaction. You confirm their purchase and thank them for shopping with you.

In the case of a digital product, you either deliver it on this page or give them step-by-step instructions to access it.

But, in the case of a physical product, tell the customer of the expected delivery date, and provide them with any other information.

Investing time in designing pages that look professional and polished will be very rewarding in the longer run.

Let's now create a WordPress Sales Funnel.

How to Create a Sales Funnel in WordPress (5 Easy Steps)

In this section, we'll be answering to all your 'How do I create a sales funnel in WordPress?' queries.

Creating a WordPress Sales Funnel with FunnelKit is a very easy process.

In 5 easy steps, you can have your very own sales funnel to roll out in the market.

Step #1: Add a New Funnel

After activating and installing FunnelKit, go to FunnelKit >> Funnels from the WordPress menu.

Add a new WordPress sales funnel by clicking on the "Add New Funnel" button.

Add a new funnel

You'll be directed to the templates page.

Select the 'Sales Funnel' templates and choose your favorite page builder.

  • Start from scratch: This is a blank template that you can design from scratch to create the sales funnel that matches your brand. There is no fixed template here and you can choose the steps you want to build the funnel.
  • Pre-built templates: FunnelKit provides you with many utility-based templates that can be customized to fit your requirements.

FunnelKit also integrates with and provides pre-built templates for some popular page builders. But if your preferred builder is not on the list - then click on Other to design funnel pages using any page builder using shortcodes.

Click on the template you'd like to import.

Select the Sales Funnel templates and choose your favorite page builder

Next, you'll be able to preview the template. This template contains 4 pages:

  • Landing page
  • Checkout page
  • One-click upsell page
  • Order confirmation page

Click on 'Import This Funnel' and name your new funnel - 'WordPress Sales Funnel'.

Name your funnel - WordPress Sales Funnel

Click on 'Add' will add your WordPress sales funnel to your workspace.

Step #2: Import and Customize the Pages

Once you’ve selected the funnel template, import it with a single click.

On importing a sales funnel template, a complete funnel with a Sales Page, Checkout Page, Upsell Page and Thank you Page will get imported.

You can add more pages to your default funnel by clicking on Add New Step at the bottom of the funnel builder page.

Steps in your sales funnel

Next, customize the pages on your WordPress sales funnel.

All you need to do is, click on each page of the funnel and customize the content within.

You can change the design and layout of a funnel page in Elementor.

Customize the pages in your funnel

Step #3: Add Product(s) to Checkout

Click on the name of your checkout page and select the 'Products' tab.

Edit the checkout page

Search and add the product you wish to design the checkout page for.

Add products to your checkout

Important: Ensure that the products you wish to add to the checkout page are already created in WooCommerce.

Adjust the product quantity and set the discount percentage if you want to offer a discount.

Adjust the product quantity and set the discount percentage if you want

Click on 'Save Changes' and you’re done!

You can even add more than one product to your checkout page. Just use the drag & drop feature to decide the order in which they are showcased.

Step #5: Add AOV Boosting Bumps and Upsells

A Sales Funnel gives you opportunities to offer relevant products to your users at different stages of their purchase.

Order Bump

An Order Bump shows complementary product offers on the checkout page, that can be added to the cart with just one click.

To add an order bump, click on the +Order Bump icon: 

Add order bump to wordpress sales funnel

Name the Bump and then click on it to begin editing.

Edit the order bump

First, you need to search for and add a product to your Bump. This product should go well with your main product for better conversions.

Add a product to your order bump

Once you've decided on the product you wish to offer, click on the Design tab to style your Order Bump.

Change the Bump Skin, content and more to make it more attractive to the customers.

Change the Bump Skin, content and more to make it more attractive to the customers

Save the design and you're all set.

You can even set conditions to define when a particular Bump is applied to a checkout page from Rules, or change the position of bumps on the page from Settings.

Similarly, you can add a one-click upsell to your funnel.

One Click Upsell

Just like with other pages, click on the One Click Upsell to edit it.

Click on upsell on your wordpress sales funnel

Next, add products to the upsell offer.

Choose the product in the search bar. You can also add products that offer variants, such as different colors and sizes.

add product as an upsell

Modify the quantity and discount details of the added product.

Product added as an upsell offer

You can add more than one product to an offer, and more than one offer to an upsell.

After adding multiple offers, interlink the offers using Dynamic Offer Path.

This allows you to decide which page (a new offer or thank you page) should be showcased next in case your first upsell offer accepted or rejected.

dynamic offer path for multiple upsell offers

Under the design tab, click on edit to customize the page in Elementor, just as you customized the sales and the checkout pages.

Edit upsell page design

There are a total of 10 special widgets for you to use and personalize the upsell offer page.

Customize your one click upsell offer

You can apply rules to these offers as well to determine when a particular upsell offer is made to a customer, and change offer priority, order behavior, and more from settings.

Remember! You can add more than one bump, and more than one upsell offer to your sales funnels.

You can also edit and customize your thank you page in the same way.

Ready to Leverage the Power of WordPress Sales Funnels?

That's it! So we looked at how you can create sales funnels in WordPress easily.

FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels) gives you every feature, template, and page you need to create a high-converting WordPress Sales Funnel.

Apart from what we discussed above, you get the Contacts activity feature that allows you to view each step of your buyer's journey and how much they spent at each step.

Analytics to see how your funnels are performing; more specifically, you can see - visits, revenue, and even revenue per visit.

And there's the performance dashboard where you can see your top-performing pages and funnels at one glance.

A/B testing the price, messaging, product for every offer in your sales funnel ensures that you are not just guessing what your prospects might be interested in.

And so much more! Get your hands on FunnelKit, the ultimate funnel builder, and create your own Sales Funnel in WordPress today!

Author: Tavleen Kaur
Do you know after Amazon implemented the 1-click buy system, their sales shot up year-on-year hitting $88.9 Billion mark in 2014? Jeff Bezos attributed it to a friction-free & streamlined buying process. At FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels), we're determined to give you the tools you need to do the same in your business. I am Tavleen and I help you get there faster.
Ready to create revenue-generating funnels in Wordpress?
Click Here

Increase your sales, starting today.

Grab Our Exclusive Bundle
chevron-down