10 min read
If you’re spending thousands on ads but visitors leave your site without buying, chances are your store lacks a clear sales funnel. A sales funnel guides your customers through the whole buying journey, helping boost conversion rates, increase average order value, and foster repeat customers.
In this guide, I’ll break down how to create a sales funnel on Shopify that captures interest, builds desire, and encourages prospects to buy. Read to learn how to measure your sales funnel success.
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is a framework that describes how a customer goes from first discovering your brand to making a purchase (and more). It’s called a “funnel” because many people can discover your brand, but only a portion of them turn into customers.
Unlike a marketing funnel, which attempts to build awareness about a brand, a sales funnel focuses on turning interested prospects into customers.
A sales funnel essentially has three main stages:
- Top of the funnel – people learn about your product or brand for the first time, becoming aware of a solution to their problem.
- Middle of the funnel – potential customers start to evaluate the products, compare them, read reviews, and decide whether it’s for them.
- Bottom of the funnel – people are ready to buy your product, and all you need to do is encourage them, whether with guarantees, reviews to remove purchasing doubts, etc.
Sales funnel: the AIDA framework
The AIDA framework, which stands for attention, interest, desire, and action, outlines the key stages a prospect goes through before making a purchase. Understanding them can help improve your sales funnel based on the target audience. Let’s review each stage individually.
1. Attention
The “attention” stage of the sales funnel refers to trying to gain the attention of potential customers and encourage them to visit your site. There are many ways to do it with or without ads, including:
- Social media videos – create Facebook, TikTok videos, or Instagram reels to provide your audience with relevant information that is focused on your niche but not too salesy.
- Collaborate with creators – use Shopify Collabs or reach out to social media creators and market your products through their accounts.
- Blog posts – create SEO blog posts with topics that are relevant to your niche. You can use it as an opportunity to build brand awareness or even encourage readers to check out your products.
- Social media ads – use Google, Instagram, Facebook, or other platforms to run ads about your brand or its products. If you create attention-grabbing advertisements, people can remember your brand better.
- Facebook and Google Ads for customer acquisition – One location-based strategy that’s becoming increasingly popular is geofencing. In marketing, it allows businesses to serve ads to users within a specific geographic area, such as near a competitor’s store, event venue, or retail location. The same underlying technology is also widely used beyond advertising. For example, a time clock app with geofencing, such as those offered by Factorialhr, enables businesses to track employee attendance, improve security, and streamline operational management by ensuring staff clock in only when they are at the correct work location.
2. Interest
Once you build awareness about your brand, prospects will start comparing your brand to others. This is the stage where you need to grab interest and make your store stand out. You can do this by educating potential customers about solutions to their problems or using lead magnets.
For example, the Rare Beauty store created a shade finder tool to help people find the right concealer or foundation for them. All it takes is choosing the shade range from the provided examples and selecting the undertones – the tool will then select the right foundation.
3. Desire
The “desire” funnel stage is reached when the person is ready to buy your products. Here, you have to ask yourself what makes your products stand out from competitors. For example, check if you offer free shipping, discounts, or other offers that make customers want to buy.
Also, make sure your product pages remove any purchasing doubts, whether using FAQ sections or customer reviews, and make it easy to contact your customer support team.
4. Action
When a prospect decides on a purchase, it’s called the “action” stage of the funnel. Here, you have to ensure that your product page has a clear call-to-action (CTA) button and a swift checkout process.
After a successful purchase, you can adopt practices to ensure first-time buyers become repeat customers. You can do this by upselling products post-purchase, ensuring fast shipping times, clearly communicating order status, or following up with discounts or feedback requests.
Why is creating a sales funnel important?
Creating a sales funnel helps guide visitors through a purchasing journey until they make a purchase. Here’s why a sales funnel is important:
- Organizes the buying process. With a clear sales funnel, you can break down the prospect journey into clear stages, like awareness, interest, desire, and purchase.
- Identifies drop-off issues. A sales funnel helps you find out at what step your prospects fail to convert, so you can optimize content, design, checkout, or other areas.
- Helps increase conversions. With a well-designed sales funnel, you can encourage more sales to your Shopify store, turning more website visitors into buyers or even repeat customers.
How to create a sales funnel on Shopify: step-by-step
Creating a sales funnel on Shopify takes rethinking your layout, design choices, and content to ensure potential customers reach beyond the action stage of the AIDA framework. Here are the steps to make your sales funnel effective:
1. Decide on a layout
When creating a sales funnel, you first need to organize a layout for your Shopify store. Creating a clear layout helps with the first step of the sales funnel – awareness. When your store is organized, customers can easily explore what it has to offer.
Will it be a one-product website or a traditional store? Here’s the difference:
- Traditional eCommerce store – if you’re selling multiple products, this layout is your best option. This kind of website would include a home page, collection pages, product pages for each item, and other necessary pages.
- Single-product website – if you’re only selling one product, then you can create a website with simple pages centered around explaining its benefits. It could include pages like how it works, frequently asked questions, and the main product page.
2. Design your header
Your website’s header is the very top part of your pages. It usually includes your brand logo, navigation menu, search bar, shopping cart, and other important elements. Here’s how you can optimize it for the sales funnel:
- Use a smart sticky header. Sticky headers can take up 10% of space on your mobile site, which can become annoying to users as they scroll. Instead, use a smart sticky header. When a visitor scrolls down, the header floats off the screen and only floats back up if they scroll up.
- Use the space smartly. Only add the pages that the visitor could benefit from to your header. Don’t overload it to ensure easier scannability and navigation. This will ensure that your customers find products more easily.
- Promote discounts. A header can be a great place to promote your latest offers by adding it as a category, encouraging customer interest in your offerings. For example, Patagonia's website includes the “Sale” link with a red font instead of a black one, instantly drawing attention as soon as you open their homepage.
- Insert the shopping cart icon. Make sure the shopping cart item is always available on your website header. This makes it easy to access when a user is ready to make a sale.
3. Optimize the product buy box
A “buy box” is crucial for the sales funnel because it’s the main section of an eCommerce product page that customers use to find product details and add it to their cart. It satisfies the negotiation stage of the sales funnel, letting visitors quickly scan whether a product and its purchasing terms satisfy their needs.
The main components of the buy box are usually:
- Product name – clear and straightforward product title.
- Product description – short section describing the benefits of the product.
- Shipping information – add easy-to-scan information about shipping, such as an icon with a “free shipping for orders over 50$” statement or information on expected delivery.
- Price – make sure the price is visible and captures attention.
- “Add to cart” button – include a button that adds the product to the cart.
- “Quick buy” button – some stores also include “buy now” buttons that allow site visitors to check out faster, reducing steps in the sales funnel.
- Specifications or technical information – if applicable, include extra details in collapsible windows, like materials, sizing guides, usage guides, or other sections.
Shopify itself recommends adding buy box content and also offers opening with a featured testimonial that’s short, enthusiastic, and represents the target audience.
4. Include product reviews in product pages
Customer reviews on product pages help potential buyers overcome purchasing doubts. For example, VSmith Media’s case study revealed that an apparel brand increased conversions by 20% just by including authentic reviews.
If you’re selling multiple items, each product page can include a reviews section. Together with a buy box, it’s another step that helps with the interest stage of the sales funnel, encouraging visitors to make a decision on whether the product matches their expectations.
“Whether we all like it or not, trust in sales and marketing is at an all-time low. Who do they trust? They trust your customers. That’s the only people they trust these days,” claimed Brian Halligan, the CEO of HubSpot.
Product reviews can be displayed straight after the buy box section. Here’s an example of Patagonia’s product page – the review section includes ratings, fit information, and activities that the clothing item is suitable for (like hiking or casual wear).
According to research by BigCommerce, 72% of consumers say that positive reviews and testimonials increase their trust in a business. So, including them in your product pages can drive more conversions in the long run.
5. Choose CTA text
Call-to-action (CTA) button text should be simple and clearly imply the action. On product pages, it’s best to stick to options that are known to work, such as “Add to Cart,” “Buy now,” or “Checkout Now.”
However, if you’re selling services or digital applications, you may want to experiment with other words. For example, a 90 eCommerce website analysis by Ed Leake found that the most used words on CTA buttons were as follows:
| Word | Count |
| now | 22 |
| get | 21 |
| free | 19 |
So, if you’re selling a product that also has a free version, you could test “Try for Free” as a CTA button. Or if you’re thinking of a CTA button text to add to your homepage, you may add “Shop Now.”
6. Add product demos
Some products are best presented with product videos, like tech products, gadgets, or anything else that requires setup. It helps visitors increase confidence in their buying decision, especially if it answers their questions like “will it be hard to use?” or “is this what I’m looking for?”
What matters is that you keep product demos short. Demonstrate how to use the product, what issue it solves for the buyer, and what it feels like in real life. You can even use Shopify Collabs to get creators to create product demos for you.
7. Use a photo gallery
A photo gallery is one of the first areas site visitors turn to when they open a product page. According to Think with Google, people who shop on their smartphones at least once per week say that they turn to product images the most.
A photo gallery usually includes one or two main product images, thumbnails of other images or product videos, swipe or click navigation, and zoom functionality.
Here’s what to know about creating an engaging photo gallery that drives your sales funnel:
- Make it high quality. Product images must be high-quality to help the visitors evaluate their details.
- Keep the background simple. Make product photos from all angles and keep the background simple to focus the visitor on the product.
- Include use case photos. Add one or a few photos where the product is in use, like if you’re selling bedsheets, include an image of a bed made with the bedsheets.
- Illustrate specifications. For some products, it’s useful to include photos that showcase their specifications. For example, if you’re selling furniture, add one picture that showcases its dimensions.
- Optimize images. Make sure your images are compressed and enable lazy loading to keep page load times fast. You can automate image compression and lazy loading setup on Shopify using TinyIMG.
8. Show off your unique selling proposition
Unique selling proposition (USP) refers to a statement that makes you stand out from competitors. It helps show visitors why they should buy from your brand, strengthening your sales funnel.
Here’s what to keep in mind:
- Think of how your product is different compared to competitors.
- What do you provide that competitors don’t – free shipping? A “Buy now, pay later” (BNPL) option?
- Are your products approved under any certifications?
- Any badges you could add to your products? For example, eco-friendly, made from natural ingredients, vegan-friendly, etc.
9. Optimize the checkout process
One of the most important stages of sales funnels is closing the sale through a checkout process. The more simplified the checkout is, the lower cart abandonment rates you can expect. Christian Holst, the research director of Baymard Institute, said “the average e-commerce site can improve its conversion rate by 35% solely through design improvements to the checkout process.”
Here are a few things to note on how to make checkout easy:
- Minimize checkout steps. Provide an option for users to check out quickly, minimizing the number of steps. Only ask for essential information that is necessary for selling and delivering the products.
- Enable guest checkout. For new customers, guest checkout allows buying a product without creating an account. Instead, you can offer customers to sign up after they complete the purchase.
- Show progress indicators. Name each checkout page and show how customers are progressing through them. For example, you can add three sections: delivery, payment, and order review.
- Enable multiple payment methods. Popular methods for checkout include credit cards, PayPal, BNPL, and others. However, for smartphone shoppers, using Google Pay and Apple Pay can make checkout even faster. The easiest way to provide multiple payment options is to use Shopify Payments.
Best Shopify apps to build a sales funnel
Some Shopify apps for conversion-optimized page building, product reviews, or upselling can help you easily optimize your sales funnel. Here are some time-tested recommendations:
- Pagefly – a page building app that helps create unique pages without coding, letting you easily include trust badges, testimonials, clear CTAs, and other conversion-focused elements. You can try creating one page or section for free; paid plans start from $18/month.
- TinyIMG – SEO and speed optimization app that helps you optimize page load times and gain more traffic through search engines without technical knowledge. For example, according to a case study, TinyIMG has helped the Caravan Cover Shop boost speeds by 3 times and achieve an SEO score of 90. The app is free to install, while paid plan prices start from $14/month.
- Loox – Shopify app that helps boost customer trust through customer reviews. It automates review collection and lets customers include photo and video reviews to boost credibility. Prices start from $12.99/month.
- Upsell.com (ReConvert) – an app that helps increase average order value through upselling. You can use it to add one-click upsells to sell more during checkout or promote products in post-purchase pages. The app’s price starts from $4.99/month.
How to measure sales funnel success
If you understand how your site visitors move through your site, you can optimize the purchasing process and drive even more sales. Here’s what you can track to measure how your sales funnel is working:
- Conversion rates – you can use the “Conversion rate over time” report on Shopify Analytics to monitor how your site’s conversion rates change as you optimize your sales funnel.
- Average order value – measures your average amount spent per transaction. You can check it through the “Average order value over time” report on Shopify Analytics. If it’s low (people are buying one product only), focus on optimizing your upselling strategy to increase it.
- Bounce rates – indicate how many users leave your site after viewing one page only. If bounce rates are high, you may need to identify the issue and fix it, such as optimizing the user experience or improving page loading times.
- Churn rate – shows the percentage of customers who stop buying from your store over a specific period. You can count it using this formula: (customers at the beginning of the period - customers at the end of the period + new customers acquired during the period) / customers at the start of the period. The lesser the number, the better your sales funnel works.
- Cost per acquisition (CPA) – measures how much you spend to gain each new customer through advertising or marketing. This helps calculate whether your sales funnel is profitable.
Common Shopify sales funnel mistakes to avoid
There are a few mistakes you should avoid when trying to create a successful sales funnel on Shopify. Here are the main ones:
- Ignoring the target audience. Make sure you clearly define your target audience to create effective messaging and offers. Knowing who you’re selling to helps ensure your content focuses on the correct pain points.
- Poor product pages. Even if your advertisements are engaging, a lack of product information, unclear images, or confusing CTAs can fail to convert visitors.
- Lack of follow-up. Create follow-up emails for customers who abandon the shopping cart to encourage them to finish their checkout. You can also follow up with thank you letters, promoting complementary products, or providing small discounts.
- Not tracking metrics. Always track conversion rates, bounce rates, and CPA to understand if your sales funnel is optimized effectively.
- Abandoning page speed. Page load times can influence your store’s conversion rates. For example, a study by Think with Google found that decreasing mobile site load times by even 0.1s improved conversion rates by 8.4% for retail.
- Forgetting mobile optimization. Many potential buyers will come to your store through smartphones, so it’s important to improve the user experience for visitors with smaller screens. Review how your product pages look on mobile, choose a bigger button size, and make sure the content is easy to scan.
Final thoughts
A sales funnel guides potential customers from discovering your brand to making a purchase. When well-optimized, a sales funnel can not just increase conversion rates but also encourage repeat purchases and turn first-time buyers into loyal customers.
Creating a sales funnel begins with understanding your target audience and focusing on crafting content that’s relevant to their needs. After optimizing each sales funnel stage, including awareness, interest, desire, and action, you should monitor metrics like conversion rates and CPA to find out if it works.
If your budget allows, external tools can help make sales funnel optimization faster and easier. You can make use of page builders like Pagefly to create conversion-focused pages or SEO and speed optimization apps like TinyIMG to improve the user experience and gain more prospects.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, Shopify supports the building of sales funnels through theme, app, and marketing strategy customization. It offers third-party Shopify apps that help build awareness, spark interest and desire, and ultimately drive action. This includes page builders, SEO & speed optimizers, upselling or customer review apps, and more.
Building a well-optimized sales funnel on Shopify starts with building awareness through ads, SEO optimization, social media presence, or other strategies. Then, you should spark interest and desire through user-focused product pages, upselling, and abandoned cart recovery.
Yes, Shopify continues to be one of the leading eCommerce platforms in 2026. Over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025 period alone, merchants achieved $14.6 billion in sales – up 27% from the previous year.
