Sales Funnel vs Website: Do You Need Both? (2024)

I get asked this question, ” What is better: website or sales funnel?” Well, if this is a question you have been wondering about, then worry no more. In this post, I will define what a sales funnel is, what a website is, and whether you need both or just one of them.

If that sounds interesting, let’s dive into it.

First, you need to understand the purpose of a website, and the purpose of a sales funnel. This will help you understand what you need and why there are two different things.

Related Content: What Is A Sales Funnel? Full Explanation

What Is A Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel has two purposes:

One is to increase the amount of money off of each customer that you get. A sales funnel typically includes upsells, down sales, small offers, and large offers. What that means is that if you’re able to take somebody and put them through this funnel, whereas you would have made $10 or $20 off of them, you could make $30 or $40 on the average customer.

This is because there are more offers and they are being offered in an orderly and synchronous way. You’re increasing the average cart value of each person who goes through your sales process.

A sales funnel can also be used to capture emails. Before you sell a customer a product, you can use a sales funnel to capture their email address. This way if the visitor isn’t willing to buy any products from your funnel yet, you can still sell to them later down the road, with an automated email sequence (autoresponder).

There are other purposes, however, these are the major ones.

You might like: 13 Best Sales Funnel Builders To Increase Sales.

What Is A Website?

A website, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same purposes as a sales funnel does.

One of the biggest purposes of a company’s website is to bring in traffic. What I mean by that is, most website owners utilize SEO to be able to rank high on Google to drive traffic.

When people get to their site, they send the traffic through sales funnels at some point.

The point of that website was to rank in Google to bring in traffic. Besides bringing in traffic, a website can be used as a place where your customers can always go back to refer to the company.

Let’s say if someone wants information about you or about the services you provide, all they have to do is to go to your website to refer. So, a website is a place where people can go to always find you and find anything they need from you or your brand.

Website va Sales Funnel – What’s The Difference?

So, from the purposes of a website and a sales funnel established above we can see that a website is used to bring in traffic whiles a sales funnel is used to generate sales and leads.

Furthermore, a website is more of a general place where your customers can refer to, to get what they want from you and your company.

Whiles a sales funnel on the other hand is purpose-driven. What I mean by a funnel is purpose-driven is, someone might purchase something from one funnel but then they might not be able to go back into that same funnel to find access to your blog– or they might not be able to find other things you sell by going into one funnel they visited at one point– it is not like an all-inclusive thing.

Whiles a website is all-inclusive. But you could obviously create the sales funnel selling multiple related products in the same ”customer journey”.

So, this is the major difference between sales funnels and websites.

Sales Funnels or Website: What Should You Use?

From the previous section, it is no debate that both a website and a sales funnel are crucial parts of any business.

For your online business to succeed you need to get people’s attention to your product or service by using your website (or ads). After getting their attention, you need to have a way of persuading them to purchase your product and you can do this by using a sales funnel.

So, generally, I will say every online business needs both a website and a sales funnel.

Yes, you need both, because you need a website as a stagnant place always resides and always come to and find anything they need about you and your brand– Then you can link out to your sales funnel and sell your product(s) or service.

So, no doubt you need both!

Where Does A Sales Funnel Fall Short?

I mean if you look at Clickfunnels, you’ll see that you can kind of Jimmy-rig websites and stuff inside ClickFunnels, but that’s not what ClickFunnels is built for. It was built for sales funnels. They do not have a built-in menu option and things like that. Like I stated they Jimmy-rig the websites and make them work but that’s not what it was built for.

There are a lot of things that go into ranking on Google, an example is the structure of your website and how it is built and designed. However, ClickFunnels doesn’t consider structure and stuff.

But, ClickFunnels is a great company. If you can create high converting sales funnels.

You can rank your funnel on Google? yes, it can, however, when you look at the statistics, and you look at the logic, and you’re an SEO person, then you know you’re less like to have your funnel ranked on Google. But I mean yes, you can do it, you can make it happen, and it could work, but shouldn’t we go for like the best chance we have of bringing traffic with SEO? Which is using a highly optimized website.

Where Does A Website Fall Short?

So, all that funnels do is focus on one goal as stated earlier. So, the funnel looks very simple and clean– and with that one thing you want to do, whether that is collecting emails or collecting credit card information to build an email list. You cannot use a typical website to perform this function very well.

Regardless of the business model, you’re using, whether it is affiliate marketing or eCommerce, the first thing you need is a lead. To make money in any business, you have to generate leads. If you don’t have leads, it doesn’t matter how good your offer is, it doesn’t matter if you have the best service in the world, or the best course, if you do not have people see your offer, you won’t get many sales.

On the other hand, you can have a product that is terrible and it isn’t good at all but if you have tons of leads coming your way, trust me, you’re going to make money. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying you should sell a crappy product. What I am saying is that if someone has leads regardless if they have the best product in the world or not, they’ll still make sales.

One of the best ways to generate leads online is through email marketing and how do you get people’s emails? Well, you know the answer: by building a funnel to collect the data.

Also, you can generate leads without necessarily having a website, you can use Facebook, Instagram, Quora, Google Paid Ads, and YouTube to direct leads to your product or service and you will have to use funnels to convert these leads.

ClickFunnels has a plug-in in WordPress and you can easily add any funnel and make it a webpage on your website.

So, we can see that both websites and Sales Funnels fall short somewhere, however, to have a solid, growing business that generates leads and converts sales, you need both a website and a sales funnel.

The next thing I want to talk about is what the best website builder is, and what the best funnel builder is, and why I recommend them.

What’s The Best Funnel Builder And The Best Website Builder?

The best sales funnel builder is- ClickFunnels, and the best website builder is WordPress.

It is a great powerful combo to have both of them. The reason you need both is that they specialize in separate things. Yeah, you can build funnels in WordPress, but it is harder, complicated, and takes a lot of time.

ClickFunnels the same thing, you can build a website but it wouldn’t rank well for SEO. So, just have them both, separate them and have them integrated together. That’s the secret to success online.

You might also like: What Is The Two Comma Club In ClickFunnels?

Why Do I Recommend ClickFunnels?

Well, ClickFunnels is the biggest and best funnel building software out there. They were one of the first ones to the market, and they’ve been around for a long time making them more reliable than most funnel building services. Also, they’ve been proven to work, hundreds (if not thousands) of people have created million-dollar funnels by using ClickFunnels.

But honestly, the number one reason to be using ClickFunnel is the training. Just being part of the ClickFunnels community, you get to learn a lot about sales funnels and marketing. It is worth $100 a month, and even if you don’t use funnels, just to be part of all that is going on and connecting with the people in the community is an incredible experience. Clickfunnels recently launched a site/product called FunnelFlix. It’s has been named the Netflix for entrepreneurs and it’s one of the BEST and BIGGEST Marketing, Sales, Funnel Strategy, Business Building, and Personal Development Trainings on the Planet! All included in your Clickfunnels membership.

>> Create A FREE Account On ClickFunnels Now <<

Why Do I Recommend WordPress?

Honestly about a quarter of all websites on the internet run on WordPress. It is the most widely used website builder, and because of that when you come to things like the plugins to do all kinds of things that you might need for your website. There are plugins for pretty much everything. That’s why I love WordPress.

The next thing is just cheap labor, WordPress is so big and known by a lot of people so, it is cheap and you can get web designers to develop your WordPress site for you at a really cheap price. It’s also very simlpe to build websites yourself.

To get started using WordPress and building your website, you need to use a hosting platform. It’s basically a place where your website is ”hostes” on the internet. This is a must-have if you’re going to use WordPress. The most recommended and reliable hosting service for WordPress is BlueHost. You can get started for as little as $3/month. Best thing is, when you start using BlueHost, WordPress is pre-installed and FREE. So the only thing you need to pay for is the hosting. To get started using BlueHost, and building your website with WordPress, click the link below:

>> Click Here To Create Your BlueHost Account <<

How Do I Build a Successful Sales Funnel?

1. Research Your Competitors

Yes, research what other people marketing in your niche is using. You can simply module their sales funnel and edit a few words. So, if your competitors are consistently advertising a particular sales funnel, try to do what they are doing– I mean there aren’t any new business ideas around.

2. Give Valuable Information

Marketing has evolved over the past decades and most customers do not just want to go to a website and be told to buy something. What you need to do is you need to lead people on a journey. Sometimes you need to convince people why they need to purchase a product.

In other cases, you need to filter and understand what products are best to offer a certain customer and you can only do this by giving your sales funnel in such a way that it gives valuable information.

3. Make It Simple and Focus On One Goal

That’s all funnels do, they’re focusing on one task. With a funnel, you have one thing you want so, you want that page to be clean and simple. So, you can create a page to allow visitors to download PDFs, collect emails, or buy products etc. But as a beginner, your aim should be to collect emails.

4. Action Step

To have a successful sales funnel, you need to put up an ad, then you collect emails, then you give the customer some free information, and then you ask for the sale. You probably wouldn’t make many sales if you do not follow this process.

Well, if you follow the steps above, your sales funnel should convert a lot of sales.

If you want to get a step by step guide on how to build a successful sales funnel then check out the One Funnel Away Challenge. It’s by far the best course on the topic.

How Can I Build a Successful Website On WordPress?

1. Don’t Use Bad Hosting

The first step in creating a website with WordPress is finding a place to host it. As I mentioned above, BlueHost is the highest recommended hosting service by WordPress itself. I use BlueHost to host this exact website and I recommend you choose it too. It’s super easy to use and perfect for a beginner.

2. Make Sure Your Site Is Secure

This is because when your site isn’t secure– when someone tries to pull up your website, Google will show a warning telling them your site isn’t secured. Trust me, this can push your leads away and kill your traffic numbers– because no one wants to be on a site where they feel vulnerable.

3. Find A Great WordPress Theme

It is crucial you find a WordPress theme that gives you drag and drop capabilities. This will save you a ton of time because you won’t need to learn how to code or necessarily hire someone to create your site for you. You simply just drag and drop the features you want to add to your site.

There are a lot of WordPress themes, but the one that I actually love is the Divi theme by Elegant Themes. This theme is super easy to use drag and drop visual builder WordPress theme. It is fast, with tons of pre-made layouts, mobile-friendly, and you get tons of plug-ins.

If you like the theme that is used on this site, then go ahead and get it. It’s called Acabado. I know it’s kind of lame, but it’s super fast and simple, and that helps for SEO and traffic.

4. Optimize From the Start

What I mean by this is for you to plan out your website ahead of time to think about how you’d rank for SEO, the content you want to create, and also think about how you can make your website fast for all devices– whether tablet, computers or phones. So, take some time and think about success before you start creating it.

If you don’t know where to start exactly, and want to have someone to show you how to setup a search engine optimized website on WordPress, then I highly recommend you check out Project 24 by Income School. They’re some of the best people in the industry.

5. Keep The Focus On The Client

To be successful as an online entrepreneur, your focus has to be on your clients and not yourself. Your clients don’t care. When people are looking at businesses and reading websites, they are not there because your website has been around for years, they are there because they have a problem and they want a solution to that problem. So, people only go to your website because they think you possibly have a solution.

So, the more you address their problems, then the more they’ll get to know you, like you, and trust you– and trust me this will give you lots of leads and sales. Each and every section of your website needs to have a purpose and it has to be to drive people towards your funnel.

Conclusion

So, for every online business to be successful, you need a fast and optimized website, and a sales funnel. These two are the most powerful weapons every online business should have in its arsenal. As explained earlier, both of these come with their own flaws, however, they complement and work together really great.

So, what are you waiting for? Go and create your website with WordPress, so you can start generating traffic and build your brand. Then head over to ClickFunnels to build a sales funnel so you can generate leads and sales!