Getting paid is one of the biggest thrills of being a small business owner. But increasing your bottom line means getting your brand in front of more potential customers. Optimize your website’s marketing performance with a sales funnel.

Cue the head scratching. For those just starting out, the term “sales funnel” might be anew one. A sales funnel is simply a visual representation of the sales process. The wide top of the funnel represents your target market. As visitors come to your website they enter the awareness stage, a process of learning about you and your products. Visitors then move down the funnel. As this targeted group narrows, site visitors turn into prospects and sales leads. Sales leads (fingers-crossed) become customers.

Sales funnel basics

Using a sales funnel can help you identify problematic, clunky, or missing parts of your site. Here are four ways to give your sales funnel a boost:

Attract visitors

It’s impossible to create an effective e-commerce sales funnel if you aren’t attracting the right customers. With that in mind, the top portion of the funnel is created by generating traffic.

There are various ways to boost customer acquisition: search engine optimization,pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, and social media. Experiment with a few. Move forward with ones that provide the most ROI for your business.

To attract potential customers, you’ll need a solid understanding of your target market.Researching your audience and their buying habits allows you to determine how best to reach this group.

Focus on design

It’s not enough to draw visitors to your site; you’ll need to provide an engaging and easy-to-use website that reflects your brand and products. Create a clean, visually attractive site design and include compelling content that is both original and benefit-focused. Ensure your site is easy to navigate and feature fast load times. Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites, so be sure that yours is easy to navigate on a smartphone.

Stay in touch

Keep in contact with your customers. Email auto-responders allow you to inform customer prospects about upcoming sales and other events. You’ll want to tailor communication to particular groups of clients based on their specific needs and demographics.

Emails might direct customers to your social media channels or directly to your site. Make the most of your social presence–offer incentives and limited-time discounts to create a sense of urgency to purchase.

Supporting Your Sales Prospects

Just because you have visitors, doesn’t mean you have sales. Encourage customers to buy by making them feel confident about purchasing your goods. Consider providing incentives to purchase now rather than later.

Social proof is an effective way to encourage purchasing. Sharing reviews can influence potential customers through the voice of current customers.

Provide sales support. Along with a phone number, you might consider providing live chat support. Create a frequently asked questions page with basic info on shipping and return policies.

Make purchasing goods easy. Choose an online shopping cart service that is secure, easy for customers to navigate, and one that integrates with your e-commerce payment processing service. Accepting payments on your website should be seamless for the customer. Many payment companies offer easy integration with financial management software (e.g., QuickBooks Online).

Finally, a sales funnel isn’t a static creation. You’ll want to continually analyze your funnel based on audience responses and research. The more you refine your funnel, the greater the benefit will be to your business, your brand, and your bottom line.

With online retail bigger than ever, there are a few important things to know to help you achieve success as a small business owner. Looking at your business from the customer perspective and anticipating their needs can go a long way.

Here are 10 of the most common e-commerce pitfalls and simple ways to avoid them.

1. Poor customer service

Be it phone, text, or chat; make it simple for customers to speak with you. Learn how to set up credit card processing on your website correctly. Create a process for returns and refunds. Add a frequently asked questions section to your website.

2. Lack of product images

A picture can be worth a thousand sales for online retailers. Show multiple product shots from various angles. Selling the same product in multiple colors or patterns? Include color swatches or additional product shots.

3. Incomplete product descriptions

Images are a must but they can’t do all the work. Product descriptions should cover all the selling points and explain how the product is made, what it does, or how it works. Be clear but thorough. Consider using bullet points to make the content easier to scan.

4. Complicated checkout

Accepting credit cards in today’s small business marketplace can translate into closing every sale and delivering good customer experience. Checkout should be a breeze once you’re set up to accept credit cards on your website. Customers should be able to complete a transaction in as few clicks as possible. Add a guest checkout option to make it even speedier.

5. Lack of shipping options

Everyone likes options—especially for shipping. Offer a variety of shipping methods in terms of delivery time and price. It’s hard for a customer to justify making a purchase if there’s only one shipping option and it costs as much as the item they’re buying.

6. Bad site search capabilities

Good search capabilities can be the difference between making a sale and causing a headache. Customers should be able to search using a few keywords and find what they need. Most website platforms offer a search engine plug-in, but make sure you’ve optimized your product descriptions with keywords and tags as well.

7. No social presence

A strong social media presence is key. You can increase visibility and enable shopping directly through channels like Pinterest and Instagram. Twitter and Facebook are valuable promotion channels that allow people to spread the word about your brand. Add social sharing buttons to all product pages.

8. Desktop-only site

Consumers spend a lot of time browsing and shopping on mobile devices. Don’t miss a sale due to a bad mobile site experience. Make sure your site is responsive or mobile-optimized. Most website platforms include this feature automatically.

9. Customers can’t find you

Customers can’t make a purchase if they can’t find you. Search engine optimization is about more than just keywords. To nail it, you’ll also need to focus on how your site is built, how images are tagged, and what data is scraped by search bots, like Google.

10. Poor navigation

No one wants to play hide and seek on your site. Hard-to-find information, lack of buttons, and too many fonts and colors can quickly frustrate customers—leading to no sale. Create simple navigation and use best practices to get the most out of your site.