To create a sales funnel, pick one offer for one kind of buyer, choose where the traffic comes from, and build the pages in order: a page that makes the case, a checkout, an upsell and a thank-you page. Then follow up with the buyers and the people who did not buy, and measure every step in money so you know which one to fix first.
In ElasticFunnels you build the pages with AI or a template, connect them in the funnel builder, and split test any step under the URL your ads already use.
I spent nine years as CTO of a direct-response company, where I architected the funnel system, the checkout and the attribution behind its offers. The order below is the order I'd build in, and it's deliberately boring. Offer first, pages second, numbers from the first visitor. Colours and fonts can wait.
What you are building
A sales funnel is a fixed path of pages with one goal. Each page has one job and one button to the next step, and every step loses some people. Creating a funnel means deciding what those steps are, building them, and then making each one lose fewer buyers. If the idea is new to you, what is a sales funnel covers the stages first.
Step 1: Pick one offer and one buyer
A funnel sells one thing to one kind of person. Write down, in a sentence each:
- Who it is for. The buyer and the problem they already know they have.
- What they get. The product, the price and the main promise you can back up.
- Why now. A guarantee, a bundle or a bonus that makes today the easy day to decide. Only offer what is real.
If you have several products, pick the one that is easiest to explain in one line. The others can become the upsell.
This is the step people rush, and it decides everything after it. If you can't say who the offer is for in one sentence, no page is going to say it for you.
Step 2: Choose the traffic source
Where the visitors come from decides the shape of the funnel. Warm traffic (your email list, returning visitors, branded search) already knows you and can go straight to the offer. Cold traffic from social, native or display ads was not looking for you, and usually needs a page that frames the problem before the pitch.
Start with one source. Each ad platform has its own audience, creative rules and landing page policy, and you learn faster by getting one to work before adding the next. Even when a second platform looks cheap, finish the first. Two half-working sources teach you less than one that works.
Step 3: Build the first page
The first page has one job: get the right people to click through to the offer. What it looks like depends on the traffic.
| Funnel shape | The pages | Works well for |
|---|---|---|
| Direct offer | Sales page, checkout, upsell, thank you | Warm traffic that knows the product |
| Presell | Advertorial or listicle, sales page, checkout, upsell | Cold social and native traffic |
| VSL | Video sales letter, checkout, upsell | Offers that need a story or a demo |
| Quiz | Quiz, personalised result, checkout | Products with several options |
| Lead magnet | Opt-in page, thank you, email sequence, offer | Higher prices and longer decisions |
For cold paid traffic I'd start with the presell shape, and move to a VSL only when the offer needs a story or a demonstration to make sense. A direct offer on cold traffic asks a stranger to decide too early.
Whatever the shape, keep one call to action and repeat it. Put the promise in the headline, the proof under it, and the price only once the reader knows what it buys. You can write the page yourself, start from a template, or describe it to the AI page builder, which builds any page you describe, advertorials and presells included. The VSL funnel and quiz funnel pages show those two shapes in more detail.
Using ElasticFunnels? Watch the first page get built step by step, with a clip for every click: How to make a landing page.
Step 4: Build the checkout
The checkout is where most funnels lose the most money for the least reason. Keep it short: contact details, shipping if you ship, the card, and a summary that repeats what they are buying. Show the guarantee next to the button. It's also the page nobody wants to work on, because once it takes a card it looks finished. It rarely is.
- Add one order bump. A small, related add-on the buyer ticks before paying. It should cost a fraction of the main product.
- Take payment on your processor, or send the buyer to the network's cart if you sell through ClickBank, Digistore24 or BuyGoods. In ElasticFunnels, a
[BUY=code]link does either and carries the visitor's tracking parameters along. - Test a real order end to end before any traffic arrives: the charge, the receipt and the page after it.
Selling on ClickBank? Follow the step-by-step tutorial, with a clip for every screen: ClickBank funnel setup for vendors.
More on the checkout itself on the custom checkouts page.
Step 5: Add an upsell and a downsell
The moment after a purchase is when a buyer is most willing to buy again. An upsell page offers a bigger or better version, or more of the same, with one click and no second card form. If they say no, a downsell can offer a smaller version at a lower price.
One upsell done well beats three stacked in a row. What is an upsell explains how the one-click charge works and how to price it, and the upsells page shows the setup.
Step 6: Set up the follow-up
The funnel does not end at the thank-you page. Three kinds of follow-up pay for themselves:
- The buyer. The receipt, what happens next, how to use the product, and later the next offer.
- The almost-buyer. Someone who started the checkout and stopped. A reminder email, and for higher prices a phone call, wins back a share of them.
- The lead. If the funnel collects emails before the offer, a short sequence that answers objections and links back to it.
In ElasticFunnels an automation can trigger on a new purchase and add the buyer to Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or another email tool, tag them in the CRM, or wait and check the order before doing either. See CRM and automations.
Step 7: Track every step and fix the biggest leak
Once traffic is flowing, measure each step in money: visitors to clicks on the first page, clicks to orders, orders to upsells, and revenue per visitor for the whole funnel. The step that loses the most money is the one to work on first. And please don't buy more traffic to fix a funnel. More visitors through a leaking step just make the leak bigger.
- Tag every link. UTM parameters on each ad, so every order can be traced to the source, campaign and ad. Analytics shows revenue per source, page and variant.
- Test one change at a time on the leaking step, and judge it on sales, not clicks. Run the test under the URL the ad already uses, so the ad keeps its learning: how to split test landing pages explains why, and split testing shows the setup.
- Check the break-even. Revenue per visitor has to beat what a visitor costs. The ROAS calculator does the arithmetic.
Creating the funnel in ElasticFunnels
I built ElasticFunnels so these seven steps live in one place, on one customer record. Here is how they map to the app:
- Pages: create each page from a template, with the AI page builder, or by importing a page you own.
- Products and checkout: add the product and its order bump, and connect your payment processor or the network you sell through.
- Funnel: connect the landing page, checkout, upsell, downsell and thank-you steps in the visual funnel builder, and set which traffic enters it.
- Tests: add a split test node on any step. Variants run under one URL.
- Follow-up: build a purchase automation to your email tool and CRM.
- Numbers: read revenue by source, page and variant on the dashboard.
Not sure which funnel builder to use? The best sales funnel software guide compares seven of them, including ours.
- Don't build the email sequence before the funnel sells. Follow-up multiplies what works. It can't rescue what doesn't.
- Don't redesign a page that isn't the biggest leak, however ugly it looks to you.
- Don't copy a funnel shape from a different kind of traffic. What sells to a warm list will often lose on cold social traffic.
- A funnel isn't launched until the source reaches the order. If you can't see which ad made yesterday's sales, fix that before anything else.
The first version of a funnel is never the good one, and that's fine. It exists to show you where the money leaks. Build it plainly, get real traffic through it, and let the numbers tell you which page deserves your next week.
