What actually is a sales funnel?

What it is meant to do

systeme.io describes a sales funnel as a structure designed to guide prospects through a sales process, built to raise conversion rates by keeping the visitor's journey simple.

That is the marketing meaning. The other meaning is a thing in the menu, and the two get muddled.

What systeme.io means by it

A funnel is one object in your account. It is created under the Sites tab, at Sales funnels, and it asks for a Name, a Domain and a Currency, and for one of four funnel types.

Every page inside it is called a step. New ones are added with + Add step.

Order is part of the definition

The steps are not a loose pile of pages. systeme.io states that funnel steps must be in a set order to work, and it links some of them for you: once a payment is validated the buyer is sent to the upsell page, and a declined upsell sends them to the downsell and then the thank you page.

One funnel is one thing your plan counts

The free plan allows 3 sales funnels. Startup, at $17 a month, lifts that to unlimited.

The figure counts funnels rather than pages.

A funnel has an on and off state

Funnels can be inactive. The funnel list can be filtered to show inactive ones, and a funnel is switched back on from the three dots beside it, then Activate.

The word does not always mean selling

systeme.io recommends the sales funnel feature for building a simple website of up to five pages.

So a funnel in your account may be a shop front, a list builder, or a five-page site. The feature name is fixed, the purpose is not.