You might have come across pitches from companies selling funnels telling you that websites are dead in this modern era and sales funnels are the only profitable way to go. Likewise, companies selling websites will tell you that a sales funnel is too complicated and they don’t work.

What’s the difference?

Let’s first identify the difference between a funnel and a website is to get a better understanding of what jobs they solve.

A Website is ultimately a static page that sits on the internet used to tell users about your specific product or service. They have remained to perform the same core function since when the internet first rolled out. A website is a great way to let users find out what information they want about your brand making more of their own journey and at their own pace.

Unlike a website, a sales funnel leads the user down a set path touching on different points before getting to the point of sale. For example, a basic model for a sales funnel would be,

• Capture page
• Bridge page
• Sales page
• Checkout

Instead of allowing users to take their own path and find the information themselves a funnel will lead them down a set path ultimately letting them get to the point of sales faster without distraction.

There’s still a place for a website

Regardless of the benefits from a sales funnel there is still definitely a place for a website. A website lets the user learn about the business or company, what they are about, what they are saying, and get a sense of their brand and who they are. A website is also great for organic growth, a user finding your site organically doesn’t want to open straight into a funnel without knowing it. A website is also great for organic reach and ranking well in SEO to get more people to learn about your business. Furthermore, there are some industries that expect a website to learn more about your business and so you don’t want to not meet their expectations by not providing it.

The compromise

Now that we’ve understood what the key differences between a sales funnel and a website are hows the best way to make them work for you and get a good ROI. Like we’ve said a website is great for organic growth whereas a funnel is optimized to sell. While youll probably still want to have a website it’s not where you should be spending your advertising money. Your ad spend will be much better used promoting your sales funnel as it creates a simpler more streamlined sales process getting the user to where you want them to be with little distraction. It is also a lot easier to see where a funnel is going wrong, which stage potential clients are being lost, and optimize the pages based on these analytics. On a website, it’s a lot harder to identify these problems as you are essentially presenting the user with all the information at once.

In summary, websites are not dead and there is still very much a time and place to use them but your advertising budget is not best spent promoting them. You’ll see a much better ROI from investing the ad budget into your funnel. While it’s optimal to use a website and a funnel hand in hand your funnel will be your primary conversion and ultimately profit engine.