A Complete Guide To Using ClickFunnels

If you are trying to launch your own online business and want to manage your own website and marketing, you might have stumbled across ClickFunnels. This article will take a deep look into ClickFunnels and tell you how to use it to operate and grow your business effectively.

ClickFunnels is the future of online business. Building a website with ClickFunnels is a proven way to gain customers and profits without having to know how to code or build a website from scratch. Using ClickFunnels, anyone with an idea and a computer can become an entrepreneur.

If you are starting an online business or have an idea that you think can make you money, you might benefit from learning how to use ClickFunnels. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about ClickFunnels and how to use them effectively.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

What is ClickFunnels?

First and foremost, ClickFunnels is a platform that hosts websites. The feature that sets ClickFunnels apart from other website hosting platforms is that it provides website owners with templates for engaging website visitors and eventually encouraging them to make a purchase from you.

ClickFunnels transforms website visitors into customers by “funneling” them through your site. The goal of a ClickFunnel is to turn a website visitor into a long-term paying customer by making them aware of and interested in a product or service, and eventually encouraging them to make a purchase.

Building a website through ClickFunnels is as easy as editing templates to include information about your idea and linking pages together that keep your users engaged. ClickFunnels is the future of online business. It is simple enough to use that anyone with an idea can create a site and get started right away, but powerful enough to truly grow your platform and have business success.

Is ClickFunnels Better Than A Traditional Website?

The old way of building an online business required at least some technical coding knowledge to set up the site’s transactional part. Some sites like WordPress, Wix, or Blogger have drag and drop configurations similar to ClickFunnels, but would still require special coding to allow your site visitors to make a purchase.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

Older accessible website builders like those we just mentioned are far better suited for blogging or informational sites. As soon as business transactions are involved, those sites get tricky, and website owners start looking for other options. This is where ClickFunnels comes in.

ClickFunnels offers a way to build your site in a familiar way using drag and drop configurations to set up your site how you imagined it. It is designed to help your site visitors become customers with inherent marketing techniques built into the way you set up the site. ClickFunnels is an all in one platform for your business.

Who Should Use ClickFunnels?

One of the best parts about ClickFunnels is that anyone can use it. Even if you have no computer software experience, you can have success with ClickFunnels. Being able to navigate a website to drag, drop, and edit features is the only technical knowledge required to set up and run a site with ClickFunnels.

Technology skills aside, the only other requirement for having success with ClickFunnels is that you need a great product idea. Many successful entrepreneurs who use ClickFunnels do not even have a physical product, but something downloadable or streamed.

ClickFunnels is an extremely accessible option for new business owners. It requires none of the things that hold a lot of potential business owners back from achieving their dreams. You won’t need:

Startup costs (you can get a two-week free trial to use the site)
Marketing skills
Technical knowledge

If you have a product or an idea that you want to share with the world and profit from, you can and should use ClickFunnels.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

How do ClickFunnels work?

You might be thinking that ClickFunnels could be a great way for you to start or grow your business. But how do they work exactly? We will explain how ClickFunnels works from the perspective of a website visitor or potential customer. Later, we will explain how to set up a funnel for your own business.

Once we go over how ClickFunnels works, you might realize that you see websites built this way across the internet. Usually, sites that use ClickFunnels follow a specific format that is designed to make site visitors stay on the website and eventually make a purchase.

The Landing Page

ClickFunnels starts with a landing page that hooks your interest. The site will claim to have a quick fix, tips, or information about your search topic or question. This page will only ask for your email address or will just ask you to click to another page on the website to learn some free information about the topic.

This will not only make you interested by learning about a topic you were researching, but you will trust the site to deliver on its promises since they gave you free tips just for providing your email address.

An example of this page may be a website that claims to have tips for healthy eating. By entering your email address, you may unlock access to a handful of free tips.

Sales Page

Once you have given your email address or clicked through the website, you will come to the sales page. This is where you are given the free information that you were promised on the landing page. ClickFunnels will almost always deliver on the first promise of free tips or information.

This page, however, will also have a sales pitch. Once you have gotten your free information, you will be shown a video or enticing ad to purchase additional information or products from the site.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

In the example we were going through, this will be the page where you receive the free healthy eating tips that you were promised. However, you may also be shown a video about how you can purchase and download a book of recipes from the site for just $20.

Upsell Page

Once you have decided to make the purchase from the video or advertisement on the previous page, the site will ask for payment information. Now that you have decided to buy a product from the website and committed to paying for it, you will be offered an upsell – something to add to your purchase for a small fee.

In our example, you, the purchaser, would have been enticed by the recipe book and decided to buy it. Once you enter all of your credit card information, you will be offered a meal plan that organizes all of the recipes and healthy eating tips so that you can have a balanced diet every day. This additional meal plan will only cost an extra $5.

Deliver the Product

The final step of the ClickFunnel is to deliver the product. Whatever you purchased from the original advertisement and upsell will be sent to you or available for download on this page.

While this is generally the end of the ClickFunnel, the website owner will have access to the email addresses of site visitors who wanted free information and those who made a purchase. These can be used for future marketing to get repeat customers or sell updated versions of your product.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

This page will have the recipe book and meal plan available for download and use in the healthy diet tips example. The ClickFunnel successfully made you a paying customer by offering some free information, then capitalizing on your interests to sell you related products.

In this scenario, you searched online for healthy eating tips and ended up purchasing an online recipe book and meal plan to help you get started. Additionally, the owner of this ClickFunnel made $25 from you.

How To Use ClickFunnels

Like we have said, ClickFunnels are a great way to sell products and grow your business. The sites are designed to make users interested and purchase products. If you think that you have a product that could be sold using ClickFunnels, just follow these steps to set up your account and funnels!

Set up your account

You can go to the ClickFunnels website to set up your account and start a two-week free trial. You can also sign up through third party sites like this one to get additional resources on top of the two-week trial.

Once you start your two-week trial, you will need to finish setting up your account. You can do this by filling out your personal information. You will also need to select the type of account you want to have after the two-week trial period is over.

The basic ClickFunnels subscription is $97 per month. This allows you to build ClickFunnels to grow your business. Other packages are more expensive and include additional features like automatic follow-up messages or affiliate programs.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

We will go over the different subscription options later in this article. For most people just getting started with ClickFunnels, the basic package is perfect.

Start Building Your First Funnel

Once you are in your account, you are ready to create your first funnel! To start building your first funnel, hover your mouse over the “ClickFunnels” button on the top of your account, and click on “Funnels” beneath it. This will take you to a page where you can manage all your funnels once you have multiple.

To create a new funnel, click on the yellow “Add New” button at the top of the page. From here, you will need to decide whether you want the classic funnel builder or the “Cookbook Builder Process,” which costs additional money but has more options for editable, pre-created funnels for specific industries.

The classic builder is free, customizable, and gives step by step instructions to setting up your funnel. This is a great option for most people.

Set a Goal For Your Funnel

Once you select the type of funnel you want to build, you will be given options for your goal. You will need to determine what you want to accomplish with your funnel. You might just want to generate leads or get right to selling products. You can choose to either:

Collect emails
Sell your product
Host a webinar

Each option will tell you which pages are included with each goal. For example, the “collect emails” option has one page to hook the reader and obtain the email and a “thank you” page. Keep in mind that you can edit the pages that you funnel your visitors through. You might want to start by collecting emails but also have an option to sell a product.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

Edit Your Pages

After you select a goal, you will be brought to a dashboard where you can edit the pages or “steps” in your funnel. For each step, you can select a template. You can also add or remove steps on the left side of the page. You can select templates that fit your needs for each page by using the filters at the top of the page to find page templates for:

Affiliates
Clickpop
Email Opt-in
Membership
Miscellaneous
Sales
Webinar

For example, if you selected “collect emails” as your goal, you will have an email opt-in page and then a thank you page. To add steps to your funnel, you can delete the thank you page and add steps for selling a product using the template filters listed above.

To edit the templates, click the yellow “Edit Page” button. From here, you will be able to highlight text boxes and images to edit them. The “drag and drop” method of site-building is utilized here to make it easy to build and edit ClickFunnel pages.

Finishing Touches

Once you have designed your funnel to include pages for every step you want your site visitors to take, you are done building the ClickFunnel. You might notice that there are a lot of other buttons and features on the ClickFunnels site. We have just walked you through setting up a basic funnel.

To learn more about how to take advantage of the full capabilities of ClickFunnels, look for online resources like Alston Godbolt.

After you have perfected your site pages and customized them for your product or service, you are ready to have site visitors. In order for people to be able to visit your site and eventually pay for your products and services, they will need a link. To accomplish this, all you need to do is:

Go to the first step of your funnel and copy the link displayed at the top of the page.
This will take people directly to the beginning of your funnel.
You will need to share this link on the internet for potential customers to find your site.

The more places you share your link, the more often it will be seen by people searching the internet.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

Tips and Additional Features

ClickFunnels offers a ton of features that were not mentioned in our basic overview of how to set up and use ClickFunnels. You can quickly set up and start your online business following the simple overview that we provided.

Keep reading to find out how to really take advantage of all that ClickFunnels has to offer.

Page Customization

One of the easiest ways to set your funnel apart is to customize your pages. Simply using the templates is a great way to set up your site quickly, but the result can make your site feel like it has no personality.

You can easily use the drag and drop method to customize your site without needing any coding knowledge or experience.

Once you are in the page editor where you previously edited text in the template, you can access the settings to easily change:

Images
Logos
Page background
Page element arrangement
Videos

You can rearrange elements by dragging and dropping them on the page. To make edits to specific elements, you can find editing options under the settings tab at the top of the page.

With the editing tools available, you can create a site that matches your brand and expectations without having to hire a web developer or learning how to code.

Capturing Leads

Capturing leads by collecting email addresses is a great way to grow your business. Even if the site visitor did not become a paying customer, you know that they are interested, and now you have a way to follow up with them. There are two great ways to follow up with potential customers using their email addresses:

The automation tab – To use the automation tab, click on “Automation” on a funnel page.

You may want to send an email after the opt-in page or after they place an order. You can decide! At the bottom of the automation page:

Click the “Add New Email” button.
From, there you, can select an email template and write a message.

The email will automatically be sent to the email on file when the customer opts into the page or places an order.

Follow-up funnels – Follow-up funnels are like the automation tab, except they are more tailored to the individual. Your emails to customers can be based on information like:
- What they purchased
- Where they are from
- How they interacted with your funnel

Follow up funnels have their own statistics so that you can see if your emails are effective, and they can be more personalized. These are a great tool to use in your funnel. Keep in mind that follow up funnels are not available for all subscription levels.

Add Products

While some ClickFunnel users just want to generate leads by collecting email addresses, one of the more lucrative uses of the platform is for selling products.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

To sell a product on your page:

You will need to click on the yellow “Add Product” button on the order form step page.
From here, you will fill out a brief description, including the price and how the customer will pay.

If you are selling a digital product, you have two main options for product delivery. The first option is to grant your customers access to a membership site where they can access the product.

Another option is to send the customer to a page where they can download the product. Your choice will depend on:

The type of product
Whether the customer will need to come back to the site for updated information and materials
If the product is something that should just be downloaded once

If you are selling a physical product, the process is a little bit more involved. You will need to integrate ShipStation with your funnel (keep reading to learn all about integrations). From there, ShipStation will take care of fulfilling and shipping orders directly to customers.

Split Tests

Split testing is a marketing method to find out how to optimize a website to have more visitors, views, and customers. Essentially, to split test your funnels, you will create two pages that have differences in:

Layout
Color choice and images
Text

ClickFunnels will then randomly send your site visitors to a version of the page. After the split test has been implemented for a designated period of time, you can look at the funnel statistics for each page to see which performed better.

Split testing is a great way for you to learn what your customers like on a website. Believe it or not, small differences like those mentioned can have a huge impact on whether you make a sale. This feature allows you to run these tests and optimize your site easily.

Funnel Statistics

One of the most useful and insightful parts of ClickFunnels is the statistics that they provide. To access this information, click on the “stats” tab on your funnel page. Here, you will see an overview of statistics for your funnel.

At the top of the stats page, you will see your:

Average earnings per click
Gross earnings
Average cart value

You will also see a table that tracks the number of

Page views
Opt-ins
Sales

These statistics are essential for understanding how your funnels are performing. You can determine if your funnels are reaching enough people and whether you are turning site visitors into paying customers.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

All these numbers and stats might be confusing at first, but the more you review them, the more you will understand and find value in them.

Integrations

ClickFunnels offers a variety of third-party integrations for your site. These integrations allow you to use other apps within your page for more interactivity and functions.

A list of compatible third-party integrations can be found here. Some of our favorites include:

Add a PayPal button
Calculate shipping costs
Embedded calendar
Integrate ShipStation to ship physical products
Payment notifications and receipts for customers

These third-party integrations, among many others, create a better shopping experience for your customers.

Price of ClickFunnels

After your two-week free trial of ClickFunnels is complete, you will need to start paying for a monthly ClickFunnels subscription.

There are two options: ClickFunnels Basic and ClickFunnels Platinum.

We will go over the main differences between the two subscription options as well as our recommendations for who should purchase each plan.

ClickFunnels Basic

This subscription option is the least expensive option of the two, coming in at $97 per month. This option is limited in the number of funnels and pages you can create and manage.

This membership only allows one user and three domains or brands.

The basic option is best for anyone just launching their business.

It will allow you to do nearly everything listed in this guide (Follow-Up Funnels are not supported with this plan) and is only limited by the number of funnels and pages you can have. With the basic package, you can have 20 funnels and 100 pages.

Click here for a FREE two-week ClickFunnels trial, a FREE ClickFunnels course, and over 10 done-for-you funnels!

This is plenty for any new business.

If you are just starting out, we recommend purchasing the basic ClickFunnels plan. You can always reconsider your plan and upgrade to the platinum plan once you have grown your business and need the extra features.

ClickFunnels Platinum

This plan has all the features of the basic plan, plus some. This plan comes in at $297 per month but has the capability to operate up to nine domains with an unlimited number of funnels and pages available. This plan also allows for up to three sub-users so that multiple business partners can manage the account.

The platinum option is recommended for online business owners that have either grown their business on their own or through the ClickFunnels basic plan to the point where they need additional pages, funnels, and domains.

Wrapping Things Up

Ultimately, ClickFunnels is a great tool for business owners who want to manage their own website and marketing. ClickFunnels offers an easy way for anyone to build a site and reach customers no matter their experience level.

Now that you know the theory of how ClickFunnels work, how to set up your own account and funnel, and some tips and extra features, you are ready to launch your site and have success in your business.

Sources

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