Businesses need to promote themselves, be in front of their eyes (target market) at the right place and right time. Being online for acquiring customers today is nobodies guess. If you have been in this for some time, you must have asked yourself this obvious question. Clickfunnels vs website: do I need both?
Which is better, a Website or Clickfunnels? Do I even need a website anymore?
Websites are seen by many as a natural choice when getting online. Websites help businesses have a dedicated address to be found online and interact with the customers. Just like a physical address… the website is your online address (www.yourbusiness.com).
You dress up your website with pleasant “get up” in terms of look and feel, introduce your business, its products, and services and even give pointers for people to buy and try out your offerings.
Websites by definition are generally 6-10 related pages, contain clear navigation links and the intent is to tell you as much as possible about the business including products and services. Websites may be designed on coding elements on HTML/Java/JavaScript/PHP etc. or by using a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress.
So how does this differ from pages created with Clickfunnels?
Clickfunnels at the core does contain a “web editor” with which you can create or edit pages within Clickfunnels on the fly. This makes creating web pages so simple that many people actually go and develop a complete website on Clickfunnels. But then that’s not what Clickfunnels is actually intended for…
Clickfunnels is a funnel creation application. Funnels are generally characterized as a lead generation and conversion tool. Helping you create landing pages (also called squeeze page) which capture leads and sell your products or services online.
As you might have figured Websites and Clickfunnels do have a range of similarities and dissimilarities. In this article, we will attempt an in-depth comparison so as to fully understand how these compare as a utility for customer acquisition.
Now even before we do this comparison lets understand something that shall put our entire discussion into a perspective. Check out the free 14-day trial offered by Clickfunnels too!
Let’s talk about Traffic… We can categorize traffic into two main types:
Inbound and Outbound Traffic
Inbound traffic is generated when people visit your website while actively searching for pertinent information mostly on a search engine like Google. They search a term on Search Engine and land on your website by clicking a result that appeared mostly in the first 10 pages. This happens as your webpage was optimized /relevant to that keyword in the eyes of Search Engine.
This is the organic mode of traffic generation and involves SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Websites are ideal for ranking on search engines as they support many of the requirements that enable search engines to understand relevance, quality, and usefulness of the content created.
Outbound traffic, on the other hand, is traffic that is generated mostly through paid advertising and may involve PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising on advertising networks like Google Adwords, Facebook ads, Twitter or Linkedin.
Paid traffic is greatly different from organic traffic as the visitors are directed to your website from an ad that is put in front of a prospect via targeting methods available on Advertising networks. In this scenario, the focus is on acquiring leads or possible sales that over a period help you recoup the advertising cost.
Simply put you will use a Website or Clickfunnels based on the traffic you want to leverage…
A website, in the long run, should allow you to create content that helps you rank on the search engines and generate organic traffic. Clickfunnels on the other side is a tool that will help you convert paid traffic and focus on ROI.
That being said you may use one in the place of other if you want to… But then you should ideally use an application for the purpose it is designed for. Let’s look at specific characteristics of these two options compare and how best you can use them.
Clickfunnels vs website: The comparison
1. Domain
Your website would essentially have a unique domain that you booked for your website example www.yourbusiness.com.
This will not be that case with Cickfunnels…here you will share the same domain and your landing pages will resolve on a subdomain like www.yourbusiness.clickfunnels.com.
It’s also worth mentioning that you can make the Clickfunnel pages appear in your website domain like www.yourbusiness.com/myclickfunnelpage but then you will have limited options to optimize that page for SEO.
The advantage of having unique domain name is that you can brand your domain. Develop focused content aligned with your SEO strategy. This shall help you engage with your website visitors, generate inquiries and even sell your products or services online.
Now if you are looking at capitalizing paid traffic and getting too aggressive with your online promotions. (It also depends on what type of products or services you are promoting) being on Clickfunnels subdomain is a real advantage as your actual domain is protected. This makes Clickfunnels a great choice for testing new landing page design concepts, products or services.
2. Landing Pages
While you can always get conversions from a website. It’s been proven landing pages help you convert better.
Clickfunnels gives you a design option that is focussed to convert visitors. Doing the same thing on the website shall take a lot of time and may even have big technical constraints.
Websites are not effective at getting conversions as they are generally designed to keep the visitor glued (allow them to move from one webpage to another find more and more interesting stuff to lower bounce rates)
Clickfunnel Landing pages, on the other hand, are CTA (Call to action) oriented and have one single focus on capturing leads or converting them.
A landing page or any funnel pages unlike website page carry minimal distractions and are designed to “squeeze” the visitor into sharing more information or completing the sales process.
3. Online Marketing Funnels
While it may be difficult to design funnels on a website… Clickfunnels is created for the very purpose. You can create advanced sales funnels literally on a click of a button.
The biggest advantage is with Clickfunnels you don’t have tie every end of your conversion funnel… it’s done automatically.
Talk of Autoresponders, Payment Systems, Upsells or Down sells all is inbuilt within Clickfunnels and all you got to do is configure them once.
Clickfunnels gives you multiple templates and funnels that you can utilize at the click of a button. Not just that it packs almost all the features you might need to setup, test and optimize sales funnels. You can also try Clickfunnels free for 14 days!
4. A/B Split Testing and Full Funnel Conversion View
AB split testing involves creating two versions of the same page and running traffic to see which converts better.
Clickfunnels makes this extremely easy along with providing analytics to decide the winner. Doing split testing on websites is possible but extremely cumbersome.
Clickfunnels also lets you have full funnel conversion view at one place. This allows a lot of clarity on sequence and ability to select/edit and develop a consistent experience for the visitor all through the funnel.
5. Change of Funnel Order on the Fly
Clickfunnels lets you change the funnel order on the fly. This is almost magical as you can change different funnel steps with a few clicks. Add or remove types of pages within the funnel sequence. This is a very advanced feature. Imagine a graphical user interface to do all the work for you at the code level!
Changing funnel order on a website is extremely cumbersome (even if you created a funnel) as it would involve code changes on every page and would be a nightmare for troubleshooting.
6. Easy Page or Funnel Replication/Sharing of Funnels
Again on Clickfunnels, you can replicate a funnel or page with a click of a button…and not just that you can share the whole funnel with another user.
This is unimaginable on a website.
One thing to appreciate is both the options (Website and Clickfunnels) ultimately help you to build “webpages”. CMS Application like WordPress greatly reduces the code level intervention needed to build websites. You may use plugins that greatly enhance website features. But an application like Clickfunnels takes this to entirely new level.
Now that you know how the Website and Clickfunnels compare…The other question that a lot of people ask is…
Do I need both?
And the short answer is Yes!
A website, when used with Clickfunnels, can get you best of both the worlds. It can help you leverage testing done on paid traffic and get the same benefits from organic traffic. A lot of successful businesses do that…
But at the end, you need to make the call based on your current needs. Ask yourself what type of traffic you are looking at generating.
You can start with Website first if you want to drive organic traffic and capitalize on free traffic from search engines.
Start with Clickfunnels if you want to test product/services in your target market and start earning revenue right away. Drive paid traffic and then expand based on what you find viable in your testing.
Goodluck! Now go ahead and make the right choice.