If you’re an eCommerce business owner, it’s critical to use your online presence to sell your goods or services. In recent years, the advent of online sales funnels has seen many entrepreneurs generate huge revenues online.
Still, many business owners don’t properly understand the differences between a sales funnel and a traditional website. While a traditional website is a general home for your business’s online content, a sales funnel directs digital visitors who want to make a purchase.
Funnels are specifically used to generate conversions, coupled with paid traffic marketing campaigns or other forms of digital marketing.
In this article, we’ll explore one of the world’s most popular sales funnels platforms—ClickFunnels and the age-old question Clickfunnels vs website – which one is best? Our analysis will help you determine whether you need to couple ClickFunnels with a traditional website and how to do it.
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A Business Website in 2025
A website typically consists of more than five web pages that contain various types of content. In many ways, a business website is a central location for customers to explore information about your company, services, or products.
Due to search engine algorithms, many business owners invest heavily in search engine optimization (SEO). By strategizing website content, keywords, page speed, blog posts, and other website elements, SEO allows you to increase your traffic organically. It’s an excellent way to generate visitors from Google, Bing, and other leading search engines.
The only issue is that when visitors arrive, there’s no clear ‘funnel’ directing these potential customers towards a specific action. With traditional websites, visitors will be able to look at various marketing pages, read your blog, access contact details, or perform a host of other tasks. While this is useful, it’s not a purpose-driven platform like a conversion funnel.
If you were to direct a potential customer to your website’s homepage, they’ll still need to roam around your website to find the aspects they need. By making the purchasing process more difficult, you’re reducing the chances that a visitor converts into a paying customer.
Search engines offer excellent benefits, but organic traffic might not be right if you’re looking to make a quick sale. If you’re hoping to build an online platform that can clearly direct visitors to purchase goods or services, a modern website might offer too much distraction and confusion to facilitate conversions well.
How Online Sales Funnels Work and How They Help
Online sales funnels direct consumers to a specific location or call to action. Unlike traditional websites, sales funnels typically have a single purpose—selling a product or service OR collecting a lead’s email address to build an email list (aka. lead generation).
By creating a page with a singular focus, visitors don’t have to contend with the number of distractions found on traditional websites (ie. a home page or web page with a navigation menu and/or side menu).
A sales funnel will usually consist of direct sales website copy and other videos or images that are directly related to the desired product or service. Outgoing links, unnecessary jargon, information on separate products, and other potential distractions are entirely eliminated to prevent confusion.
Unlike traditional websites, you won’t use SEO to generate traffic for your sales funnel. Instead, paid advertising and other online marketing strategies are used to direct traffic to your page. It allows you to accurately gauge the return on investment (ROI) for your paid traffic, for example.
A powerful sales funnel will allow a visitor to convert into a paid customer without extensive effort. It provides the ideal amount of information to convert the reader into a customer.
Companies like Clickfunnels (aka. Click Funnels) make designing marketing funnels easy by providing an easy-to-use landing page builder for funnel pages, an email marketing software, providing membership areas, and a nice funnel conversion view.
Clickfunnels vs Website Key Difference #1:
If you’re comparing a leading website builder like ClickFunnels vs website, the primary difference is the targeted nature of a sales funnel. By creating a page with a single purpose, you can eliminate inefficiencies associated with a website. A sales funnel has one purpose—conversions.
The Types of Website Traffic
There are two primary types of web traffic—inbound and outbound traffic. Understanding the differences between a sales funnel and a traditional website requires a critical exploration of both these areas in more detail.
Inbound Traffic
Often referred to as organic traffic, inbound traffic is primarily generated through effective search engine optimization (SEO).
When a web user is interested in a product, service, or topic, they may perform a general Google search using relevant keywords.
If your website is properly optimized, it will appear in the earliest search results of the top search engines. If a web user clicks on your website, it generates inbound traffic.
Inbound website traffic typically includes a wide range of web users. If you offer multiple products or services, your website might currently rank for hundreds of different keywords.
When it comes to Clickfunnels vs website for organic traffic, you’ll need a website as Clickfunnel’s isn’t meant for SEO.
Outbound Traffic
Paid-for traffic is referred to as outbound traffic. Running a pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaign to direct web users to your landing page is an example of outbound traffic (aka. search engine marketing).
It can be a useful online investment if you want to attract new customers to your website or sales funnel. Responsible eCommerce owners use a cost management system to assess whether paid-for traffic is costing less than the revenue that it generates.
Clickfunnels vs Website Key Difference #2:
Small and million-dollar businesses that use outbound traffic tend to create sales funnels, which are used to transform paid-for advertising into sales (a process called conversion). Inbound traffic is primarily beneficial to a traditional website.
Which One is Best for Your Business?
The reality is that inbound website traffic and outbound sales funnel traffic achieve two different purposes.
If you want to convert paid-for advertising into a sale, outbound traffic is best for your business. If you’re planning on using SEO to generate organic traffic for your primary website, however, inbound traffic should be your priority.
Note: when you’re considering the Clickfunnels vs website decision, you should keep in mind that both will require you to choose a domain name, payment gateways, an email service provider (Clickfunels offers its own Actionetics email marketing software), and a plan to make money via your sales process. Also, note that both Clickfunnels and a website have a learning curve.
How to Get the Most Value Out of Sales Funnels with ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels allows you to build an excellent sales funnel for your product or service.
The platform is excellent for any business owner that wants to increase the ROI of their marketing funnels, but you’ll need to keep a few aspects in mind if you want the approach to succeed.
Below, let’s take a look at three primary value-adds when you use ClickFunnels.
1. Establishing an Internet Marketing Strategy
If you want the most out of ClickFunnels, you need to develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy.
The primary aim of ClickFunnels is to convert sales, so start assessing the product or service that you’re offering to determine what market segment is most likely to purchase it. By putting yourself in the shoes of your customers, you can determine the target market for your ClickFunnels page.
Market research is an excellent tool when you’re trying to identify your target audience. If you’re hoping to find inspiration for an effective marketing strategy, be sure to explore Russel Brunson’s DotCom Secrets book for some light reading.
Once you have a firm grasp on the types of consumers, you’re targetting, divide these people into groups that have similar traits. When you begin paying for advertising on a search engine or social media, for example, you’ll need to target specific traits and interests.
2. Creating Content for Your Sales Funnels
Next, it’s time to create effective content for your sales funnel. Creating a positive response from web users is critical, and you’ll need to use the skills of an experienced copywriter. A professional copywriter can capture the attention of your audience and direct it to the goal of your funnel.
Whether you’re creating a website or sales funnel, a copywriter is an essential resource.
If you don’t want to fork out money for a writer, take an online course instead. Various online copywriting gurus are available to help you access the ins-and-outs of the craft. Russell Brunson and a host of other online experts have excellent knowledge of the mechanics behind copywriting for funnels, for example.
While the text is often the focus of landing pages, high-quality images and videos are just as effective. It’s critical for your landing pages to appear as professional as possible, and a high-level video or image editor is the best way to impress.
3. Using ClickFunnels to Create Sales Funnels
If you’re planning on building a sales funnel, but you don’t have any previous experience with website development, use a third-party platform.
While you can use a traditional website builder and website templates for funnel creation, it’s difficult to access core landing page features. ClickFunnels offers a complete funnel management software, including funnel templates, that gives you total control over the creation process, for example.
ClickFunnels also allows you to build all types of funnels in a matter of minutes. This is great because you may need to use different funnel types throughout your value ladder DotCom Secrets (a term explained by Russel Brunson). The ease-of-use that’s accessible in this platform is one of the critical advantages in the ClickFunnels vs website debate.
If you need additional help finding the right content for your sales page (or sales pages), you can also use Funnel Scripts to generate excellent quality copy. Otherwise, you would need to write/outsource copy.
The Advantage ClickFunnels Has Over Websites
Now that you understand the basics of ClickFunnels, it’s time to compare the core features against those of more traditional websites.
The ClickFunnels vs website debate requires the assessment of unique benefits for this leading sales funnel platform. Below, we explore five key advantages associated with building funnels on ClickFunnels.
1. High Converting Landing Pages
ClickFunnels continually proves that it can help its users convert sales effectively.
If you use the platform to build landing pages, you’ll have access to a broad range of page designs that guides website visitors towards a call-to-action (CTA). If you want to produce pages that focus on encouraging a response from a visitor, ClickFunnels is an excellent choice.
2. Advanced Sales Funnel Features
ClickFunnels also offers more sales-specific features than a website—there’s far more than simple template flexibility included in the platform.
You can track sales, upsells, ‘downsells,’ data gathering, and more. You can also integrate a range of elements into your sales funnel, which makes it easier to take advantage of advanced capabilities without a background in programming.
ClickFunnels ensures that it’s simple to configure the settings according to your preferences. It’s never been more straightforward to customize a landing page for drawing customers to your product or service.
3. Split Test Funnel Pages
Split testing your pages is one of the most effective ways to assess the performance.
By collecting data on funnel page performance, business owners can determine which page is most suitable for conversions.
With Clickfunnels, it’s pretty much easy-mode. ClickFunnels allows you to quickly split test pages and assess the performance of different designs, content, and color schemes.
Split testing, also known as A/B testing, is built into the ClickFunnels platform. You can effortlessly compare variations via the funnel portal before implementation, for example.
While website split testing is possible, there are many additional components to consider. A funnel is much more straightforward than a traditional website, so you can quickly assess the performance of each page.
4. Drag and Drop Funnel Steps
One of the most challenging components of building a funnel is choosing the right order or sequence.
If you’re programming a funnel, it can take a considerable time to make changes once you commit to a specific design. With ClickFunnels, you can quickly change the funnel steps using a drag-and-drop editor.
It makes it easier to design, change, and test a sales funnel order if you’re hoping to increase effectiveness.
5. Cloning Funnels, Funnel Steps, and Sharing Funnel with ClickFunnels
If you want to clone your sales funnel on ClickFunnels, it will only take you a matter of seconds. It’s also easy to share your funnel with others.
You won’t find a website builder that offers this level of flexibility.
ClickFunnels Vs Website – The Real Answer
Clickfunnels vs website – which do you need? If you’re trying to decide between a website and ClickFunnels, you’re looking at the question from the wrong angle.
While ClickFunnels is undoubtedly beneficial to eCommerce owners, there’s still a need to build a traditional website. A website and ClickFunnels offer two different advantages, though.
Search engines are a critical driver of web traffic. If you want to position your business to benefit from keyword searches, it’s essential to build a conversion focused website that is built for organic traffic (using a content management system – CMS – like WordPress). Web users need a website to find out information about your company, services, policies, and products.
If you’re looking to target specific consumers with a product or service, ClickFunnels can build sales funnels that offer high conversion rates.
If paid-for traffic is part of your business strategy, it’s essential to use a platform that offers split testing, drag-and-drop design, easy layouts, and a host of other premium features—ClickFunnels is the answer.
You can start your 14-day Clickfunnels free trial and see their pricing plans here.
If you want to succeed in the competitive world of online commerce, a comprehensive approach is necessary.
Take advantage of both websites and ClickFunnels when you’re ready to expand your business.
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