How to read a funnel example
A sales funnel example is just a named sequence of pages and emails that moves a visitor from first click to purchase.
Every example below is shown as a flow: traffic comes in on the left, and each step is a page or an email the visitor meets on the way to the sale. The value is in the order. The same handful of pieces, an opt-in page, a sales page, a checkout, a follow-up sequence, get arranged differently depending on what you sell and how much it costs.
One warning before you copy any of them. A funnel works because of the offer and the audience behind it, not the page layout. Swiping the structure of a funnel that sells a $2,000 program will not help you sell a $9 ebook, and the reverse fails just as badly. Read these as patterns to adapt, then pick the one whose price and complexity match yours. If you want the underlying build process rather than the patterns, see how to build a sales funnel, and for the customer mindset behind each step, the funnel stages.
The building blocks every funnel reuses
Before the examples, here are the pieces they are built from. Once you know these eight, every funnel below is just a different arrangement of the same parts.
Want a one-line definition for any of these on their own? The marketing glossary has each as a short entry.
10 sales funnel examples
Each card shows the page-by-page flow, then who it suits, why it works, and a quick worked example. The dashed box is the traffic source, blue boxes are paid steps, and the green box is the email follow-up.
Lead magnet funnel
Best for: building a list from scratch · free offerWhy it works. You cannot sell to people you cannot reach. This funnel captures the large majority of visitors who are not ready to buy yet and earns permission to follow up. It is also the top of almost every other funnel on this list.
Example. A fitness coach offers a free "5-day high-protein meal plan." An ad points to an opt-in page, the thank-you page delivers the PDF, and a five-email sequence ends by pitching a $27 recipe pack.
Tripwire funnel
Best for: turning leads into first-time buyers · $7 to $47Why it works. A real shift happens when someone pays you, even just a few dollars: a lead becomes a customer, and customers buy again. The aim of a tripwire is not front-end profit, it is the buyer relationship, with the order bump and upsell doing the earning.
Example. A $9 "50 Instagram hooks" swipe file, a $17 caption-templates order bump, a one-click $97 mini-course upsell, and a downsell to that course in three payments of $39.
Sales letter or VSL funnel
Best for: a proven digital offer · $50 to $1,000Why it works. A long sales page or a video sales letter can handle every objection in sequence, hook, problem, mechanism, offer, proof, guarantee, then ask for the sale. It suits a warm enough buyer who can decide in one sitting, with no call needed.
Example. A $197 "cold email that books meetings" course sold by a 14-minute video, a $27 templates order bump, a $97 done-with-you upsell, and a 7-day onboarding sequence.
Webinar funnel
Best for: offers that need explaining · $200 to $2,000Why it works. A 30 to 45 minute training delivers real value, proves your expertise, and earns the right to pitch at the end. A live or scheduled start adds scarcity, and the close-cart emails handle the people who needed a little longer. An evergreen version runs the replay on a recurring schedule.
Example. A bookkeeper runs "how to pay yourself first as a freelancer," then pitches a $497 finance-system course, with a 72-hour close-cart sequence after.
Product launch funnel
Best for: a flagship launch to an existing audienceWhy it works. Three pieces of free pre-launch content over a week or so build anticipation, reciprocity, and proof, a bit like waiting for the next episode of a show. Then the cart opens for a few days only, and the hard deadline concentrates demand into a buying window.
Example. A pottery instructor releases three technique videos over a week, opens the cart for a $799 program on Monday, and closes it Friday at midnight with an expiring bonus.
High-ticket application funnel
Best for: premium services closed on a call · $2,000+Why it works. A high price needs high trust, so the funnel front-loads education with a video, then uses an application to filter for fit, budget, and urgency. The closer only spends time on people who can actually buy, which raises the close rate. There is no buy-now button.
Example. An agency offering a $6,000 done-for-you retainer runs a VSL, a seven-question application, a Calendly booking page, then reminder emails and an SMS before the call.
Ecommerce product funnel
Best for: a single or hero product · raising order valueWhy it works. A dedicated checkout with an order bump and a one-click upsell uses purchase momentum, the card is already entered, to lift average order value past what a standard cart manages. It also strips the distractions that drive roughly 70% of carts to be abandoned, according to the Baymard Institute.
Example. A $39 skincare serum, a $12 travel-size order bump, a one-click $79 three-bottle bundle upsell, and a $49 two-bottle downsell for those who decline.
Free trial funnel
Best for: software where the product is the demoWhy it works. Letting people use the product lowers the risk of paying, and fast activation drives the upgrade. Requiring a card changes the math sharply: ChartMogul's 2026 report found card-required trials convert around 31% to paid versus about 9% for no-card trials, a trade-off between volume and conversion.
Example. A 14-day no-card trial, an onboarding checklist (invite a teammate, create a first project), a day-10 "trial ending" email, then an upgrade to a paid plan.
Free-plus-shipping funnel
Best for: a book or low-cost product as the front doorWhy it works. "Free, just cover shipping" maximizes how many people opt in while still creating a buyer, because they have paid something. The profit lives in the order bump and the one-time-offer upsell that follow, not in the front-end product.
Example. An author gives away a book for $9.95 shipping, adds a $19 audiobook order bump, upsells a $197 course, and downsells a $97 mini-course.
Membership funnel
Best for: recurring revenue from a community or libraryWhy it works. It turns a single decision into recurring revenue, and the immediate upsell to an annual plan raises lifetime value at the moment of highest intent. The follow-up sequence then shifts to onboarding and retention, since keeping a member is the whole game.
Example. A $29 per month trading-education community, with a checkout upsell to an annual plan at $290 (two months free) and a weekly engagement sequence.
How to choose the right funnel
There is one principle behind the whole list: the higher the price and the more complex the offer, the more trust-building steps the funnel needs. A cheap, self-explanatory product can sell on one page with an instant checkout. An expensive or hard-to-explain offer needs education, proof, and often a human on a call. Put another way, the price sets how many times you must earn a yes before the buy. A $9 yes is easy; a $6,000 yes needs a video, an application, and a conversation.
| Price point | Funnel to use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Free (email only) | Lead magnet | Two pages. The goal is the contact, not a sale. |
| $7 to $47 | Tripwire or free-plus-shipping | Impulse buy. Sales page, checkout with bump, upsell. No call. |
| $50 to $300 | Sales letter or VSL | One strong page can carry a considered digital purchase. |
| $300 to $2,000 | Webinar or product launch | The offer needs explaining, so educate before the ask. |
| $2,000+ | High-ticket application | A human closes it. Filter and warm up before the call. |
| Recurring | Membership | Layer a subscription and an annual upsell on any of the above. |
Conversion benchmarks to expect
Treat any benchmark as a loose reference, not a target. Rates swing with price, audience, and traffic source, and your own trend over time matters more than someone else's average. Still, these published figures give you a sense of what a healthy step looks like.
| Step | Typical rate | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Optimized landing or opt-in page | ~6.6% median | Unbounce |
| Landing page, cross-industry average | ~2.4% to 3% | WordStream |
| Free trial, card required | ~31% to paid | ChartMogul |
| Free trial, no card | ~9% to paid | ChartMogul |
| Tripwire page | ~1.5% to 3% (estimate) | Industry benchmarks |
| Ecommerce cart abandonment | ~70% | Baymard Institute |
Mistakes when copying a funnel
Most failed funnels are not badly built, they are badly matched. Check yours against these before you launch.
Copying a funnel that does not match your price. A high-ticket webinar funnel built to sell a $20 ebook adds steps that kill momentum. Match the funnel to the price point.
Too many pages for a cheap, simple product. A VSL, an application, and a call in front of a $12 impulse buy lose more sales than they make. Cheap means fewer clicks.
No email follow-up. Most people do not buy on the first visit. A funnel with no sequence leaves the majority of its revenue on the table.
Sending cold traffic straight to a high-ticket offer. Asking a stranger to book a $6,000 call with no lead magnet or video first almost never works. Warm the audience up.
Copying the pages but not the offer. A funnel works because of the offer and audience fit. A swiped layout with a weak lead magnet or tripwire still fails.
No upsell or downsell path. A tripwire or ecommerce funnel with a single product page gives up the order value that makes it profitable against ad costs.
Build any of these in systeme.io
Every one of these funnels, one account
The examples above use the same pieces: opt-in pages, checkouts with order bumps, one-click upsells, automated emails, and membership areas. systeme.io includes all of them on the free plan, so you can build a tripwire, a webinar, or a high-ticket funnel without stitching tools together.
Ready to build one? Walk through the steps in how to build a sales funnel.
Frequently asked questions
The lead magnet funnel, a free resource traded for an email address, is the most common, because almost every other funnel starts by capturing a contact first. From there you can follow up with a tripwire, a sales page, a webinar, or a call. Even ecommerce and high-ticket funnels usually sit on top of a list built by a lead magnet.
Start with a lead magnet funnel to build a list, then add a simple tripwire funnel to turn subscribers into first-time buyers. Both need only a couple of pages and no sales call, so you can launch quickly, learn what your audience responds to, and reinvest before building anything more complex.
A tripwire is a low-priced offer, usually 7 to 47 dollars, shown right after someone opts in. Its goal is not to make a profit but to convert a free lead into a paying customer, because a person who has paid you once, even a small amount, is far more likely to buy again. The real profit comes from the order bump and upsell that follow.
As few as two for a free offer: an opt-in page and a thank-you page. A paid funnel adds a sales page, a checkout, often an upsell and downsell, and a thank-you page. A high-ticket funnel may add a video sales letter, an application form, and a booking page. More pages are not better. Match the number of pages to the price: a cheap, simple offer needs fewer, an expensive one needs more trust-building steps.
A sales-letter or video sales letter funnel, or a tripwire funnel with an order bump and a one-click upsell, works well for digital products, since they have no shipping and can be delivered instantly. For a product that needs more explaining, such as a higher-priced course, a webinar or product launch funnel builds the trust a single page cannot.
A high-ticket application funnel: a video sales letter that makes the case, an application form that qualifies the prospect, and a booking page for a sales call. For offers priced in the thousands, a human usually needs to close the sale, and the application filters out poor-fit leads so call time is spent on people who can actually buy.
A product funnel with a dedicated checkout, an order bump, and a one-click upsell or downsell. It raises average order value beyond a standard shopping cart by using the moment of purchase momentum, when the card is already entered. It also cuts the distractions that drive cart abandonment, which the Baymard Institute puts at roughly 70% across studies.
A lead magnet is free and captures an email address, turning anonymous traffic into a contact you can reach again. A tripwire is a small paid offer shown right after, which converts that new lead into a first-time buyer. One builds your list, the other turns the list into customers, and most funnels use them in sequence.