Plan Your Offer and Funnel Structure Before You Build

The fastest way to waste an afternoon in any funnel builder is to open the editor before you know what you're building. Five minutes of planning now saves you from rebuilding pages later. Work through this before Lesson 2.

Write down your one offer

1. Name the single thing you're selling on this funnel — one offer, not three. A funnel that tries to sell everything you make converts worse than one built around a single decision.
2. Write the price and format — free lead magnet, low-ticket tripwire under $50, a core course or coaching offer, or a recurring membership. The format shapes every step that follows.
3. Write one sentence on the result the buyer gets. If you can't say it in one sentence, the sales page won't be able to either.

Pick the funnel shape that matches it

Match your offer to one of these shapes — don't default to the longest one out of habit:

1. Opt-in funnel — a landing page trading something free (a checklist, template, or short training) for an email address, followed by an email sequence that leads to a paid offer. Use this when the audience doesn't know you yet.
2. Tripwire funnel — a landing page straight into a low-priced offer, with an order bump and a single upsell after checkout. Use this when you already have some trust (an audience, referrals) and want a fast first sale.
3. Webinar funnel — a registration page, a live or automated training, then a pitch for a higher-ticket offer. Use this for anything that needs real explanation before someone will pay for it.
4. Direct sales funnel — a sales page straight to checkout, with no opt-in step first. Use this only when the offer is cheap and simple enough to sell cold, or your traffic already arrives warm.

Sketch the steps on paper first

1. List every step in order — for example: opt-in page → thank-you page → email sequence → sales page → order page → upsell → final thank-you page. Write it as a simple numbered list, nothing fancy.
2. Mark the one action each step wants. A page trying to both collect an email and sell a product usually does neither well — give each step a single job.
3. Decide your one metric per step — opt-in rate on the landing page, open rate on the first email, checkout completion rate. You'll use these later to see where the funnel is actually leaking.

With the offer, shape, and step list written down, you're ready to build. In the next lesson, you'll create this funnel in Systeme.io and build the first page from this exact plan.