Spending the right amount of time to make a good funnel is important. Whether you’re planning on making a funnel by yourself or hiring a professional who charges by the hour, you’ll want to know the average amount of time it takes.
On average, it takes 10 to 15 hours to build a four-page sales funnel from scratch. The amount of time will vary depending on multiple factors such as the type of funnel, how many funnel steps are required, the marketing assets available, and the funnel builder’s tools and previous experience.
We’ll cover the funnel-building process so you can determine how long it will take to get a funnel up and running. Obviously, the times provided are estimates, but they should help you figure out a general timeline.
Funnel Building Timing – How Long Does Each Stage Take?
To estimate how long it will take to launch your next funnel, we need to understand each major part of the process and how long it takes to achieve these individual milestones.
1. Sales Funnel Planning and Preparation
The first step for every project is to plan. The success of your sales funnel starts before you even open your funnel builder.
At this stage, you will do your research, inventory the tools you have at your disposal, and then map out your whole funnel structure.
For most people, the planning stage should take about 1-2 hours.
Spending more than this usually means you got caught in analysis paralysis, which will delay the launch of your funnel.
Here are a few benchmarks to guide your planning process.
a. Research
If you completely build your funnel from scratch, you will waste a lot of time and effort.
That’s why it is highly recommended to “funnel hack” your competitors and get inspiration from their funnels.
Researching other funnels to hack should take about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Time Requirement: 45 minutes to 1 hour.
b. Tools
Cataloging the tools you have available and creating new accounts shouldn’t take too long.
I wouldn’t recommend spending more than 15 minutes reviewing your tools unless you’re buying a funnel builder software.
This is a big investment, so it’s important to compare and contrast your options.
Time Requirement: 15 minutes.
c. Funnel Architecture
Choosing the type of funnel you’re going to use is important, but you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
All you have to do is choose a funnel based on the information you got while funnel hacking and then map the sales funnel structure/architecture.
Pro Tip: The Dotcom Secrets Book has a section dedicated to all of the most commonly used funnels, with explanations and easy-to-understand diagrams.
Time Requirement: 30 Minutes or less.
2. Building The Funnel
The funnel-building stage of the process is the longest. It includes everything from marketing assets to sales copy to design.
The amount of time this stage takes depends on how many of these assets you have at your disposal.
This stage will probably take at least 4 hours, but it can stretch all the way to 10 hours or more.
Let’s examine how long each stage of the funnel-building process takes.
a. Funnel Design
When it comes to designing a funnel, some people would rather use a template that takes about 30 minutes to put in place.
However, others prefer to make a unique design for their funnel. Building one from scratch will take an average of 5 hours.
In my experience, most businesses could build a successful funnel by relying on templates for the design, but for this to work, their messaging or sales copy needs to be especially good.
Time Requirement: Between 30 minutes and 5 hours.
b. Funnel Sales Copy
Sales copy is the message you will use to persuade people who visit your funnel.
For a funnel to succeed, the messaging needs to be persuasive enough to convert visitors into leads and, ultimately, customers.
On average, writing persuasive sales copy for the sales funnel could take anywhere from 3 to 10 hours.
If a business has enough data about its customers and a working knowledge of their problems and desires, then writing sales copy should take much less time.
Time Requirement: 3 to 10 hours.
c. Funnel Assets
Funnel assets are everything from your funnel domain name, pdfs, favicons, videos, pixel codes, merchant accounts, and every other element that is needed to make the funnel fully functional.
If you are assembling everything from scratch, collecting all of your funnel assets usually takes a couple of hours.
Creating content like videos and graphics will greatly increase the time it takes.
Time Requirement: 2 Hours
3. Optimizing and Launching
You did most of the heavy lifting in the previous steps and got you 90% ready to launch your next funnel.
As you can see, the minimum amount of time that you would need to build everything is roughly 9 hours.
But your job is not yet done. Next, we will cover some crucial steps that could make the difference between a successful funnel and a failure.
a. Optimizing for Mobile
When building funnels, a lot of people overlook mobile optimization. This is a mistake because you could end up losing valuable conversions.
Most funnel-building software has integrated features that allow people to easily adjust their funnels for mobile devices.
If you use a tool like this, it might only take 20 to 30 minutes to make sure your funnels look perfect on every device.
Time Requirement: 20 to 30 Minutes
b. Email Campaign
While this is not technically included in funnel building, an email follow-up or nurturing email campaign is necessary for every sale funnel.
The amount of time it takes to write an email campaign from scratch depends on the order and number of emails you want to send to your newly acquired leads.
A standard email campaign consists of 5 emails, and each email usually takes about 30 minutes to write.
Time Requirement: 2 hours 30 minutes.
4. Updating and Improving
Now your sales funnel is ready to launch!
While technically the main job is complete, there’s still some work to do if you want your funnel to keep converting.
a. Funnel Analytics
When a funnel doesn’t work, it usually means a small part of the funnel is not converting.
If one piece has issues, it prevents the whole funnel from doing its job. That’s why it is important to check your funnel analytics.
Unless you have a swarm of funnel steps, it’s easy to check your funnel analytics and make decisions.
Routinely checking your analytics and making decisions shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes.
Time Requirement: 30 minutes.
b. Split Testing
If you’re using ClickFunnels, creating variations of your funnel steps is easy. This is called split testing or A/B testing.
This functionality is especially useful when you have a step of your funnel where you want to test different offers or sales copy variations.
Creating a split test involves cloning the original step and making some little changes. As such, it’s a quick process that doesn’t usually take more than 15 minutes.
Time Requirement: 15 minutes.
Final Thoughts
Rushing your funnel build is never a good idea, and it’s easy to underestimate how long it takes to build a funnel from scratch.
That’s why you need to first understand each stage of the funnel-building process.
It may take longer than you think, but the process is manageable if you break it up into smaller chunks.
Sometimes you will already have the necessary assets to speed up the process, but most of the time, you need to create everything from scratch.
In this case, you should expect your whole build to take at least 10 hours.