ecommerce-funnel

name	ecommerce-funnel
description	Use when designing ecommerce acquisition, retargeting, lifecycle messaging, offers, upsells, retention, and repeat-purchase journeys; do not use for checkout mechanics or measurement architecture alone.
metadata	{"portable":true,"compatible_with":["claude-code","codex"]}

Ecommerce Funnel

Acknowledgement: Shared by Peter Bamuhigire, techguypeter.com, [phone].

Use when

• Acquisition, retargeting, abandoned-cart, onboarding, repeat-purchase, win-back, upsell, or loyalty journeys need an owned lifecycle map.
• Segments, triggers, consent, offers, timing, suppression, experiments, and economics must be designed as one system.

Do not use when

• The task is catalogue/store model strategy or checkout state design; use ecommerce or ecommerce-checkout.
• The task is event/KPI/dashboard architecture without lifecycle decisions; use ecommerce-analytics.
• Consent, suppression, economics, or fulfilment capacity is unknown; stop before activation.

Required Inputs

Input	Source	Required	If absent
Segments, buying cycle, products, margins, channels, and lifecycle objective	Business/commerce brief	yes	Stop offer sequencing and request economics and audience evidence.
Consent, contact rules, suppression, returns, and fulfilment limits	CRM/legal/operations	yes	Produce no send-ready campaign.
Baseline funnel and cohort evidence	Analytics	conditional	Frame journey as a hypothesis, not an optimisation result.

Workflow

1. Confirm segments, lifecycle objective, economics, consent, suppression, channels, fulfilment, and baseline; stop on unsafe activation gaps.
2. Map current journey and evidence-backed drop-offs before selecting offers or messages.
3. Decide triggers, timing, channel, content, offer, exits, frequency, and owner for each stage.
4. Define instrumentation, primary metrics, margin/service guardrails, and experiment stop conditions.
5. Review privacy, brand, stock, support, and operational capacity before handoff.
6. If activation evidence or systems fail, keep the plan in draft, suppress affected audiences, and return the recovery owner/test.

Quality standards

• Each journey names segment, evidence, trigger, channel, timing, exit, suppression, owner, metric, and guardrail.
• Offers respect verified margin, stock, fulfilment, brand, consent, and support capacity.
• Optimisation claims distinguish measured incrementality from correlation and hypothesis.

Anti-patterns

• Activating an inferred segment. Fix: validate segment evidence and eligibility first.
• Sending without consent or suppression. Fix: block activation until both are enforced.
• Discounting without margin or capacity checks. Fix: set economic and service guardrails.
• Measuring opens as business success. Fix: use incremental purchase and guardrail outcomes.
• Running journeys without exits. Fix: define conversion, recency, frequency, and unsubscribe exits.
• Do not produce generic framework dumps with no decision made.
• Do not invent facts to complete the output.
• Do not ignore the actual audience, offer, or business constraints.
• Do not send without consent or omit suppression, frequency, and unsubscribe controls.
• Do not use discounts that conflict with margin, stock, brand, or fulfilment limits.

Outputs

Artefact	Consumer	Observable acceptance condition
Funnel/lifecycle map	Marketing, CRM, ecommerce, analytics	Names segment, trigger, message/offer, channel, timing, exit, suppression, metric, and owner at each stage.
Experiment backlog	Growth owner	Each item has hypothesis, audience, primary metric, guardrail, and stop condition.

Evidence Produced

Evidence	Format	Acceptance condition
Journey assumption register	Evidence, assumption, risk, validation step	Unsupported segment or lift claims are explicitly qualified.

Capability Contract

Planning and review are read-only by default. Creating or sending campaigns, changing audiences or offers, using customer data, publishing, or spending requires explicit authority and consent controls.

Degraded Mode

When CRM access, analytics, consent evidence, or verified economics is unavailable, deliver a qualified lifecycle map and mark activation not assessed. Do not provide send-ready lists.

Decision Rules

Choice	Action	Failure or risk avoided
Segment has distinct need/evidence	Tailor journey and measurement	Generic blasting
Consent or suppression is uncertain	Block activation	Privacy harm
Offer erodes margin or service capacity	Redesign or reject it	Unprofitable growth
Baseline is missing	Run a measurement-first test	Unsupported lift claim

Worked Example

For replenishable skincare, separate first-time education from repeat-purchase timing, suppress recent purchasers from abandoned-cart messages, cap frequency, and measure incremental repeat purchase with margin and unsubscribe guardrails rather than reporting opens as success.

References

• Use sibling reference ../ecommerce/references/premium-ecommerce-growth-system.md when planning traffic-to-retargeting paths, lifecycle journeys, abandoned-cart recovery, repeat purchase, or ecommerce growth metrics.