It's easy to build a web site that forces every visitor through one little chute (or funnel). Unfortunately, people arrive at your web site in all different stages of familiarity. The comScore web site is very elegant, and, in addition to About Us, offers a well-designed area called About You. ebay beats the Amazon firehose in providing a variety of paths to jump in. Slideshare beats Youtube in providing an orientation. Typepad does a nice job of letting you enter at your natural level of interest. What about your web site? Does it assume either everyone knows nothing or everyone knows it all?

Conversation Agent: Customer Engagement, 2014-Jan-27 by Valeria Maltoni

While for the purposes of breaking down the data and acting on it marketers are still talking about funnels, people think and act more in terms of phases of need in a continuous journey through their lives.