I get a lot of questions regarding conversion optimization for SaaS…
And GOD there are a huge amount of misconceptions!
These misconceptions come from “tweak/magic” based articles that float all around the web and that screwed up the way you try to optimize your website (and that’s why you don’t get great results).
The goal with this article (and with this blog) is to answer all of your questions, change your mindset towards “tweak” based optimization and provide you valuable insights to improve your conversion rates.
In this article, I’ll answer all of these questions and provide you with additional resources for you to fix these issues.
Looking for the FAQ about my services instead? Here’s the link.
Sorry to disappoint you but small tweaks rarely work!
Let’s be real...When did a shitty effort lead you to amazing results?
That’s right, NEVER!
Small tweaks only work when there is a huge bottleneck at some stage of the funnel, which means that the rest of the pages are performing well but for some reason one is not converting much which leads to very bad results at the end of the funnel (aka no one turns into a customer).
Even in these cases, the results didn’t come from the small tweaks, but from the hours of research that concluded only a few things needed changing.
Do you want to know what’s the only thing that increases conversion?
It’s answering objections! Objections are a set of questions a potential customer needs to get answered before they are ready to make the decision to convert.
It’s simple...If you don’t answer them, they won’t convert.
If you want to learn how to identify and answer these objections, I wrote a guide here.
Related article: Design Landing pages around conversion
Landing pages that convert actually share a lot of common traits, here are a few of them:
Note that the Landing page is only going to be as good as the information and objections you can gather from your customers, otherwise it won’t convert anyway!
Here are few resources on how to identify what you should put on your Landing page in the first place:
You’ll need the right process to help you create great Landing pages predictably and consistently.
Essentially the process consists of:
This process took me nearly 5 years to develop but you can get it in 5 days with my free email course.
Free course: My 5 Step Process to Help SaaS Startup Turn Visitors into Customers
Different niches will always have slight differences on how they need to convert their visitors.
If we think of e-commerce websites (for example) we don’t see that many differences between them as the sales rely more on the products themselves and how targeted the traffic is.
Unlike SaaS websites they don’t need to explain what a certain product is for (you know how to use a t-shirt or shoes, right?), they don’t have complex questions about setup processes and the cost is easier to justify because it’s a one time thing.
SaaS products usually require bigger commitments of both time, money or even other resources (if you’re switching tools for example).
The bigger the commitment, the harder the objections you’ll need to overcome and the harder it is to convert.
On the upside, in SaaS Landing pages we can use rational triggers to explain why a product will be useful and even imply the value that it brings in the form of benefits like saving time, saving money, reducing errors, increase productivity and so on…
Want to know what does a conversion driven SaaS Landing page look like? In this article, I broke one down step-by-step
Yes!!! They need to be treated differently, I don’t know why there are barely any articles on this…
People expect to simply drive traffic to a Landing page, everyone will understand everything and convert right away with almost a 0 touch approach.
Sorry to break your heart, but this incredibly rare! Unless you are a big enough company that invested years into creating awareness for your product (I covered more around this bias here).
To get people to convert with a low touch approach you will either need a very simple and cheap product or an incredible understanding of the main problems and objections of your potential customers.
With a high touch approach you should focus on justifying the time commitment of scheduling a demo/call and why that would be useful to them.
If you are charging higher prices for your product it’s 100% doable to simply use ads + a great funnel and fill your sales people’s calendars with leads to sell to (that’s why I love it so much), although it’s way harder to convert for the inexperienced.
Related article: Want more qualified demos? Use these 10 tweaks on your SaaS Website.
If you are an early stage startup I would even advise you to start with a high touch or hybrid model so you can get as much info about product market fit as possible.
You can then use this info from the chat time with your customers to make your funnel as low touch as possible!
There are a billion reasons why people might not be converting and it can get extremely hard to find out what are the core problems that you are having.
Regardless of how many things are wrong with your website they fall down to these 4 core issues:
Want a full breakdown on each one of these issues? Here’s a step-by-step guide
First of all, don’t even use them...They rarely work!
They were not made to suit your needs...It’s like buying a suit from the tailor with measurements from other people’s bodies...
Nowadays you can use web builders or just code a page pretty fast. Why would you limit yourself to shitty templates that weren’t made to convert?
You don’t need to be a designer, a developer or a marketer but still create a good page live within a couple of hours (if you really need it that fast)!
All you need is to know your customers and use a framework to come up with your pages, that’s the only thing that will get you results!
Use this framework (and screw the template): How to make a Conversion-driven SaaS Landing page [2018 edition]
Quit the excuses and build a simple custom page. Who cares if it’s going to take you a bit longer?
How much time can you gain back by getting the right feedback on your product or even starting to convert somewhat well without the 1000 iterations your shitty template will need!?
This is actually not a bad problem to have!
You see...If you know how to sell people 1-on-1 you will probably have a great knowledge about what problems and objections your customers will have, which is better than 95% of other SaaS founders!
There are 2 ways to fix this issue.
The insights you’ll get from the phone calls you were able to close are extremely valuable and hold all the info you need to make your Landing page sell for you.
If you want to understand how to turn these insights into a Landing page, check this guide.
If you enjoy doing these calls or are at least willing to delegate them to someone that can sell the product for you.
If your product has a high enough customer LTV than you can afford to hire salespeople and even have some ad budget to “buy” demo calls with you ideal prospects.
Since you know you can’t convert a good chunk of them and get a 2x + ROI!
Want to get more qualified demos from your website? Check this guide here.
You should only redesign or even tweak your website based on these 2 things:
#1 - You learn more about your customers which gives you more information to answer more objections and describe better benefits (to get better conversion rates).
#2 - Your website is not predictably turning visitors into customers meaning that you can’t convert a good chunk of your visitors consistently so you are losing money by not doing it.
Redesigning your website shouldn’t take you longer than 1 month (even for a huge one).
If it takes you more than 1 month it’s because you don’t have a good process to define what are the core benefits of your product and the biggest pain points of your different customer archetypes.
I’ve done big redesign projects with extremely complex products, different services, available in 100+ countries with 10 different types of customers and 50+ features that needed to be turned into 3-5 benefits (to fit on a Landing page).
Do you know how long it takes me to do all of that?
3-4 weeks….
Do you want to learn my full process? I turned ~5 years of training into a 5-day email course.
This is such a common issue and it’s making startups lose a ton of potential customers :(
Visitors leaving within a few seconds is also known as bouncing, which you can track from your analytics as the bounce-rate.
If most people leave your website without going through 30-40% of your Landing page it’s because you have at least one of these issues.
When people got referred to your website by a search result, an ad, or through referral traffic they had an expectation your Landing page didn’t meet.
If they went to your website to checkout a CRM (for example) and they misunderstand it with something else, they will simply leave!
Make sure your message is consistent between what brings them to the Landing page and the page itself.
People are less and less patience these days so essentially you have 5-10 seconds to briefly explain what your product has and introduce the problem you’re fixing.
Your visitors just want to see “What’s in it for me?” and if they don’t see it, they are out!
Even if they understand what your product does you need to create curiosity to keep them scrolling and have more chances of them understanding the real value of your product and eventually convert into a customer.
Social proof and focusing on their biggest pain point are two of the easiest ways to keep them interested.
Want to know how a SaaS website can create a killer first impression? Here’s a quick guide on that.
If you have questions regarding how I can help your startup generate way more revenue from your website you can check my faq page.
Or email me: pedro@cortes.design
Or...Schedule a free consultation.
That’s a more complex question but we can still chat about it.
Without the experience and the process it might take your months of your time and of your runway to get anywhere near converting a good chunk of your visitors. Why waste all of that time and money?
Let’s discuss how you can get way more customers from your website. Schedule your free consultation here.
