SaaS Audits are great to find opportunities to acquire more customers but they have 2 big problems.
1) You might not know how to go "deep enough" to find the "easy wins" that lead to great results.
2) It's hard to get an outside perspective to find new ideas or simply some opportunity you and/or your team haven't noticed as you're too close to the product/project.
This guide is perfect for designers and marketers involved in the optimisation/changes of the website.
In this step-by-step guide (+ free template) I'll show you how to do a great audit internally (even without outside help).
Here's what I've learned from being an outside consultant for many 7 and 8 figure SaaS companies (limited offer here).
Warning: I can guarantee you've never used some of these strategies... Enjoy ;)
I'll make a bold claim.
Most audit straight up suck! They are not highly actionable, they can be overwhelming and they only focus on small tweaks with little impact (yes, this is the real world not where BS conversion advice doesn't apply).
A great audit should solve or identify one big problem not 10.
If we frame these as questions they are easy to identify.
Choose 1 goal and keep following the other steps in this article.
And if you don't? You'll be overwhelmed and end up not implementing any of the changes or you might not identify anything meaningful at all.
No, SaaS audits shouldn't take long. Sometimes I even do these valuable ones in 15 mins.
And if you don't do them fast? Ideas will be hard to get and insights harder to find.
It's easy to get biased quickly and the more time you try to spend finding problems the easier it is to focus on the problems instead of the solutions... Not that useful :(
That's why I follow a process (template here) so I can keep getting great/unique ideas to fix the problems and not focus too much on the problem itself (which isn't very productive).
Here's how to do it 👇
I know, analytics can be overwhelming so here's the 80/20 of analytics.
Ask yourself these questions and you'll know which pages you need to focus on in this audit:
Normally there are couple of pages that immediately come to mind but if they don't, just use insights in Google Analytics as it's anyone can easily use it (screenshot above) and look for:
It's useless to select a page that's not related to becoming a customer so this question is pretty important.
Examples of pages directly related to the conversion goal:
Let's be honest, this quote is SO TRUE 👇
"Do more of what works"
This is the easiest way I identify quick wins when I do audits for my clients.
If you've changed something and have noticed an improvement then it's HIGHLY likely that you still have similar tweaks to do to get even better results!
[confusing messaging - We do this, we do that]
Take several elements from your team, ideally the same ones responsible for the website and ask them the following questions:
NOTE: Write these down, otherwise it won’t work!
Q: How would you describe our product to someone outside the company (customer or not)?
Let your team write what comes to mind BEFORE they look at these examples:
Besides the cool ideas, this will help you find inconsistencies between your team regarding how they describe the product.
If they describe the product differently how can they work together to make the messaging better?
They can’t! You need to fix those inconsistencies first.
Get the template for this process. Free and without email opt-ins!
Let's be honest, if you work in the same company you won't be able to get a true outside perspective but there's a nice alternative...
You can use the outside perspective from your customers (and potential customers) which (if done right) is EVEN better!
1) Find all of the contacts you have from customers and potential customers. This could mean finding emails, recordings of demos, surveys they filled out, questions they asked and so on...
2) Put that on a Gdoc and highlight what seems important.
3) Notice how they describe their problems, the questions they ask, what keeps them from converting and whatever other insights you can find.
This will tell you what's important to them and the potential changes you need to make in order to adapt to what they want to hear, this could mean:
These insights are absolute gold and I used them whenever I need to redesign or rewrite a website for a client.
Since we are using reasons why your current customers converted it's super easy to get great results WITHOUT endless iterations ;)
If you've done the previous exercise we'll use it again for this step.
Basically, try to put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer…
What things would you need to know about the product to make a decision to convert?
List them out and use your team for more suggestions…
Now… Ask yourself: Are you answering these questions on the page(s) you want to improve?
If not, you should! Most people with these questions that don’t bother to convert to get these answers so you’re losing money.
List out everything you found and any ideas you've had to fix them...
How much could you gain from fixing them?
It's super important you try to put a number on it otherwise you won't know if you should prioritise this over other projects or which of optimisation ideas you should try.
(More on this on step 6)
Take your list of ideas to get more conversions and prioritize them by answering these questions (template here).
Which one would be the easiest to get results?
Which one would have the biggest impact?
Which one is something that as already worked before?
After you answer these you should only have 1-2 REALLY good ideas that are highly likely to get you results.
This is exactly how I find the easy wins for my clients doing my audits (irresistible offer here).
Obviously, you won't get results unless you implement these things...
Conversion optimization is a never ending task but you don't need to do audits constantly.
Simply wait a couple of months to get some results and you'll eventually find some potential growth opportunities that you can explore with an audit.
Once you need another audit, just follow the process again and get some awesome insights.
Get the template here for free. No email opt-in.
I've done my best to let you use a process to find growth opportunities internally but there's a BIG problem...
You can never replace a fresh pair of (experienced) eyes.
Between you and me that's probably the biggest advantage I have when I do audits for my clients.
What if you could get my feedback/outside perspective on your website?
I've worked with SaaS companies anywhere between multiple 6 to 8 figures and I know what works and what doesn't.
What if I do the audit for you? Full details here
I'm offering these audits for a ridiculous price (and with a good reason).
How does that sound? Actionable feedback from an experienced consultant that save you a bunch of time and find you some great growth opportunities.
Don't worry, I will make a ton of money out of these directly and/or indirectly... I know what I'm doing ;)
So here's my (irresistible) offer:
How much would these insights be worth to you?
Want to learn more? Here are the full details, might sound too good to be true ;)
