Websites are tricky things to get right, especially SaaS websites in which the primary goal is to convert visitors into customers. And the worst thing is: there’s no such thing as “perfect” when it comes to your SaaS website. Your business will grow and change. Your market and customers will evolve. As a result, your website needs to be able to adapt to reflect all of these things.
Keeping up to date with what’s working in the world of optimization, together with looking at your own analytics and customer base will help your SaaS website achieve maximum results.
Although the specifics may change, there are a number of SaaS website best practices every SaaS startup should be aware of when building and optimizing a website for customer conversions.
1. Display your unique value proposition clearly on the site
Your unique value proposition (UVP) is that short sentence (or two) that describes the unique benefits of your product, how it solves the needs of your customers, and what specific features or traits separate you from your competitors.
SaaS website best practices dictate the unique value proposition should be found quickly and easily by any new visitor, which typically means it lives above the fold on your homepage. It also pops its head up in various other places on your website, your wider marketing, and your pitches. It should be a key part of your brand messaging strategy.
The UVP should instantly tell someone who has never heard of you what your product is and does, and why it does that thing better than everyone else. This helps new leads decide whether your product is a good fit for their needs. The main thing to remember is that your UVP needs to be clear – not clever (although if you can manage both, that’s great!).
Some solid examples of company UVPs following SaaS website best practices are:
Biteable “Make better videos than your competitors. On your lunch break”
Proposify “Transform your sales team into a closing machine”
Freshbooks “All-in-one small business and accounting solution”
Ahrefs “Tools to grow your search traffic, research your competitors and monitor your niche”
Salesforce “Connect to your customers in a while new way with the world’s #1 CRM platform”
All of these statements not only make it clear in a couple of seconds what the product does, and how it differentiates from other brands in the same market, but they are also following SaaS website best practices by remaining above the fold on the homepage in a clear and concise manner.
2. Create messaging for your SaaS website based on consumer research
Is your SaaS website trying to attract everyone on the planet as a customer? If your messaging is too generic, your customer conversation rates are likely to be disappointing.
By identifying your ideal target customers and using messaging that speaks your audience's language throughout your website, you will not only be following SaaS website best practices, but you will also have better odds of acquiring qualified leads.
Spending time talking with your customers and executing a variety of consumer research methods allows you to collect qualitative data you can use to create customer segments and buyer personas, which can be used for more targeted messaging that converts the right people. These are the potential users that are genuinely interested in your product and are most likely to stick around and become valuable, long-term customers.
3. Use video to increase customer conversions
There’s a huge amount of information online pointing to the effectiveness of video on B2B websites. More engaging and memorable than text, video can make complicated tech more interesting and easier to understand. Whether you’re using them for walkthroughs, explainers, or customer case studies, the power of video and the impressive statistics can no longer be disputed:
Grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users
Drive a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engine results
Get 80% more engagement on landing pages
If results like these make you do a double-take, then it’s definitely worth testing video on your SaaS website. With video apps and editing software now more accessible than ever, there are options available for every level of startup to try their hand at moving media.
4. Use social proof to increase customer conversions
SaaS websites often overlook the power of social proof to improve conversion rates. Stacking your proof is a powerful psychological tactic that can do a lot of convincing for you on your website – turning warm leads into hot leads that are primed for you to make the sale.
The types of social proof you can use are numerous, and might include:
User reviews
Testimonials
Case studies
Endorsements
Media coverage
Number of subscribers
Brand logos of customers or partners
Mentions of well-known apps that integrate with your product
Even if you have a dedicated testimonials page (or similar) on your site, SaaS website best practices recommend ensuring social proof elements exist on other pages throughout your website as well to build trust in your prospective customers.
5. Pricing landing pages should express the value of your product
This is one of the most important pages on any SaaS website. It’s the place that customers will immediately head to and scrutinize for price comparisons, budget planning, and to get the okay from their C-Suite.
It’s crucial that your pricing landing page shows the value of signing up to potential customers – not just a list of features. This is especially important when there are other strong competitors in your field and you’re at a higher price point. Focusing on the values and benefits targets customers’ needs and emotions, instead of their wallets.
The pricing landing page is an excellent place to have a FAQ section to counter common buyer objections when they’re considering your SaaS product. This can also save your sales team time answering the same questions over and over.
Social proof is another powerful addition here. Including testimonials, well-known customer logos, or any impressive stats about customer achievements or your number of sign-ups can go a long way towards convincing prospects that this is a solution worth investing in.
Basecamp’s pricing page does a stand-out job of covering all of the above elements. The comparison chart against their close competitors doesn’t aim to shoot down their rivals. Instead, it does the math that customers would be doing anyway and positions the Basecamp pricing as delivering more value for money for teams in the long run.
Transparency in pricing is a hotly debated subject in terms of the pricing landing page. With many SaaS companies offering bespoke tailored solutions, it can be hard to even gauge a ballpark figure to display. It can also turn enterprise customers off if they see that the next plan down offers a similar solution for thousands of dollars less. Plan your pricing model carefully and keep testing the prices in your market to get optimal results from your pricing landing pages.
6. Contact details should be easy to find
You have an interested, qualified lead who wants to get in touch with you. They can see you have plenty of calls-to-action (CTAs), but that’s not what they need right now. They want to phone, email, message, or even visit your offices to find out more about your business.
Your contact details should be easy to find on your website. Social media links are also helpful for people to contact you with business questions. Making it difficult to figure out how to contact you can frustrate your potential customers – which isn’t the ideal way to start your relationship!
That said, contact details are worthless if you’re not actively responding to contact inquiries, so make sure to hire sales reps and ensure someone is checking the email inbox and answering phone calls if you choose to provide visitors those options to contact you. Or you can test AI chatbots that utilize conversational messaging.
Optimizing your SaaS website means continually testing and adapting
SaaS website best practices might sound simple enough, yet they are often overlooked altogether, especially by startups with little or no experience optimizing a website to increase customer conversions. These are just the basics every website owner needs to be aware of, but following these best practices alone won’t be enough to truly optimize your SaaS website.
Optimizing for conversions means continual testing and adapting to fit the changing needs of your customers and the wider market. By focusing on the foundations for a good website such as voice of customer data, social proof, and a strong value proposition, you can build a robust website with high SaaS conversion rates that’s primed to be the best salesperson possible for your business.