In the world of Software as a Service (SaaS), first impressions often matter more than you would think. With so many other companies out there working on solving the same problems, you usually have a limited window to impress your visitors. This is where the importance of clever and converting landing page design in SaaS comes in.
Here are our 7 tips to help you craft a page that works:
Include explainer videos
Understanding exactly what a tool does is often the challenge potential leads face when first coming across a product – and not many of them will take the time to read your copy to learn more.
However, if you manage to include a short but to-the-point explainer video on your landing pages, your chances of getting your value across will increase.
Here is an example from Forms on Fire – they provide mobile data collection software – where a minute and a half is all it takes to get to know the product and determine whether you are interested or not.
Invest a lot of creativity in your header
You are often told how important headers are in content writing – the same is true for landing page copy, as the impact your header will have on a visitor is crucial.
You want to represent your brand, you want to get your main point across, you want to showcase your value, explain what you are really about and get people to convert: in no more than a sentence or two.
Which is where the challenge lies.
Take the example of Crazyegg, who provide an unspecified website improvement service – and have a very attractive header to show for it.
Since they offer a 30-day free trial and promise to instantly improve your website, there isn’t much a visitor could lose. So their header works like a charm.
Your calls-to-action are also key
However, you don’t need to be as creative with them as with your headers: a simple “get started”, “start your trial”, or a “sign up now” will work – but what’s important here is how you preempt the CTA.
Most international, huge, famous companies have simple CTAs – Netflix, Hulu, Dropbox, Evernote, etc. – they don’t have a catchphrase or a funny saying slapped onto their pages.
What they do have is a clear list of benefits (what it is you are getting from the service) and a straightforward way of signing up for the service.
Make it easy to access
Which leads right to our next tip: don’t make signing up very complicated.
You may want to make credit card data compulsory, but even if you do, make it as easy as possible to fill in your form and move on to the next step.
Whether or not you are offering a free trial, or have something like the Ahrefs 7 days for $7 trial period, you still want your leads to be able to accomplish their goal (sign up), in as little time as digitally and humanly possible.
If you are seeing a lot of uncompleted sign-up forms, try making the form simpler, and eliminate some of your required fields: we understand you want to gather as much data as possible about your leads, but maybe spread data collecting out over a longer period of time.
Show the process
If you don’t feel the use of your tool requires an entire video, still try to explain how to make it work, especially if the tool in question does something essentially simple, but very useful.
TimeTackle, a software designed to pull your calendar off of the cloud, has a great four-step explanation of the process users will need to run through once they have the tool, making it very easy for users to decide whether they want to give it a go or not.
Always remember that while some of your users will be very tech-savvy, others might have more of a hard time understanding even the more basic concepts. That’s why you need to try to figure out a language that will speak to your target audience, as well as all its variations and levels of understanding.
Offer social proof where it makes sense
A lot of landing pages incorporate social proof – which is essentially a great move, but does not always make sense.
You don’t have to repeat the same testimonials on every page, nor do you have to showcase different satisfied customers on every corner.
When talking about the benefits of your product, or when showcasing use cases and success stories, social proof is more than welcome.
Here is the example of Gusto, who make payroll, insurance, and a whole host of other tasks easier– who have added in plenty of social proof, yet have not made it sound like they are bragging, or like they have solicited recommendations from their users.
The basics: webpage design
Of course, there is another important element you should never forget: webpage design.
And we are not just talking about the colors and font you choose (although it is in itself very important). You should also think about the emotions you want to elicit, the value you want to portray, and the target audience you are aiming for.
Naturally, navigation, user experience and user-friendliness, responsiveness, and a whole host of other webpage optimization tactics should also all play their part. If you have elements that don’t load properly, don’t work on certain screen sizes, or if your pages are cluttered and crowded, all the other good work you may have done won’t be worth a dime.
Final thoughts
Hopefully, these tips will help you design better SaaS landing pages in the future – but remember, there is no bulletproof design formula that will work for every website. You need to keep your own target market and product in mind when designing sales pages, rather than just considering what has worked for others in the past.
In fact, a lot of these tips were once novelties that have since been proven to work by countless websites. So why not come up with the next one?
