You have a sweet SaaS product, you managed to setup a site to push your software, you even acquired some attention via social channels, paid ads, and various inbound practices. Only problem being, the traffic-to-lead ratio is 100/3. Meaning for every 100 visitors, 3% are signing up, while 97% are leaving without doing anything (now that’s one big #saashole). How can you increase your SaaS conversion rate based on the same amount of visitors your site currently receives?
Well it’s obvious to see why that conundrum requires your immediate attention, however the answer is often illusive. It could have something to do with that CRO acronym being thrown around, but we’ll come back to that. Before we delve into why people aren’t signing up, and how we can turn them into SaaS leads, we have to know why they are leaving. Let’s review a couple broad reasons that may happen:
1) Your site design is….poor.
Face it, the majority of people have, and always will, judge based on looks. And if your site looks janky, chances are they think your product will be just that.
2) Your navigation is confusing.
This is one of those easiest ways to control the direction of visitors. Arrange your navigation through the eyes of your visitor, don’t force feed them. Make the information they need available, but avoid overcrowding the menu.
3) Your site isn’t responsive.
Mobilegeddon has passed, around 2014 in fact; so don’t be surprised if the majority of your traffic comes from a mobile device. With that in mind, it is important to make sure your website functions properly on a variety of mobile platforms. The easiest way to accomplish that is to make sure your website is responsive. What’s responsive?
4) Gating basic content.
Don’t throw a registration requirement pop-up on content just because. Gating an offer's content is great for driving leads but isn’t necessary for most information on your site.
5) What you offer isn’t clear.
Messaging needs to convey both value to the customer, and have a solid proposition, hence it needs to be a value proposition. On top of that, having relevant content to support your value proposition is essential.
Now where were we.. oh yes, that CRO acronym.
CRO, or Conversion Rate Optimization, is the numero uno way to boost those SaaS conversion rates based on your current amount of traffic. This is accomplished through fixing the weak portions of the buyer journey. The fundamental steps are as follows:
(In the words of Old Gregg) Make an assessment:
Utilizing a variety of tools you can find the flaws in your buyer’s journey. Use this analytical data to drive your decisions on which portions of the site needs the most attention.
- Tools To Use:
- Google Analytics – A great way to follow the ebb and flow of traffic to your website. The Visitor Flow Chart is exceptionally useful to see where visitors are dropping off in the buyer journey.
Think about it:
Dually the most overlooked, and the most crucial. Actually thinking about the changes you want to implement before acting will save you time, and yield far greater results.
- Tools to use:
- Brain - noun 1. An organ of soft nervous tissue contained in the skull of vertebrates, functioning as the coordinating center of sensation and intellectual and nervous activity.
Tweaking:
This usually takes place on the page of the problem. Whether it’s your home page, pricing page, landing page, etc. Many times you will be creating multiple versions of these tweaks in order to test the best one. You would be surprised how big of an improvement can come from the most simple of tweaks. For example, we found by simply changing the color of a button we increased our click through rate (I forget the actual percent increase, but I promise you it happened).
- Tools to Use:
- CSS
- HTML
- Photoshop
- Any other way to make visual/copy changes
- And of course there exists various all-incluse packages for this entier process (a few are mentioned below)
Testing:
Put your tweaks to the test. There are multiple ways, and multiple tools you can use to publish your new changes. There are also multiple forms of testing that can be applied to your tweaks. A/B testing is the most commonly utilized form of page testing, and easy to capture analytics on.
- Tools to use*:
*Most of these tools can be used for the whole process; I’m stating different tools in other sections for variety’s sake.
Evaluating & Optimizing:
This is where the magic happens (R.I.P MTV Cribs). After deploying your tweaks you will be able to collect a bunch of juicy analytics on them. Evaluating them is how you are going to determine the effectiveness of your tweaks, and the best way to optimize them.
To be fair, all of the steps above can be made into their own countless word blog post, and I may do so in the future. Although knowing the steps is important, it would also be wise to brush up on some best practices. CRO is ultimately about getting the most value from existing users, through improving upon what you already have. You can really go just about as in depth as you would like, especially when it comes to SaaS lead generation.
So.. let’s bring this full circle.
You have a problem: Whether you garner 10k visitors a month, or 100, only a small percentage is turning into leads. What’s the best way to make sure you get the most value from your site visits?
Solution: Conversion Rate Optimization. Utilizing the steps and tools above, along with some of those best practices, you can ensure an improvement in the value of your traffic.
That’s the beautiful thing about CRO, it’s a form of internal improvements, to gain external results. If using Google adwords is similar to signing up for a UFC fight, then utilizing CRO is kin to joining a morning Yoga class. Don’t get me wrong Yoga is hard, and also very rewarding.
Are you missing out on conversions from not optimizing? Sounds like you may have a SaaSHole is your marketing strategy. Sign up for a Free Inbound Marketing Assessment and we’d be happy to discuss!
