The SaaS Growth Blog

The subscription environment requires measurements of SaaS-favs like monetization, churn, retention, and expansion to ensure a successful business. This holds true whether your business is solving security issues or facilitating movie rentals. In this regard, many SaaS businesses have strong similarities.

For so many businesses, the conversion process largely remains a mystery -- especially if there are multiple routes for a prospective customer to take: free trial, demo, phone call, whitepaper; the list gets complicated, quickly. Rather than investing in answers to address why leads aren’t enticed to become customers, companies often persist with the same infrastructure, hoping that the sales will eventually come. Or worse yet, they pump a bunch of money into an unproven process and don’t glean the results they were hoping for.

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?

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, if that tree symbolizes your Conversion Rate Optimization, and there’s no inbound call tracking, then the answer is absolutely not. Tracking leads is the weak link in many websites aimed at turning page views into paying customers. How do you know what your real ROI is if you don’t know which ad or website is bringing in customers? You don’t. That’s a problem. 

Here’s how to solve for your real ROI. (Click to Tweet!)

 Number? Number? Who’s Got Your Number?

Lately, I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect pair of eyeglasses to fit my giant face (the technical term for “giant face” is “wide temples”). The upshot is, most eyeglasses are made for smaller heads than mine, which means that I really need to try on eyeglasses before I buy. Fortunately for big-headed gals like me, online eyeglasses stores are making at-home try-ons easy. These eyeglasses webstores are doing a terrific job of aligning their inbound marketing (the cutest pair of glasses popped up in my Facebook sidebar and I just had to click), website (sleek, modern, intuitive navigation), and freebie incentives (free shipping for at-home trials!).

Picture this: Your daughter finally brings home her new boyfriend Jimmy, and whether it’s his greasy hair or his limp-fish handshake, you don’t like him. Instantly.

Now, you don’t know Jimmy’s GPA or that he spends every weekend volunteering at the local animal shelter – in fact, there’s a lot you don’t know. But, you feel your assessment is solid (and it probably is). That’s because people make shortcuts all the time when making decisions. We use “Rules of Thumb,” gut instincts, and intuition to make decisions all day long.

You have a great product, you have a well-functioning website, you have customers who have trucked along your sales funnel and are almost ready to buy. What’s stopping them? Why are they abandoning their shopping carts? Most importantly, how can you get them to make the leap and finally hit that “Buy” button and convert.

You have a “Buy” button, right?

Phew – just checking!

Before you begin tweaking Calls to Action, you need to start from the beginning of the Ecommerce CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) process. You need to find out where your conversions are coming from in the first place.