With the number of SaaS companies in the market today, it’s getting more difficult to increase sales online. Solve this challenge with great SaaS website design.
The same techniques that used to work for you aren’t getting the results they used to. You need fresh ideas that stand out from the competition and hit your sales goals. Refining your sales strategy should start with evaluating your website.
What if we told you that you could convert visitors and increase your lead generation by making some small fixes to your company’s website? In fact, it’s so simple that you might have overlooked it when looking to boost sales.
Of course, we know nothing can guarantee a boost in sales, but we have some ideas to consider?
Fix your SaaS business website by implementing these 5 SaaS website best practices that are bound to increase sales and boost your conversion rate.
1. Tell A Story
To build trust, be honest. Are you telling your story by describing your products and services’ technical aspects? If so, try a different approach by telling the story of your company.
You may think storytelling is some fluffy term marketing people throw around to sound creative, but storytelling is a powerful tool—it isn’t just a trend. Storytelling has been used since the dawn of time because humans are wired to understand stories. We relate to stories, create stories, and remember stories.
You can form a deeper connection with your customer by involving yourself in their narrative. There are numerous storytelling frameworks. We like National Best-Selling Author Donald Miller’s storytelling framework called The Storybrand 7 or SB7.
In SB7, Miller lays out seven steps to help guide a brand’s narrative to connect with customers. Remember, you’re not just telling your brand’s story, but you are capturing the customer’s journey.
Use these seven steps to the SB7 to frame your marketing message:
- Character – your customer is the hero, define them.
- Problem – look for the customer’s frustrations.
- Guide – your customers are looking for help.
- A plan – customers trust a guide who has a plan.
- Call to Action – customers need a challenge, link to case studies.
- Avoid failure – no one wants to fail or have an unhappy ending.
Success – how can your product or service improve your customer’s life and solve their problems?
Use the SB7 framework to tell your company story. Create a compelling narrative through the copy on your website. You’ll be more successful at getting your ideal customer’s attention (and wallet) when you use storytelling on your website. Best of all, it doesn’t cost a dime.
2. Ditch The Technical Lingo
We know you’ve spent countless hours coding and regression testing, but the average consumer doesn’t even know what it means.
Your potential customers don’t have the expertise you do. Technical terms and industry jargon only create confusion. Speak in a way your target audience can understand and stay away from using technical terms to describe your offerings.
Delete anything on your website that is not clear to the average consumer or your target audience. To double-check, enlist friends (ideally a digital marketing expert) or one of your current customers to give you feedback.
While you’re at it, avoid showing screenshots of your platform and instead use the copy on your site to speak to the problems you are solving for your customers. This little change in how you, or your SaaS marketing agency, use short, readable copy – instead of design elements that nobody understands – will speak volumes to your visitors.
Remember to use the storytelling framework to talk problems and solutions, and nix the complex industry terminology that not everyone understands.
3. Use Local SEO
Instead of casting a wide net, focus on the customers in your backyard. 80% of consumers use search engines to search for local information.
Optimizing your site’s landing pages for local SEO can help improve your sales by getting more local customers. Hubspot defines local SEO as assisting businesses to promote their products and services locally.
Search engines collect local content, social profiles, and links to provide the most relevant information when consumers search for something they need.
Some ways you can optimize for local SEO – and get a great SaaS website design in the process – include improving your internal link structure, adding a location page to your website, and improving your Google My Business profile.
Google My Business verifies your business is legitimate and lets users leave reviews and rate your services.
Check out your Google My Business profile and make sure all your information is up-to-date and filled out correctly. Then go to your website and double-check that your address is on there. If you don’t have a location page already, add one. It’s an easy fix.
Don’t underestimate local search power to improve your sales just because you offer a SaaS product. Your community wants to support you, but they might not know you’re in their neighborhood.
4. Don’t Dismiss Mobile
Have you viewed your website on your mobile phone lately? If you haven’t, you should. User experience is officially a Google ranking signal – up to 70% of web traffic happens on a mobile device.
Your future customers could be using their mobile devices instead of their computers when viewing your site. If your web design doesn’t translate to mobile well, you might miss out on potential sales.
Nearly 7 out of 10 smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies whose mobile sites are optimized to efficiently address their concerns and questions. This might sound obvious, but have you taken “contextual” considerations in mind when developing your site? If not, this could be a barrier for potential customers.
Verify your site’s UX design is mobile-friendly and looks great on all screens and devices. If not, seek out a professional who can help to optimize your website for various formats.
5. Highlight Your Social Presence
Your social media is 100, as they say. You’re knocking it out of the park with creative and engaging posts that your audience loves. Why not put it on your website?
Social media is an essential part of your inbound marketing strategy and great SaaS website design. We’ve seen many companies who rock their social media, but their website falls flat in comparison.
There seems to be a disconnect between how a company comes to life on social versus what they have on their site—this shouldn’t be.
People like consistency. If your brand doesn’t look consistent from platform to platform, it could be confusing. Consumers don’t know who you are.
Update your website’s design and copy to align with your social media and overall content marketing strategy. Make sure you have the same look, feel, and voice everywhere. Incorporate a feed of one of your social profiles onto your website. We recommend Instagram because it’s popular and adds excellent images to the page.
As a bonus, adding a social feed allows traffic generators like SEO to not only help your site traffic but get a cross-effect for social traffic driven from your website.
Improve Your SaaS Website Design and Get More Sales
Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of driving traffic, including local. Your website is a powerful storytelling and sales tool. Your company’s story is unique, so use it! Just remember to leave out the industry jargon.
By making a few adjustments and optimizing for search and mobile, you can convert that traffic and increase your sales.
If this all feels horribly overwhelming and is not a core, in-house discipline, there’s always another way. Let your marketing team find a great partner, specifically a SaaS website design agency. There’s lots of long term value in any agency partner.
