Do you feel like your SaaS marketing site should be converting at a higher rate?
It’s easy to throw up a website and open the doors for business. It’s much harder to build an engaging website that actually draws your visitors in and converts them into prospects. All websites aren’t created equal.
If you’re not a web design expert, or don’t understand the importance of having a design optimized for conversions, then your website could actually be doing your business more harm than good.
Let’s face it, as a SaaS marketing agency, you’re going to be doing business with companies that operate in the online space. Your website must inspire confidence in your customers and clients if you want to be trusted.
But, even if your website “looks” good, it still might not be doing its job effectively. Below, we highlight some of the most common website mistakes that could actually be costing your business money. Get those mistakes handled and you’ll increase your chances of growing your profits, and who doesn’t want that?
1. Your Navigation Overwhelms Visitors
There is such a thing as doing too much with your navigation. A lot of website owners overwhelm their visitors by presenting them with too many options. Our short-term memory can only hold up to seven items at a given time. Having a navigation bar that’s bulging at the seams won’t do your users any favors.
Your navigation shouldn’t be used as a sitemap for your website. It should easily guide your visitors around your website and enable them to find exactly what they’re looking for.
Here are some navigation menu best practices:
- Highlight what information your site visitors want to access
- Make it easy for them to find your paid products and services
- Let them contact you without having to dig for your information
The simpler your navigation bar, the easier you make the decision making process on your visitor. As a SaaS marketing company, you only need a few elements:
- A link to your blog page
- A link to your about page
- A link to your contact page
- A link to your services
- (Potentially) a link to your customer case studies and testimonials
2. Your Content is Confusing, Not Helpful
Is your blog a smattering of unorganized content? Did you read somewhere that blogging and creating “content” are important, so you began executing a random strategy to attract leads?
Having a lot of valuable and high-quality content is a great way to demonstrate value to a potential customer before they begin working with you. But, you need to craft content in a way that aligns with your business’s goals, not just writing a post whenever you feel like it.
A stellar content strategy will be based around content that speaks to major points and helps to solve common problems your audience might be having. Before you create any content, you need to ask yourself what the goal is of the piece you’re creating. And, how will it help your audience and potential customers?
Beyond the words you write, how your content is laid out also needs to make sense. Hubspot does a great job at making it easy to navigate between blog posts and blog types, even while having a very large blog.
They’re able to effectively maintain blogs on three different topics, all without overwhelming the visitor. Make sure the organization of your blog makes it easy for the visitor to find what they’re looking for.
3. Your Website Requires Too Much Thought
When a visitor lands on your website, is it easy for them to understand what your site is about, and figure out what to do next?
If you present them with a cluttered mess or an unclear value proposition, they aren’t going to stick around to become paying customers—you can bet on that. Your website needs to be intuitive.
This means two things. One, it needs to stay in line with certain design conventions and web standards. For example, users expect your navigation bar to be in a certain place and your blog to look a certain way. Overall, your website should function in a relatively similar manner to most others.
Second, your website needs to take your visitor’s hand and guide them around. You can do this by including calls-to-action that grab your visitor’s attention, having a clear and compelling USP that tells your user what you’re all about, and using color to help draw your user’s eyes around the page.
4. You Make Lead Collection Difficult
So, you already know that sign up forms and subscriber boxes are great ways to grow your email list of potential clients. But, you can actually be losing potential subscribers by adding unnecessary steps in the signup process.
For instance, on your sign up forms, how many fields are you asking your visitor to fill out? If it’s more than two, then you need to rethink your process.
Some business owners believe that having complex forms will help to eliminate spam. However, aside from spam you might also be eliminating some of your potential customers. The less effort the form requires to fill out, the more likely they are to stick through until the end of the process.
If your SaaS marketing company is using email marketing to attract and nurture leads (which you should be!), then you’ll want to maximize your chances of increasing your subscription rates.
You should be placing email subscriber boxes in your sidebar, on your homepage, within your blog posts, and even as a pop-up (if it makes sense). To encourage readers to subscribe it can be helpful to create a compelling lead magnet, content upgrade, or additional email course.
Nurturing leads over the long haul through email marketing is much easier than trying to garner a one-off sale.
5. Readability and Usability Aren’t a Focus
Your content can either detract or add to your credibility. Companies selling software live and die by their information. Your blog must create a great user experience and communicate to your visitor that you know what you’re doing.
Below, we highlight some of the most common ways company blogs create a poor user experience:
- The font is hard to read and makes long reading sessions uncomfortable
- There are broken links that either don’t link, or link to old and outdated information
- Your site contains images, but they aren’t relevant to the topic and are distracting
- There’s no whitespace between the content and the rest of the site, and within the blog post itself
Make sure the rules mentioned above extend across all of the content sitewide. You must provide a good reading experience no matter what they’re reading.
Also, your assumptions can only get you so far. If you’re serious about optimizing your website around the goals of your visitor, then you need to be testing and collecting data. Some of the most common elements to test are listed below:
- Your call to action
- Your headline and USP
- Font colors and text size
- Other sales elements like social proof and testimonials
By eliminating the mistakes above, you’ll start to create a better overall experience for your visitors, and potential customers. Remember, your website and blog communicate a lot about your company, your work ethic, your trustworthiness, and your knowledge.
Don’t let your website poke holes in your sales process. Let your SaaS marketing site work for you.
