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I've compiled the best SaaS Landing pages and broke down all their secrets
- kbos87 8y agoThis is the dozenth post of its type. The truth is that there isn’t some secret sauce when it comes to marketing and conversion. What makes an effective landing page is pretty well documented at this point.
- funfunfunction 8y agoDocumented where?
- avip 8y agoSign up to find out.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tomcam 8y agoWhere?
- pedrocortes 8y agoI don't know where it would be documented either as SaaS Landing pages usually require a different explanation as every niche needs a specific strategic! I wrote another article about the ideal structure if you interested: https://www.cortes.design/post/how-to-make-a-conversion-driven-saas-landing-page-2018-edition https://www.cortes.design/post/how-to-make-a-conversion-driv...
- pedrocortes 8y agoYou're right, there's no secret sauce but you need to be aware of the right strategies in the right context and that's the real goal of the article. Let's face it people are looking for "secrets" so I used the article to steer them to the right direction.
- oldmancoyote 8y agoI mean no disrespect, but I am horrified by your first case. If I don't know what a product does and the basics of how it works in the first 15 seconds, I move on. I never give personal info in order to proceed into the web site. Not ever!
- raiyu 8y agoI would agree. Some of the examples for me are exactly what I dislike about many landing pages. They do a very poor job of explaining what it is the company does and you could put 10 companies under the same tag line and it would be just as true.
- AznHisoka 8y agoI totally agree. What a generic, worthless tagline: “Make your website better”. Better how?
- ozim 8y agoBut it helps you to know it is not "Make your sales org better". It helps if you search for something that makes your website better, you know you are in right place and you can read more. If not you move to next page in 0.5 second instead of reading some irrelevant technical details of how.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago"Irrelevant technical details" is exactly the "how" in the "how". I need to know some of it to evaluate whether I'm really "in the right place". I'm not going to trust the smiley faces on stock photos - that's how charlatans work.
- iovrthoughtthis 8y agoIt’s likely you’re not exactly the target audience.
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- jesterjester1 8y agoWow these are terrible. "Secrets"? I hope you keep them.
- shubhamjain 8y agoWant to know my personal favorite? It's ConferenceBadge [1]. The design is clean and the page is very snappy. But what I absolutely love is how they answer every question that I might have on the landing page itself. I am not personally a fan of Close.io's that sells itself as "close more deals," but doesn't answer how. I think a landing page should answer what it does, and how it does it in very unambiguous terms. Too bad so many SaaS companies try to make promises without giving an idea on how they'll deliver them. [1]: https://www.conferencebadge.com/ https://www.conferencebadge.com/
- nathan_f77 8y agoI agree, that's a really awesome landing page! I need to come up with something like that.
- loeber 8y agoHoly cow, that's an _amazing_ landing page! So effective.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoIf only they were all like that. As added bonus, everything is still visible, the signup button and phone button rollover work with my default mode of all JS off. None of the usual need to enable JS for clicking a signup button to have any effect at all, or to be permitted to see images. I'm very impressed.
- tzm 8y agoYou have a good eye for effective communication. Thanks for sharing.
- ThomPete 8y agoIts an easy product to communicate, most products arent that simple. But yeah great.
- MaxBarraclough 8y agoVery nice. My only complaint is the 300KB of JavaScript.
- ccantana 8y agoFor what it’s worth, we’ve had a lot of success with a strategy not mentioned here: hosting a site that’s intentionally mysterious, if not slightly provocative. About 35% of all visitors to our site end up subscribing. We’re not a SaaS company, so I realize this may be comparing apples to oranges, but we had experimented with a lot of different, elaborate, shiny landing pages that were similar to a few encouraged here. And after falling flat on our face for months, we realized that an incredibly simple, borderline-mysterious landing page converted users far more effectively. (For the curious, this is the landing page: https://techloaf.io https://techloaf.io)
- capkutay 8y agoThat's probably good for getting a lot of sign-ups with no intent to become a paying customer/active user of your product, but I'm curious how many of those users would convert down funnel.
- staticautomatic 8y agoConvert to what? Croutons?
- Untit1ed 8y agoThis is important - techloaf (big fan here!) is obviously an outlier, but generally the bigger and more complex the product, the vaguer the landing pages get. I always thought this was a shifty strategy to get you on the phone and have salespeople con you, but after reading _Mastering the Complex Sale_ I've come to realise that it makes sense - you want to understand a potential customer's needs before you actually try to pitch anything concrete at them.
- yabatopia 8y agoWithout conversion data it's impossible say something meaningful about the effectiveness of the showcased landing pages. The author gives several reasons why he likes the examples (creating curiosity, layout, using case studies, ...), but without data it's more about personal preferences, current best practices and common sense. No real secrets.
- FollowSteph3 8y agoI’m amazed that your comment isn’t higher. That was my first thought as well. They may be great design wise but if they don’t covert at all it means very little. Many tv commercials than win awards are terrible at converting for example.
- dzonga 8y agoFrankly, Medium killed objective analysis. Even though that site is not hosted, on Medium, it's junk like most Medium articles, based on confirmation bias. I can bet +1 that you can have a plain HTML page, that explains what your SAAS does and still make a killing, if you build a product that the market wants/needs! Without all landing page gimmick.
- ksahin 8y agoCould you explain a bit why do you think it's "junk like most Medium articles" ? Sure simple landing pages can works really well, but that's not the point.
- tonystubblebine 8y agoRe: "Junk like most Medium articles" Thank you for saying this! I've been pressing Medium for a long time to be more aggressive at shoving crappy publishers off of the platform. I think what happened is that Medium was originally great for content marketers. There was a growth hack that let certain publications get big just by publishing any remotely relevant article. Many of these published 30 times a day (and still do). Additionally, the Medium algorithm seemed to reward articles mostly for having a clickable title. However! Medium made a recent change to manually review all articles before allowing them to get algorithmic boosts. That did a ton for weeding out the junk articles and removing the incentives for these content-mill publications. You can see this in action if you go to one of the big publications and append /latest. Most of the articles these pubs are publishing now are getting fewer than 50 claps. In other words, nobody is reading them. I think eventually, most of these pubs are going to end up leaving. Then on the flip side, Medium is partnering/paying a lot more for high quality writing. And as a result of less competition with content marketing junk, those high quality articles are getting a lot more views. I just published something the other day that I spent two years writing and researching, and it's got 250k views (and I think will make $10-15k in their network over its lifetime). I'm not going to link it, but I think it met a bunch of standards of quality that many past Medium articles haven't: all the advice had been tested on multiple people by the author, the article was peer reviewed, it was copy edited. My world is mostly personal development writing and we do have a partnership with Medium. It's just a weird middle ground where the old growth hackers are still around and have been offered a chance to participate at a higher level of quality. But I'm finding that most of them either aren't able or don't want to. From my world, the old definition of quality was an article that was a summary of something the author read but probably never personally tested, i.e. "10 Foods That Made Ben Franklin Crazy Productive." And what got us a partnership with Medium was putting together a style guide that had a much stronger opinion about what goes into a high quality personal development article. Style guide here, but you'd really have to be a nerd to read it =) https://betterhumans.coach.me/draft-style-guide-for-personal-development-articles-6f641023347f https://betterhumans.coach.me/draft-style-guide-for-personal...
- deytempo 8y agoGreat selection! I didn’t see https://www.surveyking.com https://www.surveyking.com there. Pretty good up and coming site with a ton of nice data analytics features.
- tomglynch 8y agoCan someone report this guy? Went through his comment history and is shilling surveyking 4 times in the past 2 months
- jschulenklopper 8y agoThat has almost nothing to do with the topic at hand. On top of that, SurveyKing's landing page isn't exemplary at all.
- sctb 8y agoCould you please refrain from plugging your stuff here unless it's utterly relevant? Eventually we do ban accounts that abuse the community like this.
- andrewstuart 8y agoI feel like pretty much all websites and landingpages are the same - a single page, broken into sections, plenty of space, some happy people, some key points, a pricing table, maybe a section that scrolls in parallax. In fact this is such a pattern that pretty much all website builders put together this formula of site. Indeed I noticed this pattern in 2014 and suggested the idea to a colleague who then built the first website builder around this pattern: https://www.redferret.net/?p=45278 https://www.redferret.net/?p=45278 These days, a site has to completely break this pattern to be innovative.
- zonidjan 8y agoTo any site that, like several listed, makes it nigh-impossible to find out what they actually do / what you're paying for: die in a fire.
- jschulenklopper 8y agoIMHO, "I’ve compiled the best examples of SaaS Landing pages I’ve seen over the years (1000’s of them) into actionable examples you can use as reference!" is incomplete without mentioning actual statistics about conversion -- or any other measurable goal that the company might have for the landing page. Without that, what would be the qualification of "best"? The best the OP has seen... but then that's comparing landing pages mainly from the perspective of one person (that may or not be part of the target group of the SaaS).
- pedrocortes 8y agoThat's true but you can't get that data so I have to compile the examples that startups can apply in the right context to get them better results.
- jschulenklopper 8y agoI understand that conversion data is hard to get... but it would put a real number to explain “best” or “better results”. Now it’s a (nice) collection of pages the OP found eh... nice/interesting/attractive (and likely to convert well, since these are actually in use - insert “survivorship bias” here), but no real explanation for why these are measurably better than others. Appreciate the effort though. Just questioning the wording like “best” and “better”.
- pedrocortes 8y agoI understand your point, it's definitely something to consider as I'm still trying to find ways to write the best or most actionable articles possible. Thanks for feedback, cheers! :)
- jschulenklopper 8y agoJust thought about this: could you ask the companies in your list how/why they ended up with these landing pages? What where the alternatives and smaller variations they tried? Tried for how long (or are they still optimizing)? Did they A/B test between alternatives and options? What did they measure, or tried to optimze for? What was their sample size, the outcome and their decisions? What was “best or better” for them, specifically? That could be a very interesting follow-up to your analysis, also by providing data that sometimes “best” is an opinion or hunch, sometimes a choice or preference, sometimes a measurable result. Cheers!
- xtrapolate 8y agoDo people actually give away their email address when stumbling across a mysterious non-descriptive landing-page that says nothing about who or what a company is? In other words - what's the point of having "we're in stealth mode" landing page in the first place? Might as-well point your domain at an ambiguous Tumblr blog, or a Facebook page. Thoughts?
- woogiewonka 8y agoYes they do. Sadly. Some make up fake emails or use a junk email, but many give their real.
- mring33621 8y agoI do. If I'm curious about something, I sign up. I already ignore thousands of emails a day, what's a few more?
- therealchiko 8y agoI have Googled for Roadmap listed, no luck yet. Anyone know the url to that website?
- pedrocortes 8y agoWeird...It's : onroadmap.com
- cocoflunchy 8y agoThanks! I was looking everywhere without luck too
- chiefalchemist 8y agoSolid article, but essentially nothing new. For me it boils down to: 1) Have a product the market needs (even if they don't know they need it yet.) Yes. Easier said than done. The point is marketing mumbo-jumbo won't make a Me Too product unique. 2) Explain __crisply & clearly__ why I need it. Focus on benefits more than features. In short: Why should I care? 3) Make finding a complete features list easy. If I'm interested (i.e., I think I will benefit) I'll want to see in detail all you can do for me. 4) Making finding a product comparison (e.g., free v paid) easy. 5) Making finding an FAQ is easy, and make sure that FAQ is an FAQ and not more marking spin. 6) Make finding pricing easy. 7) Maintain a semi-active Twitter accnt. If that looks left for dead then I'm going to presume you're soon to fade as well. I can't commit to and invest my time in a solutions that'll soon be MIA. 8) A free trial is NOT a proxy for any of the above. My time is valuable, so free is not really free. If you can't clearly communicate your brand / product to me then I'm going to presume you don't know, or are too lazy. In any case, it's a red flag. I'm leaving. 9) Speaking of leaving: conversions are a false god. What's more important is churn / retention. High conversions aren't good if there's also a lot of churn. You want to build relationships, not one night stands. 10) If you think you're special and that any of the above doesn't apply to you. Think again.
- pedrocortes 8y agoYep and I agree with some of your points. The main point of that article was showing strategies that you can replicate for each scenario (social proof, intro, product explanation...)and I think you got that ;)
- chiefalchemist 8y agoYes. I did. I think we all did :) But we see these things __botched__ all the time. The reason for that is too many still have it all wrong. They get the means right. "Look ma! My CTA is just like that article!!" But they miss the start, and the ends. That is: It's not about them, it's about me. The article is about tools. That's great. But unless you understand and embrace why you're using them, you're going to get it wrong. Again, plenty are still getting it wrong. Put another way, a fancy new IDE or a hot-shot framework, etc. are tools. They don't mean you're going to build good / great product. You need a broader awareness for that. Not just how to use the tools, but why. I was wanting to shine some light on why.
- TomK32 8y agoPity you don't have screenshots from their mobile versions in you own mobile version.
- ScoutOrgo 8y agoFor a site design blog, the "What to read next" covering the bottom corner of text isn't too great.
- pedrocortes 8y agoYou're right, it's supposed to show up only near the end but i'm having problems getting it working :P
- CodeWriter23 8y agoEven if it reveals at the end, it should still be dismissible. That kind of dark pattern gets me hitting the Reader button every time. And setting it to always go to Reader mode on such a site.
- dandare 8y agoAm I the only one who thinks "Creates curiosity in visitors" is a horrible idea? "Make your website better. Instantly." is a totally meaningless header that will only frustrate visitors.
- intellent 8y agoExactly my thoughts. I hate things like that. It’s an art to tell visitors in one or two snappy lines, what your product is all about.
- mannykannot 8y agoThe first rule of effective writing (of any sort) is to imagine yourself in the position of the reader. It's not about what you want to say or get done, it's about what they want or might be interested in.
- cpburns2009 8y agoThe examples in the first half of this article are supposed to be sarcastic, right? EmbedSocial is the first one to show any semblance of information, and even then it doesn't say what it does.