Is your SaaS landing page getting traffic, but no conversions? You’ve put a lot of effort into design and copy, spent money on ads, and still nothing? Are you struggling to figure out why? Join the club.
Here is the deal: first impressions matter, and landing pages are often the first point of contact potential customers have with your SaaS business, which makes landing page conversion rate one of the key SaaS marketing metrics.
The upside is that you can improve landing page conversion rates by implementing the tactics that have been tried and tested, without spending any additional ad money.
In this guide, we will take a closer look at the 10 most effective and proven landing page CRO tactics, with a detailed breakdown into why each one of them matters, why it works, and how you can implement it, along with real-life examples.
Let’s jump right in.
Landing Page CRO Tactics That Work: The Full List
Now, there are plenty of landing page CRO tactics you can try out and hope that some of them stick. However, this can cost you not only time, but money.
This is why we are focusing only on the following strategies that have been battle-tested by actual SaaS businesses, both large and small, and which have produced measurable results.
1. Put Your CTA Above the Fold
The most obvious reason is that people make very quick decisions nowadays. They also get easily distracted and move on to something else if you aren’t able to grab their attention. You only have a few seconds until they’re gone forever.
This also means they might not even take the time to scroll and click on your CTA. The solution? Make it visible by placing it above the fold.
Why it works
One of the reasons is the primacy effect, which is a type of cognitive bias where users tend to focus on the info they came across first. That is why you should always have the following 4 elements of your landing pages above the fold:
- Your headline
- Your offer + the benefits
- Image, GIF, or video showing your product
- Your CTA
The first three are usually visible on most landing pages, but CTAs tend to get buried further down, and unfortunately, lost.
Example
ABsmartly packages all of the above-mentioned elements in a neat little block that is always shown above the fold. Does that mean that users never want to scroll?
Absolutely not, but eyetracking studies show that 80% of viewing time is spent above the fold.
Top Tip: Make sure to let your visitors know that there is actually more content below the fold and that it’s not a “false bottom”.
You can do this by adding the button to scroll down for more, or simply by allowing some of the content (other than your CTA, visuals, and value proposition) to show up above the fold.
2. Prioritize Outcomes and Benefits Over Features
It all comes down to why people buy SaaS products. Customers don’t care about your product's features because, in most cases, they aren’t even sure what they are.
However, they are very interested in the problems they face, their aspirations, and their desires.
Benefits not only tap into that, but they also make for much better storytelling material. For example, Slack can reduce the number of internal emails by $48.6%, which is great, because most people hate emails.
To get a better idea about what your potential customers want and need, you can generate your customer persona with WeGrowth’s powerful Persona AI tool that helps you define everything from your target niche, challenges, and goals, to exact messaging and content.
Why It Works
Try to think about selling a car to a customer instead of SaaS products or solutions for a second. Do you think stuff like horsepower or fuel economy is what gets them excited?
No, because those are features. However, more horsepower helps them get from A to B faster and gives them a thrill while doing so, while fuel economy helps them save money and be more eco-friendly. Those are benefits.
Put into SaaS terms, your customers care less about features and more about:
- Increasing their revenue
- Improve their ROI
- Improve conversion rate
- Saving time and money
Example
Shopify, the biggest eCommerce platform, keeps it simple but brilliant with its free trial landing page. They get you started for free, and then pay just €1/month for 3 months, with the ability to cancel anytime.
3. Provide Relevant Social Proof
When a customer comes across a landing page that has zero reviews, testimonials, client logos, or usage stats, it usually means one of two things:
- Your SaaS product is brand new
- Nobody wants your SaaS product
Let’s say it’s the former. According to the numbers, 92% of consumers will hesitate to buy a product if no reviews are available.
How can you fix this and improve landing page conversion rates? Here are the most effective ways to provide social proof for your SaaS product:
- Add client logos and place them close to your CTA
- Provide user ratings, quotes, interviews, and video testimonials that focus on outcomes
- Show customer activity, such as “Trusted by 5,000+ marketing teams”, for example.
Why It Works
There is a whole slew of reasons why social proof is so effective, including:
- Conformity bias: People mirror what others are doing when uncertain
- Risk reduction: Seeing the success of others lowers the perceived risk of purchase
- Similarity bias: Social proof works better on customers when given by people like them.
- FOMO: Introduces an element of urgency and competitiveness.
Example
There is no better example than Senja, which is a tool designed to collect testimonials. Their homepage shows recent customer sign-ups, their testimonials, and the number of customers (20,000+) right below their CTA.
4. Use Actual UI Screens or GIFs Instead of AI or Stock Images
Stock images feel generic, as do abstract illustrations, and AI images give customers that uncanny valley feeling that can be unsettling.
While great written copy is the backbone of every landing page, using UI screenshots, GIFs, or even video of your actual product can improve landing page conversion rates by as much as 64%.
This is exactly what Crazy Egg did, and wrote a detailed case study about it.
Why It Works
- Cognitive load: customers can instantly understand what your product does instead of having to visualize it.
- Authenticity: showing that the product actually does what it promises builds trust.
- Reduces confusion: abstract or stock visuals can create a disconnect.
Example
Swipe Pages, which is used to create landing pages with the help of AI, uses videos to show actual templates being designed in front of your very eyes in mere clicks. It doesn’t get any clearer and more illustrative than that.
5. Boost FOMO by Creating a Sense of Urgency
According to Neuroscience Marketing, you can increase revenue by as much as 9% on average by adding a small countdown timer, with some businesses reporting a massive 332% increase in sales after adding them.
When a potential customer comes across a deal, trial, discount, or a beta offer on your landing page that is available for a limited time only, it can push them to take immediate action.
Why It Works
By introducing temporal scarcity, you can trigger your customer’s innate FOMO and have them act immediately instead of prolonging their decision-making process.
Here are some ways in which you can trigger their FOMO:
- Use the countdown timer for limited offers and discounts
- Introduce urgency into your copy: “Be sure not to miss out - offer expires in 3 days!”
- Offer new features, product launches, or more expensive product plans during short promotional windows
Example
Usermaven, a SaaS analytics platform, ran a Black Friday deal that offered 30% off on their annual plan for first-time subscribers.
6. Be Careful with SEO on Landing Pages
Although you will have plenty of sources telling you that you should optimize your product’s landing pages for SEO, you may want to hold off on that.
Why? Well, letting Google crawl and index your landing pages can actually hurt organic performance. How so? It’s simple: you run the risk of cannibalizing your own rankings.
Why It Works
Or in this case, why it doesn’t work. Here is how keyword cannibalization happens if you’re not careful:
- You have a top-ranking blog post on “best ad analytics tool”.
- You run a paid campaign with a landing page whose meta title and headline are almost identical to those of your blog post.
- Google crawls and indexes your landing page instead of or even penalizes you for duplicate content.
The solution is fairly straightforward, though. Mark your SaaS PPC landing pages as noindex, and create them on a subdomain.
Example
Obviously, most companies and businesses aren’t too keen on broadcasting these sorts of mistakes on their part, so case studies or research, if any, don’t disclose their actual names.
7. Message Match Is Crucial
This is such a vital component of every landing page, yet it goes overlooked so many times, even though it can boost conversion by 212.74%!
If ad copy doesn’t match the content on your landing page, there is a message mismatch, which can kill your landing page conversion rates and increase your bounce rate.
But if the intent and the wording match, it builds momentum and nudges customers toward conversion.
Why It Works
Message match signals trust, and helps maintain a smooth customer journey from clicking your ad to taking action. Not only does this improve landing page conversion rates, but it also lowers your CPC through better Google Ads Quality Score.
Here is how you can ensure message match:
- Have your ad and landing page headlines match
- Focus on outcomes in both your ad and landing page copy
- Use the same CTA
- Be consistent with your visuals
Example
Monday.com, which is one of the most popular SaaS project management platforms, keeps the visuals across its ads and landing pages very similar, as well as the copy, which focuses on “no credit card needed” and “free plan”.
Their homepage:
8. Minimize Friction to Maximize Conversions
So, you’ve done everything right so far, and there is traffic on your landing page, but sign-ups and demos are still too few. Why?
In all likelihood, you are making it difficult for customers to sign up. Are you using long forms? Is your landing page slow to load? Do you have multiple choices?
If the answer to one or more of these questions is yes, you’ve identified the reasons why landing page conversion rates are tanking.
Why It Works
If customers are interacting smoothly with your landing pages, your business feels more trustworthy, and your product more valuable.
Removing friction boils down to the following in most cases:
- Improve load speed: B2B sites that load in one second have 3x higher landing page conversion rates than websites that load in 5 seconds.
- Opt for shorter forms: Only ask customers what is absolutely necessary.
- Remove distractions and direct attention: Remove navigation bars and exit links, but use contrast and whitespace to navigate customers to your CTA.
Example
Once again, we have Shopify on our list, which was able to boost conversions by 30% by cutting its page load time by one second.
[Source: https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/blog/site-performance-page-speed-ecommerce\]
9. Use Strong CTAs That Drive Action
Your CTA is the final boss of CRO, and the moment where your customer either signs up or leaves. That is why the design of your CTA button and every single word of your CTA carries a lot of weight.
A simple “Submit”, “Learn more”, or “Click here” is not going to work in SaaS. What will work is phrasing that leaves zero doubt in your customers’ minds about what they should do next.
Why It Works
Because it’s been proven that using clear and benefit-oriented CTA can improve landing page conversion rates by as much as 161%.
How do you get there? By following these simple guidelines:
- Use contrasting colors to draw attention to CTA
- Use strong CTAs like “Book a Demo”, “Start Free Trial”, or “Get Access Now”
- Match CTA wording from ads to landing pages
Example
Kajabi, which is a business platform aimed at course creators and coaches, blends a clear CTA that not only uses concise and direct phrasing but also stands out visually.
10. Testing, Testing, Testing
A/B testing removes guessing from the equation and gives you an answer on what actually converts. By testing different versions of landing pages, you get access to real insight into what drives customer action.
In the SaaS niche, even the slightest tweak can lead to a huge uptick in landing page CRO and compound your growth over time.
Why It Works
Instead of relying on assumptions, biases, or inaccurate data, you test two or more variations of your landing page to figure out which one drives better results.
Here is how to do it:
- Test only one variable at a time, such as headline, customer persona, or CTA
- Split traffic evenly between variations
- Use software like Google Optimize or VWO
- Tracks both conversions and clicks
- Run tests long enough so that you get a statistically significant sample
Example
Thinkific, a SaaS platform aimed at course creators, tested over 700 landing pages for messaging, promoting, webinars, and trials of new products. This resulted in over 150,000 conversions in less than 2 years!
They also doubled their traffic and conversions, and saw an increase of 50% in webinar signup rates! All of that by A/B testing their landing pages.
Conclusion - Boost Your Landing Page Conversion Rates with WeGrowth
Improving landing page conversion rates is a challenging process with lots of moving parts. But, if done right, even something as simple as a change in CTA wording can yield some pretty dramatic results for your SaaS.
You can start by implementing some of these high-impact moves first:
- Put your CTA front and center and above the fold.
- Shine the spotlight on the benefits and outcomes your solution provides first, then zero in on the benefits.
- Provide user testimonials, logos, reviews, and actual cases for social proof.
- Last but not least, test and question everything to get the right data.
Stack a few of these together for starters, and see how your landing CRO changes.
And that's exactly what we do here at WeGrowth. We identify the easy wins hiding in plain sight, and then create tailor-made solutions, such as SaaS marketing templates, so that your business's landing page is pulling its weight. To better understand your target audience and craft messaging that converts, try our customer persona generator or explore our growth metrics dashboard to track your performance.
Do you want to see what that could look like for your SaaS business? Book a growth strategy call with us, and let our team turn your landing page into a place where actual conversions happen! Or get started with our free growth marketing plan.
