So, how do you figure out what your SaaS landing page should have in order to convert as many people as possible?

Different people will have slightly different needs so targeting all of them usually ends up with a generic message that hardly converts anyone…‍

Why is the right message important? ‍

Your potential customers need to feel like your solution is tailored to their problem, that your product fixes their biggest concerns and “speaks” in the language they understand.

If you aren’t able to do this your potential customers won’t understand the value you are offering and won’t have any good reason to convert :(‍

If you have a proper process to list, prioritize and explain your features and benefits you will be able to identify the ideal message and do it consistently avoiding months of iterations.

In this article, I will show you the process I developed to do just that! I usually have to go through a ton of data to help my clients so I came with this process to make it as effective as possible over the years.

I have turned 4-5 page feature lists, targeting 160+ countries with very different needs and objections into something that fits on a Landing page. I will show you how you can do the same!‍

Disclaimer: This article is ideal for people that have at least a handful of customers. We are going to take the data from your current/initial customers and replicate their buying process thousands and thousands of times over. If you don’t have customers yet use the tactics I’ll teach you with your competitors (by studying them).

But first...Avoid this trap!

Most likely the message is either defined or somewhat influenced by the founder's opinions and while they might know their product really well they are also the ones that can easily get biased on what potential customers actually want to hear.

There’s no way to eliminate this, everyone will become at least slightly biased but you can avoid it.

Let me show you how you can consistently get out of that trap by listing out where all these objections and reasons to convert actually are like in faq’s, demos, support questions and so on… (full list later on in the article).

This bias is especially common for technical founders (still love you tho) as they tend to use very technical/overcomplicated terms that the potential customer can’t understand at a glance (or ever).

Start with your own vision

First, let’s be clear…

I am not talking about how useful you perceive your product because, to be honest, potential customers just don’t care.

Instead, I am suggesting you look at why you have created your product and how you decide to add more features.

You will be able to create a message that converts visitors later in this article, but first, you have to think which direction do you want your product to take and what your ideal customer is.

If you have made the time to define this properly just skip this step.

Here’s your checklist:

Why did you create the product in the first place?
What are your goals for your next 6-12 months?
How do you prioritize which features to add and why?
What action do you want your visitors to take?
Who is your ideal customer? Will it be the same (or similar enough) in the next 6-12 months or the next 5 years!?

Use these answers to keep you focused on what matters. It’s very easy to get distracted after all the info you will be going through in the following steps.

Step #1 - List all your features and benefits

Hopefully, you already have a list of features your product has but if not, list out most of the features you have and the benefits they can bring.‍

For the sake of efficiency let’s consider a “real feature” something big enough that you could put on your pricing page in the “what’s included” section.‍

Pro tip: If you have listed more than 5 benefits you are going too broad and not covering the real reasons why your potential customers might want to convert.

We will use this list to identify how you can convert your visitors into customers.

Step #2- Filter them with User Profiles/archetypes

Now that you have your list, it’s time to create User Profiles (just a document of your ideal paying users and their different needs/groups) in order to filter all of these features.

Simply use the framework below and create different groups of users based on their different needs and/or answers to the following questions:

Which features do they use the most?
Would they pay for a certain feature alone? Hopefully, you find something here. If so, it should be the foundation of your messaging since it’s the core benefit of using your product.
Are they tech-savvy (or aware of how your product might work)? The more technical they are the more in-depth you can be but usually you should explain things using a more high-level approach.
Who are you selling too? Do they have the power to make the decision? If not your message needs to be easy to understand in order to sell to the decision maker otherwise you will rely on another person in the company to sell it for you...
What objections and questions do they have?
How did they found your solution?
Did they come from a competitor?
Are they looking for similar solutions from competitors
Who brings the most revenue?
Which are the easiest to convert?
How likely are them to refer you?

Try to find patterns to understand which people are the easiest to convert and/or bring the most revenue. You will find that only a small percentage will bring most of the revenue.

If targeting mostly the easiest people to convert or that bring most of the revenue is a big enough market then I would advise you to focus only on them. If not the “Beginner/Pro” technique will help you reach a wider target and more user groups.

Step #3 - Use the “Beginner/Pro” technique

First, I apologize for that shitty name, I made that up…

BUT...This is actually a very useful tactic! Basically, you focus on both extremes regarding on how easily people might understand how your product works and/or based on how well they are aware of similar solutions.‍

If you focus on defining a message that targets both extremes (beginner and pro) you will be able to target everyone else in between! ‍

See the power with this tactic? This has helped me define what content should go on a page before I design it (countless times)!

Step #4 - Find the real problems and you’ll find the real reasons they should sign up

Be careful! People can be very misleading...

What they say they value the most or would pay for might be completely different than what they truly want/need.

This is a HUGE challenge… How can you find the REAL reasons behind their buying decisions?

Luckily for you, I’ve compiled a bunch of good places to find them!

Frequent questions: with these questions you should be able to find some patterns on what people want to hear before they are ready to make any decision about buying or signing up. Why is this important? For anyone that asks a question, there were around 20 people you didn’t bother to do so…see how much revenue you might be missing out on?

Surveys: These can give you feedback on a bigger scale but can also be misleading… The main use of surveys should be to compare them to the hypothesis and user profiles we have been creating. If you do your job right you should see some similarities, if not, I wouldn’t give them that much importance.

Support questions: these are very similar to the frequent questions I've mentioned above but in this case, I’m only considering frequent questions from actual customers. Here you can find what people are more interested in learning more about or even what they might misunderstand about your product works. You can use these insights to (mainly) come up with a good explanation of how your product works.

Analytics: check what features your customers are using the most and what visitors are paying the most attention to on your website.

Review: this is actually a great place to find the biggest benefits your customers get from your product! If the reviews are long enough and not short/generic like “it’s an awesome tool!” you could probably find some great insights there. While working for a client I went through a ton of reviews and started noticing 2 or 3 features that were saving the customers a ton of time and stress, after that, it was easy to find the ideal message to use on the entire website.

Customer interviews/Sales calls: since you have direct contact with a customer or potential customer you will be able to get a ton of insights if you ask the right questions. If you have done several of these before just try to list out common questions and objections people had and use it as a foundation for what you should use on your website.

Step #5 - Use this formula to convey your message on a Landing page (at least properly)

I have a process for most things...that’s the only way I can predictably and repeatedly design high converting pages and funnels!

Landing pages can be VERY complex even if those decisions are invisible and explaining how to take the process from this article and showing you how to put in on a Landing page effectively would take WAY too long so here are separate/specific articles on that ;) ‍

Here’s a step by step guide on how to create a Landing page that converts based on the message you have defined using this process.

I also broke down the ideal SaaS Landing page step by step in this article.