I analyzed 50 SaaS landing pages for conversion mistakes. The same 5 issues showed up on 80% of them.

I’ve spent the last few weeks building and running BurnRate (https://burnrateai.app), an AI CRO audit tool. To train it, I manually audited around 50 SaaS landing pages — mostly from founders posting here, on Product Hunt, and on Reddit.

The founders were smart. The products were solid. But the landing pages were quietly leaking signups.

Here are the 5 mistakes I saw on ~80% of them:

1. The hero doesn’t say what the product actually does

Headlines like “Reimagine your workflow” or “Insights at the speed of thought” sound premium but tell the visitor nothing.

After 5 seconds on the page, they still don’t know:
What it is
Who it’s for
Why they should care
The fix is almost embarrassingly simple: “[Outcome] for [audience].”

Example from a real rewrite:
Before: “The modern data platform for modern teams.”
After: “Turn your Postgres data into dashboards in 10 minutes — without a data team.”

2. Too many primary CTAs

I saw heroes with “Start free trial,” “Book a demo,” “Watch video,” and “See pricing” all styled as equal buttons.

Every extra button splits intent. The visitor has to make a decision before they even understand the product.

Fix: one primary action. Demote the rest to text links. If you need a secondary CTA, make it a ghost button.

3. Feature walls instead of outcome blocks

Below the fold, a 4×3 grid of feature cards: “Kanban boards,” “Real-time sync,” “Custom fields.”

Nobody buys a tool because it has custom fields. They buy it because their team is missing deadlines.

Replace feature grids with 3 outcome blocks:
Stop missing deadlines.
Stop the Slack chaos.
Stop paying for 4 tools that don’t talk.
4. Mobile is an afterthought

On a 375px viewport, the CTA was below the fold, tap targets were tiny, and the hero video was 4MB.

On one AI image tool, LCP on a simulated 3G phone was 6.8 seconds. The signup button loaded after the video.

Mobile traffic often outweighs desktop now. If you haven’t opened your site on your actual phone in the last week, do it today.

5. Friction at the moment of conversion

I saw:
6-field signup forms
Free trials requiring a credit card
“Contact sales” tiers with no starting price
Pricing pages where the top tier hid the number
One email deliverability SaaS had 3 transparent pricing tiers… and then a 4th “Contact sales” tier that killed trust.

Fix: cut every form field that doesn’t gate the next step. Move the credit card to after the user sees value. Publish a starting number, even if it’s “from $2k/mo.”

The pattern behind all 5

These aren’t design flaws. They’re clarity flaws.

The founder knows what the product does. The visitor doesn’t. The landing page has to bridge that gap in under 10 seconds.

I built BurnRate to automate this audit — it checks 40+ conversion criteria and returns a prioritized fix list in about 60 seconds.

Happy to roast a few sites here.

So what’s the fix?

You don’t need a redesign. You need a clarity pass.

Read your hero out loud to a friend who doesn’t know your product. If they can’t explain what you do in one sentence, rewrite it.

Open your site on your phone. If you can’t find the signup button in 3 seconds, move it.

Walk through your signup flow like a new visitor. Every extra field, every “contact sales” gate, every “modern data platform” headline is a leak.

I’m happy to roast a few sites in the comments — drop your URL and I’ll point out the biggest conversion leak I see. If you want to run the full audit yourself, it’s free at https://burnrateai.app.