May 7, 2019

Use Breadcrumbs

1. Acquisition  >  Use Breadcrumbs For Orientation

Use breadcrumbs for orientation to reduce SaaS churn

Breadcrumbs are an exceptional way to increase user experience and reduce churn. Using breadcrumbs let visitors know where they're on your website and how to switch between pages easily.

●● INTUITIVENESS

Mailchimp

MailChimp uses breadcrumbs on its help section clearly guiding visitors where they're now and how they got here.

Shopify

SurveyMonkey smartly uses breadcrumbs right at the top of the page under primary navigation to boost user experience.

SurveyMonkey

Shopify uses navigation breadcrumbs creatively with a sidebar to make it easy for readers to jump from one page to another with just one click.

How to use the technique

  • Use breadcrumbs to display current location. The location should be relevant to the website’s structure or it should be attribute-based. Conduct research to figure out which type will work for your website. Read our churn optimization framework on how to do research like a pro. 
  • Start breadcrumb trail with a link to the homepage and the last trail should be the current page and it shouldn’t have a hyperlink.
  • Reduce breadcrumb for mobile. Use trail for the previous level instead of showing complete trail (which looks messy).
  • Use a recognizable symbol for separators. The greater than sign (>) is the best and universally acceptable symbol. Any symbol that users cannot understand will make them churn.
  • Test breadcrumb styles and designs. Yes, you should test different variations for conversion optimization. Breadcrumbs can have a significant impact on user engagement, churn, and user experience. Our churn optimization framework is your best resource for this.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Using breadcrumbs as a replacement of primary navigation. Don’t use these two interchangeably. Primary navigation is a must and should never be replaced.
  • Always using breadcrumbs. There are certain website designs (like flat design) and certain pages (like landing pages) where using breadcrumbs do more harm than good.

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> Breadcrumbs In Web Design: Examples And Best Practices

> Breadcrumb Navigation

> Why You Were Always Wrong About Breadcrumbs

Research evidence

Nielsen Norman Group research revealed that there are multiple benefits of using breadcrumbs while there are no drawbacks. Using breadcrumbs on a website improves navigation, makes it user-friendly, and improves the user experience.

>>>

Integrate breadcrumbs without thinking. When implementing correctly, there are absolutely no major drawbacks.

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May 7, 2019

Main Action Above The Fold

1. Acquisition  >  Main Action Above The Fold

Have your primary action above the fold to reduce SaaS churn

The top of the page gets a lot of eyeballs as compared to the middle or bottom of the page. Moving your primary CTA and UVP above-the-fold will reduce churn and boost conversions.

●● INTUITIVENESS

Asana

Asana has smarty utilized above the fold by putting their UVP, offer description, and a clear CTA.

Allocable

Allocable increased its conversion rate by 211% with a website redesign which mostly focused on above the fold section.

Yotopo

Yotopo tweaked their website’s design, content, and a lot of other elements including above the fold area which resulted in an increase in conversion rate by 93%.

How to use the technique

  • Move CTA above the fold. Your primary CTA should be placed above the fold so visitors know what action they're supposed to take as soon as they land. Read our churn optimization framework on how to do research to identify best performing CTA. 
  • Publish your best content above the fold. It could be a headline, UVP, a video, customer testimonial, emotional trigger, or any other content type that has the potential to keep visitors hooked.
  • Use appropriate tools to track how visitors react to different elements above the fold (e.g. heatmap analysis).
  • Grab attention. The content, design, and elements above the fold should have the potential to grab visitor’s attention right away.
  • Encourage scrolling. Ask visitors to scroll down and use persuasive copy so visitors scroll down and read more of your amazing content.
  • Test multiple variations. Split test multiple variations of above the fold content. Conversion optimization gets easier with testing. Here is a link to our free guide on split testing. 

Mistakes to avoid

  • Putting a lot of content above the fold with an intention to provide as much information as possible. This doesn’t work, instead put your best content above the fold and provide users a reason to scroll down. Don’t make it messy.
  • Not considering abandoners. If a visitor doesn’t scroll, he should get the necessary message. Optimize above the fold for visitors who leave without scrolling. They shouldn’t leave empty-handed, ensure they at least remember one thing about your brand.

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> The Fold Manifesto: Why the Page Fold Still Matters

> Is Above the Fold Really That Important?

> How to make users scroll down your page

Research evidence

Nielsen Norman Group research found that visitors treat content above and below the fold differently. The content above the fold gets 84% more views as compared to the content below the fold.

84%

This is how much more views the content above the fold gets in comparison with the content below the fold.

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May 7, 2019

Use Contrast For Your CTA

1. Acquisition  >  Use Contrast For Your CTA

Use contrast for your CTA to reduce SaaS churn

Use of contrasting CTA buttons and text have a drastic impact on conversions, churn, and retention. Right color at the right location is all your SaaS needs on its landing page.

●● INTUITIVENESS

Friendbuy

Friendbuy improved its CTR by 211% by changing its CTA button.

37Signal

37Signal, now Basecamp, increased its signups by 200% when they tweaked their CTA button and text.

ArtsyEditor

ArtsyEditor successfully increased CTR by 47% after tweaking the text of the CTA button.

How to use the technique

  • Identify a landing page and tweak its CTA to begin with. Start with one CTA at a time, measure the impact of the change, take necessary action, and repeat. Read this detailed churn optimization framework. 
  • Make CTA prominent. The purpose of CTA is to get the attention of the visitors. This is why you should use contrasting colors to make it stand out from the rest of the content and all other elements on the page.
  • Link CTA color to a buyer persona. Men and women like different colors. Using appropriate colors for CTAs based on audience demographics, culture, and personal likes will significantly boost conversions and churn.
  • Use dark CTA colors on white background. If your landing page has a lot of white space and its background is white, use red, blue, black, and other dark colors for CTAs.
  • Change the CTA text including text font, color, and CTA. It isn’t always the color of the button that matters. Test all CTA conversion optimization options.
  • Place CTAs strategically. Don’t just change the color but change CTAs location for conversion optimization and churn reduction. Place CTA close to its origin. We have this actionable guide to help you with conversion optimization for all the aspects of a landing page.

Mistakes to avoid

  • There is no single best CTA color that will create a true contrasting effect. Keep testing different colors. Don’t stop. There is always room for improvement.
  • Contrasting CTA button should always be RED. What color you choose for CTA depends on the surrounding elements and the overall theme of the landing page. Red isn’t always contrasting.
  • Ignoring your brand. CTA color isn’t more important than your brand. Any color that violates your brand’s image or your brand’s color theme should be used with caution.

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> Mastering the Call to Action: Words, Color, Size, & Location

> Which Is the Best Call to Action Button Color?

> 6 Characteristics of High-Converting CTA Buttons

Research evidence

According to a HubSpot study, red CTA button outperformed the green CTA button by a whopping 21%. This was primarily due to the fact that red button created contrast and was prominent on the page.

21%

This is how contrasting red CTA button outperformed the green CTA button

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May 6, 2019

One Offer Per Page

1. Acquisition  >  One Offer Per Page

Have one offer per page to reduce SaaS churn

Multiple offers on a single page won’t help you sell more. It backfires. Have one offer per landing page to boost conversions and to lower churn rate for repeat customers.

●● INTUITIVENESS

Sims

Sims increased game registrations by 128% simply tweaking their landing page. They tested multiple offers to finally find the one that worked.

Wedbuddy

Wedbuddy increased signups for the free trial by 73% by focusing only on the free trial on its landing page.

ServerDensity

Server Density increased its revenue by a whopping 114% after tweaking its pricing plan on the landing page.

How to use the technique

  • Set a clear goal for each landing page you create. What do you want to sell? Which buyer persona you'll target? Read more about setting clear goals in our free guide.
  • Have one offer per landing page. The offer should be consistent with the landing page’s goal. This is essential to keep visitors hooked and to lower churn.
  • The offer should stand out and must be clear on the landing page. The headline, copy, CTAs, white space, images, videos, and all other elements should be consistent with the offer and your goal.
  • Keep CTAs consistent with the offer. You can have multiple CTAs but these should link to one and only one offer.
  • Test and tweak each landing page and its offer. Monitor conversions, churn rate, user experience, etc. to see what combination works best. Find more actionable testing techniques in our free guide.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Using one offer per landing page for the entire audience. Create highly customized landing pages with the most appropriate product for each buyer persona. One size doesn’t fit all.
  • Considering multiple pricing plans as one offer. As a SaaS company, you have one product so it doesn’t mean you have to use one landing page only. Use different landing pages for different pricing offers.

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> Customer Choice and Conversion: Less Is More

> More Isn’t Always Better

> Are You Losing Sales By Giving Customers Too Many Choices?

> Choice Paralysis

Research evidence

A study published in APA found that when buyers have fewer options to choose from (limited choices), they're more likely to purchase (30%) as compared to if they're presented with multiple varieties (3%).

30%

Of buyers are more likely to purchase when there is only one option present. It's as simple as that!

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May 6, 2019

Create A Relevant UVP

1. Acquisition  >  Create A Relevant UVP

Create a relevant UVP to reduce SaaS churn

Your product’s unique value proposition makes it stand out from the crowd and differentiates it. Clearly mention how your offer helps solve their problem. Clear and persuasive UVP works best.

●● INTUITIVENESS

Evernote

Evernote has a perfect UVP. The headline describes the major benefit it offers ‘organized’ and the sub-headline describes it further.

Zapier

Zapier does a great job of clearly communicating the benefit of their app in a clear yet effective headline. The description highlights all the major benefits and focuses on who is it for.

GoToWebinar

GoToWebinar has clearly stated the value its users get from the webinar. It doesn’t sell the webinar rather it is selling the benefits.

How to use the technique

  • Conduct research to understand your target audience, their motivation, challenges, and fears. Use our framework for step-by-step guidance.
  • Create a value proposition based on research findings. It has to be clear, unique, and persuasive. It should answer the following questions: What is your offer? Who is it for? How it is different? How it will solve their problem?
  • Use it on landing pages and across all marketing material. UVP should be the first thing that visitors see. This will significantly reduce churn because they will know how your offer is relevant to their problem.
  • Use this formula to write UVP on landing pages: Start with a clear headline and a sub-headline. The headline should focus on one big benefit of your offer and subheading should explain the exact same benefit further. Explain more relevant benefits in explanation using visuals and videos.
  • A/B testing your UVP is a crucial step. You have to test multiple variations to come up with the best that converts at a decent rate and reduces churn over time. Use our free guide for actionable insights on how to practically use A/B tests.

Mistakes to avoid

  • UVP isn’t your brand’s tagline, slogan, or some random catchy phrase. Don’t mix it with other related and non-related terms. UVP is different.
  • Not doing research. You cannot create an offer or decide with the benefits that your product offers without identifying and understanding the problem your audience is facing. Understand your audience, their problem, tweak your offer, and devise a relevant UVP targeting their problem.

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READ MORE ON THE TOPIC

> Useful Value Proposition Examples

> Use these 3 points to create an awesome value proposition

> The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Value Proposition with over 30 Examples

> 9 Conversion Rate Optimization Principles to Get You Started

Research evidence

Research by Marketing Experiments revealed that the biggest challenge businesses face are identifying a value proposition (23%), expressing it (24%), and not measuring it once it has been implemented (21%). The majority of the marketers face all of these three challenges (32%).

68%

68% of businesses face one of the problems related to the unique value proposition

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May 6, 2019

Get Rid Of Broken Links

1. Acquisition  >  Get Rid Of Broken Links

Get rid of broken links to reduce SaaS churn

Any link that doesn’t lead a visitor to the desired webpage (404, dead links, etc.) is a disaster for your website. It kills user experience and is most likely a reason why your website’s churn rate is skyrocketing.

●●● FUNCTIONALITY

Whittington

Whittington Consulting increased its website traffic by 74% and organic traffic by 109% by fixing broken links and crawl errors.

Segment

Segment improved its organic traffic by 127% in 2 months after implementing the required technical and content audit recommendations.

PDFPro

PDF Pro increased search traffic by 106,283% in as low as 6 months primarily with linkbuilding and cleaning technical SEO glitches.

How to use the technique

  • Identify broken links on your website using a tool like Ahref’s Broken Link Checker. It lets you find 404 not found pages on your domain. Check our free guide on how to improve your website’s performance using website audits.
  • Use Fetch as Googlebot in the Search Console to see what errors you’re getting from broken internal links. Use the information to identify broken links and codes so you can deal with them to reduce churn rate.
  • Fix broken links by re-creating new webpages or using 301 redirects. If you don’t need a page anymore, use 301 redirect to send traffic to an appropriate webpage. This helps reduce bounce rate as well as churn rate.
  • Make 404 useful by clearly guiding visitors that the page they're looking for has been moved or isn’t available, and provide them with useful links to get desired information. This doesn’t hurt the user experience. More on user experience improvement techniques can be found in this free guide.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Redirecting broken links to the homepage is a bad idea. Google doesn’t like it and your audience won’t either because anyone who clicks a link expects a specific page. Show them a relevant page.
  • Not reaching out to external websites that linked to one of your broken links. It is essential to identify websites that have linked to a broken webpage and ask them to link to a new and better page (that you have re-created).

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> Web Analytics Analysis: How to Find Business Growth Opportunities

Research evidence

An article published on Science Direct found that error messages (such as 404 or invalid pages) develop psychological stress. While a couple of pages won’t hurt but when users tend to see a lot of such invalid pages, it leads to frustration and users eventually give up and churn.

Boo!

People get frustrated if they see a lot of 404 pages under your domain and start developing bad associations with it.

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May 6, 2019

Conduct Quality Assurance

1. Acquisition  >  Conduct Essential Quality Assurance

Conduct essential quality assurance to reduce SaaS churn

Quality assurance ensures that all the different elements of your website are working properly. Measuring your website’s quality is essential to enhance user experience and reduce churn.

●●● FUNCTIONALITY

airbnb

Airbnb was failing due to poor quality images which were replaced with high-quality photos. This tiny change doubled its revenue.

dropbox

Dropbox was hacked which leaked 68 million user passwords. It is a clear example of how important quality assurance is. Dropbox then introduced two-step verification.

posist

POSist increased its signups by 52% after tweaking several elements throughout their website that improved the overall website’s quality.

How to use the technique

  • Develop quality assurance guidelines to define what has to be tested, who is to test it, and how it will be tested. It’s better to create SOPs for quality assurance. You can read more about enhancing user experience in our free guide.
  • Get rid of bugs and site errors. The biggest hurdle to your website’s quality and usability is bugs and unknown error messages that visitors receive randomly. Find them, fix them, and monitor continuously before these bugs add to churn rate.
  • Improve content quality throughout your website on every single page. Content includes text, images, videos, etc. Are there any low-resolution images? Is font style and size consistent across your website? Are you linking to a YouTube video that isn’t available anymore?
  • Inspect internal and external links. Make sure every link on your website works and doesn’t lead to an invalid or obsolete destination. Broken links will eventually lead to a high churn.
  • Check if emails, notifications, and social sharing buttons work as expected. Do customers receive emails on time? Are there any social sharing icons that don’t work?
  • Test and monitor consistently. Maintaining the quality of your website isn’t a one-time job. Constant testing and analysis are required. Check our free guide that has actionable techniques on testing and monitoring a website. 

Mistakes to avoid

  • Mixing quality assurance with A/B testing. Quality assurance is focused on the quality of your website. It isn’t an alternative to A/B testing.
  • Not using website audit tools is one of the biggest mistakes that you could ever make. Most of the quality-related issues can be identified by audit tools, so grab one today.

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READ MORE ON THE TOPIC

> 9 Conversion Rate Optimization Principles

> The Optimizer’s Guide to Proper Website QA

> Web Analytics Analysis: How to Find Business Growth Opportunities

Research evidence

Research by NN/g focuses on quality assurance and how it impacts user experience. Having your website function properly has a significant impact on how users will interact and engage.

100x

It's 100x cheaper to resolve design flaws when you're still on the design stage than when product is launched.

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Featured Image

April 13, 2017

Decrease Loading Time

1. Acquisition  >  Decrease Loading Time

Decrease loading time to reduce SaaS churn

Your website’s loading time plays a significant role in whether visitors will stick or leave. Reducing churn and bounce rate gets a whole lot easier if your website loads quickly.

●●● FUNCTIONALITY

Schermafbeelding 2019-04-11 om 11.07.58

Firefox increased its conversion rate by 15.4% when they reduced load time by 2.2 seconds.

Schermafbeelding 2019-04-11 om 12.05.58

Pinterest reduced page load time by 40% which resulted in a 15% increase in organic traffic and 15% increase in conversion rate.

Schermafbeelding 2019-04-11 om 12.29.21

Bundlify has reduced its load time significantly. The page loads in 0.2 seconds and they have clearly stated how they did it.

How to use the technique

  • Check your website speed: Visit PageSpeed Insights, enter your website’s URL, and click analyze. You’ll get detailed instructions on underperforming elements on your website and instructions on how to improve speed. Read more on our free guide.
  • Reduce image size by compressing images. 1) Convert images to JPG as it consumes less space. 2) Use image resize tools like Resizeimage.net to reduce image size significantly. 3) If you use WordPress, install an image compression and optimization plugin.
  • Switch to a Content Delivery Network (CDN) which will serve your website to visitors from a local (or nearby) server. Your website (and related data) will be stored in several geographically dispersed servers. Reduction in geographical distance between server and user increases loading speed.
  • Install a caching plugin on your CMS or on your host to effectively deal with churn rate and low load speed.
  • Create Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to significantly deal with churn and bounce rate due to low speeds. It’s Google’s open-source project to help businesses create super-fast websites. 
  • A/B test and analyze how changes impact website speed, churn rate, bounce rate, conversion rate, and user experience. Detailed steps can be found in our free guide.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Choose your hosting company carefully. You can implement all the best practices to improve your website’s speed but if you’re with a mediocre host, things won’t work.
  • Having unnecessary plugins, themes, and widgets. Get rid of the clutter and remove everything and anything from your CMS or database that you don’t need.
  • Excessive use of multimedia. While multimedia makes your website look better but too much of it will make your website slow. Use what’s necessary. Every bit counts.

FREE OPTIMIZATION GUIDE

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READ MORE ON THE TOPIC

> 9 Conversion Rate Optimization Principles

> Speed Is A Killer

> Low-Hanging Fruits for Increasing Website Conversions

> How Does Page Speed Really Affect your Conversions

Research evidence

A study by Gomez revealed that a delay of one second in website load time reduces page views by 11%, conversions by 7%, and customer satisfaction by a whopping 16%. This means if your website makes $100K a day, you could lose $2.5 million this year.

16%

Average decrease in a customer satisfaction caused by a one second delay in a page upload time

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