May 6, 2019

Offer Live Chat

2. Activation  >  Offer Live Chat

Offer live chat to reduce SaaS churn

Live chat is the best thing you can give new users. It increases conversions, reduces churn, and keeps users engaged during the onboarding process. You can offer help immediately before they even think of leaving.

●●● FUNCTIONALITY

TradeShift

TradeShift increased sales opportunities by a whopping 32% with live chat.

Mention

Mention increased activation rate by 12% after it started sending a customized welcome message to new users.

SalesLoft

SalesLoft used live chat to increase sales and conversions. It received 8x more demo appointments for the software via live chat.

How to use the technique

  • Know when to use live chat. It is essential. The live chat shouldn’t interfere with user onboarding. You need to understand and track user behavior to offer live chat just at the right moment when they're most likely to churn. This free guide will show you how to do research to understand your customers. 
  • Set automated greeting. Show users that they have the option to talk to a human should they need. There are fair chances that users might ignore live chat icon. However, it’s hard to ignore a greeting that pops up on the screen.
  • Offer early help. The purpose of using live chat is to offer instant help to users, solve their queries, and help them achieve first success with your app. Be proactive in offering help to reduce churn.
  • Deliver value. You can use chat greeting to deliver value to the users. Describe your product’s major feature in the chat greeting. Persuade users to activate.
  • Offer support 24/7. Make sure you offer live chat 24/7. There has to be at least one agent live at any given time of the day.
  • Train customer support team. Live chat can backfire if your agents aren’t trained. If they aren’t well-trained to solve user issues, guide them, and help them with decision-making, what’s the point of having live chat?
  • Identify common problems. Live chat provides you with lots of information on common user queries, general issues, peak timings, etc. Use this data to tweak the customer journey and user experience. We have an amazing free guide to help you with testing and analyzing.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Inadequate staff. Not having enough staff to handle customer queries and an inability to provide live chat 24/7 are the biggest mistakes you'll ever make. If you have to do it, do it properly.
  • Using chatbots. While chatbots are great for customer services but using them during onboarding process when users are in a phase to understand your brand, chatbots can backfire. Don’t use them. If it’s really necessary to use chatbots, use them with extra caution.

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> Five Ways to Boost Engagement with Live Chat

> How live chat increases conversion rates

> How Mention Increased Activation Rate by 50%

> How to Boost Your Conversion Rate by 45% with Live Chat

Research evidence

The eDigital survey found that live chat has the highest customer satisfaction (73%). Customers love live chat because they can get answers to their queries almost instantly. Customers expect to receive an answer to their queries in as low as 1 minute and that’s why they prefer live chat.

1m

Average expectation of a reply time in live chat is only 1 minute. It's difficult to keep up with, but in case of success 73% of your customers will be satisfied. 

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May 6, 2019

Create A NUE Leading To Aha

2. Activation  >  Create A NUE Leading To "Aha"

Create A NUE that leads to "Aha!" to reduce SaaS churn

Create a perfect new user experience that guides new users to get value from your app instantly. Help users get to their Aha moment so they stick with your software and don’t churn.

●●● FUNCTIONALITY

Magoosh

Magoosh increased its conversion rate by 17% after it started sending customized welcome messages to new users.

KnowYourCompany

Know Your Company optimized its user onboarding process which helped them increase activation rate by 44%.

Hint

Hint Health increased pricing reviews by 10% within a few weeks by providing creating a customized and proactive onboarding process.

How to use the technique

  • Define Aha moment for new users. This can be found by analyzing buyer personas and customer journey map. We have a free guide that will let you know how you can do it with ease.
  • Make it easier for users to experience Aha moment. This is the point of creating an onboarding experience that will show them how to get to Aha moment. After experiencing Aha moment, users are less likely to churn.
  • Reduce friction. Are there any distractions? Is something stopping users to get to Aha moment? Does design support onboarding process? Provide users with a highly focused user experience during the onboarding process that has no distractions at all.
  • Choose one core feature. It’s really important that the onboarding sequence focuses on one core feature that truly represents Aha moment. It should be the most important feature of your software. If users get to know it, they won’t churn.
  • Create support documents. A flawless and well-designed onboarding experience isn’t just enough. Create support tools, help videos, and guides so users can get additional information as per need.
  • Offer customer support. You cannot create a great user experience without proactive customer support. Make sure there are human beings available to answer any queries that new users have.
  • Focus on benefits. New user experience should explain the benefits that users drive from using your app. It shouldn’t just describe features.
  • Analyze and see how new users interact and respond to the onboarding sequence. Do they really get to the Aha moment? This calls for intensive testing and tweaking. Here is a guide you shouldn’t miss on testing and analysis.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Not focusing on churn. When your primary goal isn’t to retain new users with awesome user experience, things don’t turn out well. The reason why you create an onboarding process, great new user experience, and guide users to achieve Aha moment is to reduce churn. To ensure they continue using your app.
  • Not personalizing new user experience. It is a lethal mistake. Don’t treat all users the same way. Users have different needs and backgrounds. Create a personalized user experience based on data you have and buyer personas.
  • Making it hard for users to get to Aha moment. Don’t complicate it. Keep it simple and easy.

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READ MORE ON THE TOPIC

> Getting to the “Aha” Moment

> User Onboarding Checklist – Designing the New User Experience

> What are some examples of great new user experience flows on the web?

> Dynamic new user experience

Research evidence

Quettra conducted a study and found that apps lose 77% of users in the first 3 days after the install. The figure jumps to 90% in the first 30 days. The top 10 apps have the best day one retention rate which shows the importance of engaging new users right away.

90%

That many users are lost in the first 30 days by SaaS products in average. Make sure you have a better onboarding! 

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May 6, 2019

Build A Product Tour

2. Activation  >  Build A Product Tour

Build a product tour to reduce SaaS churn

Product tour is a perfect way to helping users understand your app and learn using it. A quick product tour helps users achieve activation quickly. It reduces the churn rate and boosts user engagement.

●●● FUNCTIONALITY

Proposify

ProdPad used product tours to onboard new users. It decreased their trial to paid period by a whopping 80%.

Dropbox

Dropbox has a great onboarding product tour that guides the new users and makes it dead-simple to understand their tool.

ProdPad

Proposify totally transformed its user onboarding process with a focus on product tour. The change increased trail to paid conversions by 5% and users who complete the product tutorial are 3x more likely to convert.

How to use the technique

  • Link product tour to customer flow map. What is the most important action in the flow map? What are the critical events? Add them to product tour. Read our article on customer flows to learn more.
  • Identify the key features of your product and include them in the product tour. Don’t focus on all the features. It will make product tour boring and lengthy.
  • Personalize product tour by linking to buyer personas and to user’s history. What actions does the user take on your app? How did he/she found it? Use existing information for personalization to reduce churn.
  • Keep UI simple yet attractive. Don’t add a lot of information. Make it intuitive and catchy.
  • Keep it short. It should have 4-6 steps in the product tour with actionable instructions. Long product tours make users churn.
  • Show users how they can achieve first success with your app. Help them get to activation. Show what benefit they will get.
  • Make action-taking easier. Do you have CTAs within the tour? How many steps are involved in action taking? The easier it is for them to follow the tour, the better it is. It will reduce churn and boost engagement.
  • Test different product tour types. There is no best product tour for onboarding. Test different variations such as nickel tour, coach marks, guided tour, explainer video, tooltips, task completion, and others to see what works best in terms of retention and churn reduction. This free guide has more details.

Mistakes to avoid

  • No follow up. Having an amazing product tour doesn’t necessarily mean the user will activate. Follow up if the user doesn’t activate after the product tour.
  • Not focusing on activation. The purpose of the product tour is to guide users to achieve success with your app and activate. A product tour is useless if it doesn’t focus on activation.
  • Unable to track critical events. If you’re not tracking critical events during onboarding, you won’t be able to track activation and if the user followed instructions. Even if you have to do it manually, don’t go without tracking.

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READ MORE ON THE TOPIC

> 20 growth experiments to improve your activation rate

> From conversion to retention: industry experts on improving your onboarding

> How this e-learning company 5x their customer onboarding conversions

Research evidence

Research by Localytics found that 21% of users never open an app after a single use. App retention can be increased by 50% with a solid onboarding process (such as product tours).

50%

This is how you can grow your retention rate with a solid onboarding process only

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Implement with our proven SaaS Churn Optimization Framework

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May 6, 2019

Map Your Customer Flow

2. Activation  >  Map Your Customer Flow

Map your customer flow to reduce SaaS churn

Mapping your ideal customer flow helps with understanding and prioritizing steps that users take to achieve their goal. A clear customer flow helps with activation and reduces churn.

●●● FUNCTIONALITY

BingoCardReader

Bingo Card Reader redesigned its UI to facilitate customers to move quickly through the mapping flow. The change in UI resulted in a 10% increase in customers who succeeded with their app in the first go.

Trackduck

TrackDuck reduced fields in their registration form from 10 to 4 based on customers’ feedback. This resulted in an increase of 120% in registration completion.

Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder has created a detailed customer journey map that provides them with all the information about their ideal customers throughout their journey.

How to use the technique

  • Conduct research to get a better insight into customer flow. Conduct interviews, field studies, and surveys. Not sure how to do it? We have an actionable guide for you.
  • Use existing data preferably from buyer personas and analytics to better understand and map customer flow. For instance, a specific persona might find your brand through search while another persona might find you via a social network.
  • Identify all the touchpoints your customers can use to interact with you. These touchpoints play a critical role in reducing churn. You can identify customers who are not using all the touchpoints (meaning they're about to churn) – and take necessary action.
  • Map your ideal customer flow. What steps an ideal customer takes from research getting first success with your software?
  • Identify customer motivation, emotion, pain, challenges, and interest in each stage. What keeps an ideal customer moving? What are the hurdles? How you can help them move forward.
  • Identify actions successful customers take. Focus on these actions. Help and guide customers to take these actions. Add them to your flow.
  • Track customer flow. Use a tracking tool to see how customers move from one stage to the next and where they stop. Without a tracking tool, you won’t be able to take necessary actions on time which means customers will churn.
  • Tweak your map. A map once created isn’t finalized unless it has been tested and tweaked for perfection. Is there something missing? Do all customers follow the exact same flow? We have a free guide to help you with testing and tweaking, grab it now.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Not conducting research. Mapping customer flow is all about your customers. You cannot do it yourself. Go out and do research to better understand your customer’s journey.
  • Not using a tracking tool. You cannot measure the progress of your customers without a tracking tool. Don’t make this mistake. Guesswork doesn’t work.
  • Not responding and reacting to issues. The purpose of creating customer flow is to identify roadblocks and help customers achieve success with your app. Respond on time to fix issues and to help your customers.

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READ MORE ON THE TOPIC

> 6 Advanced Steps for Doubling Your Activation Rate

> A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Customer Journey Maps

> How to Create an Effective Customer Journey Map

Research evidence

Customer journey mapping research report 2018 by CXPA found that 67% of organizations are currently using customer journey mapping and 85% of them reported customer flow has a positive or very positive impact on their organization. Some 71% of respondents said that customer flow has increased customer satisfaction.

85%

Of organizations that currently use customer journey mapping reported customer flow has a positive impact on them,

Related techniques SEE ALL THE TECHNIQUES >

Implement with our proven SaaS Churn Optimization Framework

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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.

Related techniques SEE ALL THE TECHNIQUES >

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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

Stop Your SaaS From Leaking Customers With Our Proven Optimization Process

We will reveal an EXACT framework we use to improve conversion & retention rates of our SaaS clients by at least 30%.

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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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