Driving traffic to your website is essential to running a successful SaaS business. The next step is more challenging: converting your website visitors into signups and customers. Many elements can make or break your SaaS website conversion rate.

Luckily, there are many things you can do to improve it using the process known as conversion rate optimisation (CRO). We'll take a closer look at why CRO is so important for SaaS companies and expert-approved tips to help improve your website's conversion rates. 

You can explore how to conduct a comprehensive CRO audit for more detailed guidance.

What Is SaaS CRO and Why Is It So Important?

SaaS conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the art of improving your SaaS website to convert more visitors into signups and increase revenue. CRO involves improving many elements on your website, including your homepage, features page, pricing page, and signup page.

The Main Benefits of SaaS Conversion Rate Optimisation

1. Increases Usability: Enhancing the overall user experience makes it easier for visitors to navigate and engage with your site, leading to more purchases.
2. Boosts Signups: Maximises the potential of your existing traffic by converting more visitors into signups without increasing your marketing spend.
3. Maximises ROI: Increases your marketing spend's return on investment (ROI) and lowers customer acquisition costs.
4. Improves Understanding: Provides better insights into your visitors and customers, enabling more tailored marketing strategies.
5. Enhances Retention: Helps boost your customer retention strategy and increases long-term value.
6. Leverages Organic Traffic: Take advantage of your SaaS website's organic traffic.

Consider further checking out our conversion rate optimisation services to enhance your understanding and application of these principles.

What Are Good Conversion Rates for SaaS Businesses?

The conversion rate of your SaaS website is the percentage of users who convert into a free trial or paying customer. It's more complex than eCommerce conversion rates, as multiple conversion rates depend on how you sign up users. Therefore, conversion rates can vary significantly on SaaS websites.

Free Trial Conversion Rate

The majority of SaaS websites offer a free trial. For those that do, there are two conversion rates to consider:

• Free trial conversion rate: Above 7% is good, and it will be higher if you don't require credit card details to sign up.
• Free trial to paying customer conversion rate: Above 30% is good, and it will be higher if you require credit card details for your free trial.

Freemium to Paid Conversion Rate

This is the second most common type of signup on SaaS websites. In this type of signup, you offer users a free limited version of your service, either by limiting the features or the frequency it can be used. The average freemium conversion rate is between 1% and 10%, depending on the type of product you offer, so anything above that is considered good.

Demo to Paid Conversion Rate

This is the lowest expected conversion rate on SaaS websites, where users sign up for a demo and try to convert them to paid customers. The average is about 2-3% for demo conversion rates, but it varies by industry and the expense of your offering. Therefore, anything above 3% is considered good.

A conversion rate optimisation audit can provide valuable insights for those looking to optimise these conversion rates more thoroughly.

Expert Tips to Increase Your SaaS Conversion Rate

You may be wondering how to do it now that you know why SaaS CRO is so important for 

your business. In this section, you will discover some expert tips that you can use to increase your SaaS conversion rates and revenue.

1. Offer a Free Trial and Promote Its Benefits

One of the best ways to get users to try your service is to let them try it for free. But don't stop there. It would help if you did the following:

• Ideally, don't require credit card details for users to begin, and mention that by your signup CTA buttons.
• Use a sticky navigation menu with a 'Start free trial' CTA so it can be seen anywhere on your website.

2. Clearly Explain Your Unique Value Proposition

One of the most significant elements influencing conversion rates on SaaS websites is how well you explain and promote your unique value proposition (UVP). These are the reasons that users should choose your business over competitors. Here are the best ways to explain and promote your UVP:

• Use a homepage headline and intro text highlighting the main reasons for choosing you.
• When mentioning each feature, explain what makes them better than competitors.
• Create a comparison table to highlight why you beat competitors. Display it on your homepage and on a 'compare us' page.

3. Ensure Your Pricing Plans Are Easy to Compare

Many SaaS businesses have too many plans, which makes it hard for users to compare and understand which is best for them. Here is what you need to do to optimise your pricing plans so users choose a plan quicker and more often:

• Only have three plans at most, or you risk users needing clarification.
• Use tooltips to explain each feature of your plans.
• Mention who each plan is best for, which saves the most money, and which is most popular.
• Refrain from using technical terms or jargon; it's always better to presume your users won't understand.
• Clearly show savings when paying annually, and let users switch monthly and annual.

For tailored CRO strategies for your SaaS business, explore our SaaS CRO services.

4. Optimise Your Onboarding After a User Signs Up

CRO for SaaS websites doesn't stop when you get a user to sign up. You then need to go further and increase the chances of them understanding the benefits of your tool and features so they convert to a paid customer and stay longer. Here are some of the best ways to optimise your SaaS user onboarding process:

• Show a good welcome screen that includes tips to get started.
• Include an interactive tour of your service by showing tooltips for critical parts of your tool.
• Create a good series of automated emails that walk them through the benefits of your tool.
• Send automated emails with discounts if they don't use the free trial after signing up.

5. Fix Your Hidden Website Issues

It doesn't matter how well you improve your SaaS website if its issues must be discovered and resolved. And I'm not talking about 404 issues or broken links—the less visible things impacting user experience that you may not have checked very well. Here are some of the other most common hidden website issues:

• Poor or understandable field error validation in signup.
• Broken/squashed layout on smaller devices with 375 widths.
• Mega menus that cover important content and CTA buttons.
• The tablet layout is broken due to stretched buttons or images too large.
• Live chat widgets cover and block CTA buttons on mobile.

Consider a website conversion audit for a thorough examination of your website's performance.

Get Expert Help from a CRO Consultant

Conversion rate optimisation services can be relatively inexpensive to get good results on your SaaS revenue. Unfortunately, many agencies are expensive and only sometimes deliver on their promises. 

Conversionry offers expert SaaS CRO consultancy with years of experience, providing services with a clear ROI on your SaaS website revenue.

Are you ready to take your SaaS business to the next level? Contact us today to learn more about our tailored conversion rate optimisation services and how we can help you achieve your goals.