Design your way

SaaS, or Software as a service, is a new way for businesses to supply their customers with software over the internet through a web browser.

This means that instead of having to install the software locally, the program is hosted in a central location where it is easily accessed by thousands of customers. The user simply pays for the privilege of using the software.

A lot of painstaking effort goes into the construction of a great website. It can also be very taxing and time-consuming. After all this, the website still may not appeal to some visitors so you must have a clear strategy from the beginning.

Consequently, I will resist the temptation to tell you how you should build your website; instead I’ll give you a general breakdown how some of the top SaaS companies enhance their websites. So keep these ideas in mind when you build your first website.

The importance of a SaaS website

When building an advanced SaaS website, naturally, a degree of emphasis should be placed on marketing. In the old days of enterprise software this was not the case. Back then, most vendors were happy with their poorly-designed, static, low-tech websites. In fact, about the only images found on those dinosaurs were low-quality stock photos.

Fortunately, businesses back then could get by with those less-than-spectacular websites since the internet was still in its infancy and was not the company’s primary marketing tool. Now, however, a marketing campaign based on a SaaS application, using a non-invasive sales model, it is unlikely that your customers will have any interaction with your sales team at all. This means that your website now becomes the de facto face of your company and its no. 1 salesman.

Helpful ideas

Clearly, the primary objective of your website is to attract as many visitors as possible, while at the same time turning those visitors into future customers.

However, there are also a number of secondary goals such as compiling a database of email addresses of visitors who have yet to begin their free trial or take advantage of any other promotional offerings; mutually sharing information between your website and its partners; posting information about job opportunities and careers; and promoting your brand.

However, since getting visitors to your website is important to your website, the sales pitch needs to be both convincing and appealing in order to grab the visitors’ attention and make them want to investigate further; that coupled with a clearly visible call-to-action.

Therefore, it is extremely important that you offer your visitors who are not yet ready to accept the trial offer something to pique their interest. It can take the form of something as active as a newsletter subscription, or as benign as a callback button or whitepaper download. Or, you can go for something even more interactive like a live-chat window or webinar. All these features can be used to compile an email database to be used for future contact.

Simple is better

Simplicity is always the best advice when it comes to your website’s presentation. This makes less likely that visitors will turn away from your site prematurely—before a more comprehensive view of what your site has to offer is revealed.

This is the job of the inner pages. This, characteristically, has been a gradual, evolving technique of SaaS websites since their inception.

The homepage is your landing page

There’s an old saying that the first impression is a lasting impression and this has never been truer than with homepages. In fact, homepages act as a virtual front door for most companies. If a visitor is not immediately impressed, his initial reaction is to make a hasty retreat via his browser’s “back” button.

If the product your company sells has become a household name, you may be forgiven for failing to adequately describe who you are and what your company represents. However, the reality of the situation is that most companies don’t have that luxury and must endeavor to answer these pressing questions to the visitors’ satisfaction.

Ideally, you’d want your homepage’s focus to be narrower in scope—targeting the right audience in a language they can understand. A well-crafted homepage will avoid a lot of the unnecessary info and fluff that tend to bore visitors.

Instead, your homepage should be attractive enough to compel visitors to stick around and investigate what your site has to offer. Homepages are the hook that catches the visitor’s attention and expels any idea of navigating to a competitor’s site from his mind.

The homepage should be user-friendly. This means that they should be easy to navigate and free of fancy objects that tend to impede browsing. Banners, animations, and pop-ups have their place, but too many of them can clutter a website and distract visitors’ attention away from what is really important: the real message you’re trying to convey.

Primary and secondary calls-to-action buttons are critical elements of a homepage. They seek to direct the visitors’ to the next logical step in your webpage hierarchy. After all, the goal of the homepage is to compel visitors to burrow as deep into your website’s inner pages as possible. Call-to-action buttons (CTAs) are like a road map that guides the visitor through your website, preventing them from losing their way, while enticing them to purchase your products.

All-in-all, a well-designed homepage is crucial to building rapport, establishing communication, and showing the way. Therefore, homepages are comprised of effective layout, optimum use of CTA placement, fonts, colors, and other page elements.

Ending thoughts

Creating a successful SaaS venue begins with a quality product and an advanced website that makes it easy for visitors to see how beneficial it would be for them to sign up for a free trial with you. By focusing on the details, SaaS/cloud startups can improve their online visibility immensely and greatly increase lead generation results.

Pay particular attention to the product you’re designing a SaaS website to promote and the target audience.

To give visitors a better idea of what to expect, provide images of the software as well as tutorials and videos that make using the software easier.

Use the homepage to provide visitors with information about pricing as well as what they can expect to find on the inner pages.

It is also a good idea to provide brief testimonials and reviews featured prominently on your SaaS website’s homepage with links to more comprehensive information.

And, lastly, it is worth re-mentioning the importance of providing the visitor with clearly identifiable call-to-action buttons inviting visitors to sign up, but without making them feel obligated to do so.