SaaS B2B Conversion Rate Optimization:
How To Boost Your Bottom Line

As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to boost your bottom line. And if you’re like most business owners, you’ve turned to the world of SaaS to help you do just that. 

But even the best SaaS can’t reach its full potential without effective conversion rate optimization (CRO). 

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at why CRO is so important for SaaS businesses and offer some tips on how you can get started optimizing your own conversion rates.

Understanding the conversion funnel

A conversion funnel is a marketing tool used by businesses to increase their sales and qualified leads through the process of converting prospects into customers. The idea behind this approach is that you don’t want all your leads at the top of your sales funnel; some will drop out along the way, and others won’t be interested in buying from you at all. So why not keep them from wasting their time by getting them interested earlier?

There are a number of different ways to structure a conversion funnel, but they all have the same basic goal: To boost your lead generation strategy through your door and increase your sales.

The typical conversion funnel looks something like this:

• Awareness: The prospect becomes aware of your product or service.
• Interest: The prospect expresses interest in your product or service.
• Desire: The prospect desires your product or service.
• Action: The prospect takes action and buys your product or service.

With SaaS, the purchase is usually a subscription, so the conversion funnel doesn’t end there. The typical SaaS customer lifecycle looks something like this:

• Awareness: The potential customer becomes aware of your SaaS product or service.
• Interest: The customer expresses interest in your SaaS product.
• Trial: The customer signs up for a free trial of your SaaS product.
• Use: The customer uses your SaaS product.
• Engagement: The customer becomes engaged with your SaaS product.
• Retention: The customer continues to use your SaaS product.
• Advocacy: The customer promotes your SaaS product.

B2B SaaS businesses need to focus on all stages of the customer lifecycle, not just the purchase. In order to do that, you need to have a solid understanding of your conversion funnel and how it works.

By understanding where people fall off in a traditional sales funnel (e.g., if they don’t sign up for an email list or submit an inquiry form), you can create follow-up emails or landing pages focused specifically on those points of hesitation–and therefore increase your overall conversion rate!

The problem that needs solving…

Before you can start solving the problem, you have to understand the problem.

To do this, you have to understand why your users are coming to your site and what they’re trying to accomplish when they get there.

This is what we call “understanding the user’s motivation.” Once you understand that, it’s time for step two: understanding where those users are coming from and what their situations look like. What does their environment look like? What pain points does it cause them?

These factors play a huge role in how they interact with your SaaS product and how likely they are to convert on an offer or visit another page within your site (the goal). They also help inform how successful any changes made by other departments will be – if they don’t work within these parameters then their effects could be negligible at best and harmful at worst!

Once you understand all of that, it’s time to start solving the problem.

The solution: Conversion Rate Optimization

What is conversion rate optimization?

Conversion rate optimization is the process of improving the performance of a website. It’s not just about increasing sales and revenue, but also about ensuring an enjoyable and excellent user experience. This will result in higher loyalty, better reviews, more repeat purchases and more referrals – ultimately improving your bottom line.

Conversion optimization is a continuous process aimed at testing different options to improve conversion rates on your website or app based on data analysis from life experiences with real users. The goal is to find out what works best for each step of the user journey so you can create great user experiences for all visitors throughout their path to purchase (or other desired action).

It should be noted that conversion rate optimization is not something you do once and then forget about. Instead, it should be treated as a continuous process, where testing different options are part of every iteration until you achieve your goals or decide to change strategy completely because something else works even better.

There are a few different types of optimization that you can do, but for the sake of this article we’ll focus on two:

A/B testing

A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of a web page to see which one performs better. Usually, one version is the original (control) and the other is a modified version (treatment). A/B testing can be used to test anything on a web page, from the headline to the call-to-action (CTA) button.

The key to a successful A/B test is to make sure that you’re testing one thing at a time. This helps to ensure that you know which change caused an increase or decrease in conversion rate.

Multivariate testing

Multivariate testing is a method of testing more than one element on a web page at the same time. Unlike A/B testing, which tests two versions of a page, multivariate testing tests multiple versions of a page.

This is done by creating different combinations of elements and testing them all at the same time. The goal is to find out which combination performs the best.

Multivariate testing can be used to test anything on a web page, from the headline to the CTA button.

The key to a successful multivariate test is to make sure that you’re testing more than one element at a time. This helps to ensure that you know which combination of changes caused an increase or decrease in conversion rate.

How to determine your conversion goal

The first step in choosing a conversion goal is to identify your bottom line. What are you trying to accomplish? Why are you doing it? These are important questions, and the answers will determine what success looks like for your business.

A good place to start is with a simple question: “What would make me feel successful?”

Your answer might be something like “I want to increase sales by 10%” or “I want to get 100 new leads.” These are both great answers, but they’re not specific enough.

To make your goal more specific, you need to add a time frame. For example, “I want to increase sales by 10% in the next month.” This is a great goal, and it’s specific enough that you’ll be able to measure it.

Now that you have your goal, it’s time to start planning your conversion rate optimization strategy.

Your strategy should be based on your goals, and it should be tailored to your business. There is no “one size fits all” solution, so it’s important to find a strategy that works for you.

Convert or prioritize?

In order to make sure you’re optimizing your conversions, it’s important to know what you stand to gain from conversion rate optimization. Conversion rate optimization helps you meet your business goals by increasing revenue and reducing costs. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach and is more of a continuous process than an isolated effort.

The goal of CRO is not just higher conversion rates; it’s also maximizing value from all touchpoints in the customer journey that lead up to those conversions (and hopefully beyond). The impact of CRO can be as simple as ensuring that your site’s navigation is intuitive and easy for visitors, or as complex as automating sales processes based on customer activity across multiple channels-but either way, CRO has the power to drive real results for businesses large and small across industries worldwide!

Auditing your funnels, pages, and content

Auditing your SaaS website’s conversion rate starts with understanding three main elements as follows

• Audit your funnels. To start with an audit of your website, think about the customer journey from an intent to purchase stage to a completed purchase. For example, if you’re selling webinar services, how do visitors get from “I want to learn more about webinars” to “I just signed up for a webinar?”
• Audit your pages. Look at each page on your site and see what issues arise: Is there anything confusing or unclear? Are there any obvious problems with design or layout that could be solved easily? Are there any calls-to-action (CTAs) that are unclear or buried on the page?
• Audit your content. In addition to auditing your SaaS website’s design and functionality, it’s important to take a close look at the quality of your content. After all, if your website is full of typos, grammatical errors, or just plain bad writing, that’s going to reflect poorly on your business and could turn visitors away.

Implementing changes based on your audit

Based on the results of your audit, it’s time to start making changes! Remember, the goal is to increase conversions by making it easier for visitors to take the desired action on your site.

Some of the changes you might want to consider include:

• Improving the design of your website
• Making sure your site is mobile-friendly
• Ensuring that your CTAs are clear and visible
• Making sure your content is high-quality and error-free
• Testing different versions of your website
• Monitoring your results

Once you’ve made changes to your website, it’s important to keep track of your results to see what’s working and what’s not. Google Analytics is a free tool that can help you track your website’s traffic and conversions.

Segmenting your traffic by buyer’s journey and stage in the funnel

It’s important to know the stages in a buyer’s journey so you can create content that makes sense for each stage. It can be easy to write a blog post or podcast episode about “what is SaaS?”, but if you were doing that in an enterprise sales cycle, it would be a huge waste of time. You need to know what your audience is interested in at each stage of their decision-making process.

After identifying which stages make up your buyer’s journey and understanding how long those stages usually take, then it becomes easier to create effective content for them. If you’re making videos for a digital marketing agency across multiple industries, you may want to create different videos based on what stage they’re at in their buying process.

The three main stages of a buyer’s journey are:

• Awareness: The customer is aware that they have a problem or need that your product or service can help with.
• Interest: The customer is interested in learning more about your product or service.
• Decision: The customer is ready to make a decision and choose a provider.

Once you know which stage of the buyer’s journey your audience is in, you can create content that is tailored to their needs.

Analyzing your conversion data to reveal misalignments and motivations

Tracking your SaaS B2B conversion rate is the first step to understanding what’s working, and what isn’t. You need to know where you are losing customers – are they abandoning their carts? Are they not checking out at all?

By analyzing your data, you can see where you are losing customers and why. 

For example, if you see that users aren’t making it through the checkout process before abandoning their carts, then it might be worth testing a different payment method on your site or adding a new payment option like PayPal Express Checkout.

Prioritizing which problems to solve first

The first step in the conversion rate optimization process is prioritizing which problems to solve first. You can prioritize based on impact, opportunity, ease of implementation, or team resources.

For example: if you’re a B2B SaaS company and want to increase your conversion rate from 3% to 5%, this will require roughly 2x more effort than going from 8% to 10%. The magnitude of change may be different for every business depending on how many sales opportunities are available at each stage in their funnel (i.e., if there are only two opportunities left before becoming an expired lead).

It’s also important to consider what part of your funnel has the highest priority at any given time. If you have a large volume of traffic coming through but very few conversions, then that’s where you need to focus your efforts first-in other words, don’t try fixing something that isn’t broken yet!

Establishing a CRO program and process in your organization

Establishing a CRO program and process at your organization can be done in a few steps:

• Create a CRO team: A team can be made up of different people, but it should be small in order to ensure that all members are focused on the main goals. The decision-making process has to be clear so that there is minimal confusion and conflict among team members. Also, make sure that you have enough time to dedicate to each project so they can move forward smoothly and effectively.
• Establish a CRO budget: It’s important to allocate money for research purposes because this will help improve your conversion rate over time by providing insight into what needs improvement in terms of content and design elements on your website or app. Be sure not to spend too much money at once though! Also remember: if there isn’t enough funding available yet (which is often the case), then just start small by focusing on one element first before moving on to another area needing improvement or change later down the line when more funds become available again.

Final Thoughts

Conversion rate optimization is a process that can be applied to any business process. By optimizing your website or other marketing materials, you’ll be able to improve the effectiveness of your sales and SaaS B2B marketing efforts. It’s important to note that SaaS conversion rate optimization is not just limited to sales and marketing – it can also be applied across the entire business, from HR practices to onboarding new hires.

Conversion rate optimization isn’t just for B2B SaaS companies either! Your competitors are probably using this technique right now, so if you want an edge over them then it might be time to think about implementing CRO into your own organization as well.

The benefits of prioritizing SaaS conversion rate optimization are clear – it can help improve your bottom line and increase efficiency in your sales and marketing processes. If you’re not already implementing CRO strategies, then now is the time to start!

If you need more help in growing your SaaS business, feel free to contact us and we’d be happy to help out. Also, don’t forget to read our blog for more tips on how to optimize your website and boost your SaaS conversion rate.