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If you’re tired of making guesses about what’s wrong with your startup’s landing page, this article is for you. We’ve compiled the 7 most common mistakes for the SaaS industry and how to fix them.
Spoiler: maybe it’s not (only) your landing page.
The typical landing page conversion rate for SaaS is only at 3.8%*. That’s good and bad news.
It’s good news, because maybe it’s not only your landing page that’s hindering you from getting leads. It’s bad news, because maybe it’s not only your landing page that’s hindering you from getting leads.
Don’t worry, nearly all marketers and startup teams have been there. Once you’re aware of the following, conversion rates can only improve:
Fixing your landing page is just the beginning. Optimizing the entire funnel and user experience is what truly moves the needle.
If you want to create a high-converting landing page, try to fix these 7 most common mistakes.
The 7 fixes your landing page needs
1. Are you generating enough traffic?
Landing pages don’t exist in isolation. They are part of a larger funnel and the destination of your traffic campaign. Evaluate your entire customer journey. Maybe you actually need to drive more traffic on your page to see results.
If you want to generate 10 leads from the landing page and the average conversion rate is 3,8%, how much traffic will you need?
Simply calculate (or ask your favorite AI): traffic needed = expected leads/average conversion rate. In our case, we would need around 264 visitors to reach our goals.
So, if you’re landing page has less traffic than needed, revisit your traffic source. Optimize LinkedIn and Google ads, always keeping in mind the entire user journey to enhance brand storytelling.
2. Are you attracting the right audience?
You reach your traffic goals, but you notice high bounce rates on your startup’s landing page? Maybe you’re not targeting the right people.
If your traffic comes from a LinkedIn ad, for instance, review your people demographics in LinkedIn. Pay special attention to “Audience expansion” options and turn them off. Don’t be afraid of spending some money on testing and determining your ideal audience. Yes, our marketing team also admits it: Social media ad targeting can be a pain…
If search machines are your main traffic source, consider revising the meta title, the meta description, and keywords of your landing page. This is a general rule for all of your startup website’s pages, not only for specific landing pages.
3. Do you communicate your value proposition clearly?
Confident that you’re generating enough qualified traffic but the results are still weak? Maybe visitors don’t immediately grasp what you offer. Consider revising your startup’s value proposition on the page and be as on-point as possible.
If you and your team are struggling to condense your value proposition into one sentence, it might be worth revising your brand strategy and messaging framework.
Does your landing page immediately tell visitors why they should care? Depending on the goal of your landing page, you’ll need to adjust the reasoning.
Goal: Downloads of a whitepaper, toolkit, etc.
- Your headline should answer: What benefits will you get? What does the user need to do?
- Examples: Save time and nerves. Download our brand strategy toolkit.
Goal: Subscription to a trial version of a SaaS product
- Your headline should answer: What does the product do? Why does it matter for the user?
- Examples: Get paid faster with cloud-based invoicing. (See example from Holded below—by the way, one of the best SaaS landing pages out there, in terms of design, structure, and messaging: https://www.holded.com/invoicing-software)
Also, try A/B testing for different headings and subheadings.
4. Is there any friction in the signup process?
You notice high engagement time, but visitors leave without completing the form? Try revising your form fields: simplify them. This also applies to any other forms on your startup’s website.
- Ask as few questions as possible. What do you really need to get in touch with the user after they converted?
- Reduce the number of fields. Is the phone number necessary? Or is the email and the full name enough?
- Make CTA buttons clear and action-oriented. Change “Submit” to “Get my free trial”.
One important point our web developer wants to make: Mobile drives 82.9% of traffic to landing pages*. Have you checked mobile responsiveness? What about load times?
You can use tools like PageSpeedInsights from Google to immediately get an overview of how your page is performing on desktop and mobile. It will also give you hints on how to improve speed, e.g. reducing image sizes etc.
5. Do you provide enough trust signals and social proof?
Especially if users need to give away personal information, they will want social proof. Even established SaaS companies like Holded, Microsoft etc. need to show users that they’re worth their email address.
- Add customer testimonials, logos of trusted clients, case studies, and security badges.
- Use real numbers (e.g., “Trusted by 10,000+ businesses” instead of generic “Join many satisfied customers”).
- Offer low-risk CTAs (e.g., “No credit card required”).
Check out the “Book a demo” page we created for North, a cloud startup. The page is perfectly aligned with the overall web design and has various trust elements like client logos, testimonials, and KPIs.
6. Have you optimized the structure of your landing page?
One thing that all high-converting SaaS landing pages have in common is their basic structure, which is proven to be successful. Revise your content and try switching and refining sections based on the following framework:
- Hero section: main value proposition, form, CTA
- Problem, agitation, solution
- Product/service benefits and features
- CTA (yes, another one)
- Social proof: testimonials, KPIs, client logos
- FAQs: add-on
- CTA (yes, a third one)
Check out our blog post on how to create a high-converting SaaS landing page. There you get detailed information on the structure of a successful landing page.
7. Do your branding and web design create trust?
You’re confident that you’ve covered points 1-6 and you’re still not reaching your conversion goals.
If your landing page looks like the Google Slides template you created it with, it’s about time to revise its design.
If your branding comes across as inconsistent, generic, or outdated, chances are that visitors don’t convert because your startup website doesn’t feel trustworthy.
- Make sure your look and feel is professional and polished to reinforce credibility: not only on this specific landing page, but also across your whole website and digital assets.
- Maintain consistent branding by using your official color palette, typography, and logo across all touchpoints.
- Ensure a clean, modern design that aligns with your brand’s personality (e.g., tech brands often use sleek, minimalist layouts).
- Stick to a consistent imagery style (illustrations, photography, or icons should feel cohesive).
- Create impactful video material that explains your product to reduce the effort users have to make to understand your value proposition. 38.6% of marketers* claim videos boost landing conversion rate, more than any other element.
TL;DR?
Optimizing your startup’s landing page isn’t just about tweaking a few words or changing a button color—it’s about creating a seamless, trustworthy, and conversion-friendly experience. From traffic quantity and quality to social proof and brand and web design: there are several things you can do to improve your conversion rate.
Now, take a step back and audit your landing page with these insights in mind. What’s the one thing you’ll fix first?
If you need help optimizing the design of your landing page, your web design, or your branding, reach out.
*Source landing page statistics: https://backlinko.com/landing-page-stats
