7 CRUCIAL Things Every SaaS Landing Page Should Have (with examples)

0:00If you're looking to launch a SaaS, you need a landing page to send potential customers to. But a landing page isn't just a generic website. It has a job, and that job is to convince people to pay you money to use your product. In this video, we're going to cover the seven simple but essential things you want to have for converting visitors into customers and driving your startup's growth. As your business grows, your landing pages will get more and more sophisticated, and eventually you may need to have multiple landing pages for the same product, and we'll cover that later in the video. I've got a ton of examples to show you from the

0:28couple hundreds of startups I have worked with through Tinyseed over the last 5 years. So, let's start at the beginning with the first three key ingredients you'll need for a simple pre-launch landing page. So, number one, your headline. What problem does your product solve and for whom? This is your main headline, your H1. You want to have a prominent sentence that immediately explains why your product exists, and it should be one sentence. Don't get too long and complicated with this. This is something that you should spend a bit of time on because it's so important. Your customer's going to be loading your website, reading this, and then they're

1:02going to bounce if it's not compelling. The lazy way of writing this headline is to simply say what your product is. XYZ is an app for product marketers, but this isn't compelling. You want to go into what problem that your product, product XYZ, solves. Is it saving product managers' time? Is it saving them money? Is it saving them effort? So, for example, a headline that says, "Spend 10x less time on product management using XYZ" is far more compelling than just XYZ says does so and so. So, take the time to write out a bunch of different variations. Play with humor. Make people curious. The time you

1:38spend working on your headline will magnify the number of customers that stay on your landing page and potentially use your product. Next thing you should have is a sub-headline that expands on that headline and adds supporting copy. These two elements, the headline and sub-headline, work together. You can use your sub-headline, your H2, to build upon what your H1 says. So, this is a good place to explain your product in more natural language, tell people how you're different than alternate offerings, and expand on what makes your product awesome. You can get away with just a headline, but folks are so used to seeing an H1 and an H2, you can utilize

2:11this framework that people are used to to write succinctly and intriguingly about your products to compel folks to sign up. Let's take a look at the CloudForecast website to see how an H1 and H2 can play well together. So, the H1, the headline, "Wave goodbye to unexpected AWS costs," is a very compelling uh headline. It has humor, it's interesting, it doesn't just say what CloudForecast is, it's a product for people working at AWS, it tells you what you would get as a customer of CloudForecast, and that is far more compelling than just saying what CloudForecast does. You want to tell folks that they're going to wave goodbye

2:47to all those unexpected AWS costs, and that's going to be really intriguing to a lot of people. Let's jump down to the H2. So, the H2 is two sentences. It is uh expands way more about what CloudForecast does. So, you got the headline to capture the intention, then the H2 to actually explain what's going on behind the scenes. And so, this is a really good example about how the headline and the sub-headline can play off each other and work together to create a really, really compelling story on top of your landing page. Now, the last crucial element is your call to action. Folks read your headlines, and

3:22now they're interested, and this is where you need to have a call to action to compel people to do what you want them to do, whether this is a email sign-up, if you're not launched yet, you're just creating your email list, or the sign-up button for your product, or whatever you want someone to do. So, at the top of the page, without scrolling, a potential customer should see these three things: one, two, and three. H1, headline, H2, sub-headline, and your

3:44call to action. Above the fold, no scrolling, I'm going to emphasize this, you want people to only see these things, reduce distractions around them, and really focus on these three elements. So, let's look at one more example, which is the Swipe Well landing page. So, you can see here they have that H1, that H2, and

4:03that CTA, that email collection area. So, your landing page can be as simple as this. So, with these three simple things, you can start building a launch list for your new idea. And if you're at this early stage where you're testing out ideas and trying to get a SaaS off the ground, and you're looking for more help with finding profitable ideas, writing your landing page copy, or validating our idea, you should head

4:22over to saaslaunchpad.co. We're launching a course to help founders like you. And you can also see what we put together for our own landing page. So, once you've launched and you have a product live, you'll want to update and improve your landing page so it can do a better job of converting visitors into customers. So, what do these pages need? I recommend a few more crucial elements to add your landing page to really help compel folks to sign up to be customers. First up, I recommend screenshots or mockups of your product. A preview of what to expect is very compelling to customers. And a lot of folks are going to be looking for how

4:58your product looks as they're trying to decide whether to sign up. So, if it's possible, add screenshots of the product you have. You know, obviously this is not necessary if you're in pre-launch, but it's only post-launch. You want to get people an idea of what they're signing up for. Now, these mockups can come uh in several different forms, from the simpler to the more complex. Simple is just a screenshot. A little bit more complex would be like yousummit.com, where there is an embedded Loom video with the founder walking through the product. So, this shows the product, but it also adds a sense of humanity, a sense of like

5:35personality to the product that a simple screenshot wouldn't have. Obviously, this takes more time, but it's really compelling. Another thing you can do is something like the Savvy Cow website, where you have a full-blown preview about how the app works right on the homepage. And so, folks can click around and interact with it. Obviously, this takes a lot more engineering time to set this up, but this is a really awesome way of showing how your product works behind the scenes before people even have to sign up for it. The next thing I'd recommend is some sort of social proof, something to help earn your customers' trust. So, social proof

6:11can come in many different forms, and a landing page could have some or all of these things. First version of this would be, say, customer logos. Ask the customers who sign up for your product if they are okay with you displaying their logos on your homepage. And then, future customers can go on your homepage, see these logos, and just have this social proof of these you know, especially if you're a business targeting other businesses, someone saying, "Oh, these other businesses are using this product, and they given permission to have their logos on the homepage, this product must be a good product." So, this is very simple to do,

6:42just having a few logos. Good example of this is the approximated.app, where they have logos to one side. Um and this is just logos of the customers, doesn't necessarily have to have testimonials for all of them, but it shows that other businesses are using their product. The next way to show social proof is to have social media embeds. So, if you have customers who are talking positively about your company on Twitter X, um or LinkedIn, or Instagram, you can embed those posts directly on your homepage. Now, this is compelling because it's your customers' actual words on a platform they control, and folks know that like, "All right,

7:17cool, this is this person it's like proof that this person is talking positively about the product." A good example of this is finchat.io, which has a scrolling section with testimonials. Scrolling isn't the easiest for reading, but at least this is going at a consistent rate, and you can see here that there's a mix of um both testimonials, but also these social media embeds showing that there was bookmarks and retweets and responses to it which makes it stand out more than a typical testimonial. And on that note, this is kind of going up in terms of difficulty. So, number one is having logos, number two is having social media

7:56in beds, but number three would be to have full testimonials. Now, obviously this takes a little bit more time because you have to ask your customers for one to two paragraphs about why they're using your product and including that in your homepage and that just takes some time and some you know, permission finagling from your customers. But, more so than the other two, these are even more compelling

8:16social proof for potential customers. You want to make sure your testimonial area is readable. So, I see a lot of carousels with the testimonial swiping between different paragraphs. So, for example, let's look at Userlist.com and you can see that their testimonial area is perfectly simple. We have a photo of the customer, we have a short but sweet and readable testimonial and then the name of the person who gave that testimonial. So, this is simple, easy, it doesn't move or swipe or anything like that. The amount of white space around it brings a lot of importance to

8:50this area making it super visible. Another great example, going back to UseSummit.com, we have the wall of testimonials. And so, not just like one singular testimonial, but it's just like boom boom boom, all of these folks talking about why Summit is awesome. And so, you know, you can have it both simple, you can have it as complex as this. Both of these companies are doing testimonial areas really well. Last thing I want to show is video testimonials. Obviously, this is more complex than doing text testimonials or a wall of logos, but uh it also goes up and in terms of how compelling it is to customers. So, if you have a chance to

9:24talk to your customers on video and get a video that shows them talking about your product and why they use it, that is such a compelling story, super important to have on landing page if you have that. So, for example, let's look at trendful.com where they have customer success stories embedded right on their landing page. And the last thing for

9:45social proof is a link to case studies. So, this is the most complex of them all cuz proper case study should have its own page on the site with a lot of information, a lot of data, compelling graphics and photos. So, you don't have to have the whole thing embedded on your home page, but if you have case studies, and have a link to those case studies directly from your landing page, they really support the testimonials and other social proof that you have. Let's take a look at the clearscope.io website which has a photo of a team and the testimonial right there with the link to

10:17the full case study below. Case studies can be really hard to do and do right, but once you have one, you want to make sure it's seen. And so, having that as a link on your landing page is super important. Next thing I recommend to have is a link to pricing, especially if you're using your home page as your landing page. So, folks have landed on landing page, they've consumed your H1, your H2, they've looked at your social

10:38proof, and now they're ready to sign up. But they're curious about what it's going to cost. Folks are going to look at your navigation, see if there is a link to pricing because this is what we're used to with other SaaS websites. And if it's not there, the folks who are looking for that pricing page are likely to bounce. Now, there's going to be a certain number of people who are not going to bother with that web page, and they're going to still going to sign up via our CTA on your website, but there's such a huge contingent of people that are going to look for this page that you

11:04should have a link to it in your navigation cuz people are used to it. And this goes for even for folks who want uh customers to call in for demos. So, even if you don't have your pricing public, you want people to call demos and you can give custom pricing, still have a link to pricing in your navigation for folks who are looking for it. For example, Data Co doesn't have their pricing information publicly, but they have this page up um that is linked to you from all their landing pages that has a form, has more information, and says request pricing information. The last thing I recommend on your landing

11:34page is to have your benefits and your features listed out below the fold. So, this is where you can go into what makes your product awesome. All the things you wanted to say in your headline and sub-headline, but you wanted to keep those short and succinct. So, let's take a look at the userlist.com website and we can see that at the top of the page, but still below the fold, they go into those features in depth. So, they have a screenshot and a longer description for each of these um awesome uses for their product. You don't want to have all this jammed into your headline and

12:05sub-headline, but below that, this is where you can go into depth in different ways about what makes your product awesome. There are a few more things that I think you should keep in mind when you're building your landing page, but before I get into those, I want to show you a third type of landing page. And this is for founders who really know their ideal customer profile. If your users have specific use cases for your product, it might make sense to create individual landing pages for each of those use cases. For example, let's take a look at SavvyCal. SavvyCal has a homepage, a general homepage talking

12:40about what makes SavvyCal awesome, but it also has specific landing pages for folks who are looking for specific things. For example, this page on Google Calendar and how to set up um scheduling through Google Calendar. The elements of these individual landing pages are similar to the post-launch landing page that homepage that you're using, but the content and copywriting are going to be

13:03specifically tweaked for this use case. As you're building out your landing page, here's a few more things I want you to look out for. Number one is a white space. This is the designer in me sneaking out. We went through all these items in the landing page that should be there and the best way to make sure that people can see those things that you've put in is to make sure you have white space around those elements so those elements have room to breathe. If everything's all crammed up against each other, you're not going to be able to see where the headline is, how the headline is, where those feature

13:32elements are. It's going to be look crowded and crazy, and people are going to bounce off. So, white space will add scanability, and make sure that people can see that social proof area, see your CTA area, see those testimonials. If your page is getting really long, make sure you add more CTAs within the page. Perhaps you have another CTA section in the middle that says, "Hey, like what

13:56you see? And here's a place to sign up." And then people scroll to the bottom, and there's another one being like, "Now you've consumed the whole website, one last time to sign up for this product." Um that's that bottom one is especially important, uh because people are, you know, there's going to be some people who are too lazy to scroll all the way back up to the top of your page to sign up for your product. Look for areas you can add more calls to action, and capture people, you know, at the moment that they they've read something really awesome that's relevant to them, and they're ready to sign up. Next thing is,

14:26look for places where you can limit distractions. You don't want to have a link to someone else's website in the middle of your website, and someone clicks on it, and then they get distracted on another website, and then they totally forget that they're trying to sign up for your product. So, be careful with outbound links. Those outbound links might distract a loser, and you might lose them once they leave your landing page. Look for links you can remove. Look for items that are distracting. Really simplify your website, and it's going to make things easier to read, to consume, and more compelling for people to sign up. This

14:57doubly goes for forms. If you want people to fill out a form to, you know, say book a meeting with you, don't have too many fields in that form. Every additional field is a potential distraction, or potential hurdle to signing up, and people might bounce out. So, hopefully you only need like an email address, maybe a first name field

15:16if you're doing a email sign up form. Next up, make sure your website is quick loading. If you have a beautiful landing page with images and a video and it just takes so long to load, people are just going to move on to the next big thing. So, make sure that you've optimized those photos, those videos, and make sure that that that landing page is super quick loading. Take a look at your landing page and make sure it looks good in mobile cuz, you know, often times people are designing and creating your landing page on a giant desktop computer and forget that it needs to look good on

15:49a phone. So, look at where your your fold is and those three crucial elements, the H1, the H2, and your CTA, also need to be at the top of the page on a mobile view of your website as well. And for all of this, all of this work you put into, you want to see how well it's doing. So, make sure you're tracking the behavior. Have some sort of tracking, whether that's like, you know, Google Analytics or something else to see how many people are landing on your webpage, how many people are bouncing off your webpage, how many people are clicking on those CTAs. And that way you have the

16:20data to improve things in the future. In conclusion, remember that your landing page will never be perfect, never, cuz there's always room for another testimonial, another screenshot, or another feature section, or something else to add. This is a place where you want to get it out with the basics, get it up and launched with the bare

16:38minimum, and then iterate over time. Your landing page is a living document that should be regularly updated. Your goal is to launch even if it doesn't feel perfect so you can start gathering data and make more efficient updates and changes. Getting your landing page up so you can start talking to customers is just one step in the process of launching a SaaS. In fact, there are

16:56seven other steps that you need to take. Check out this next video for the full list. And make sure you like and subscribe for more videos like this. Thanks for watching.