The conversion is the culmination of the lengthy sales process: the moment when potential is turned into tangible revenue. That makes it crucial. Bringing someone to the cusp of conversion before losing them is akin to running a marathon but leaving the track before you cross the finish line. It wastes all the effort and resources needed to reach that point. If you want your business to reach its full potential, you need to focus on converting those chances.
This is particularly true in the SaaS world for two major reasons. Firstly, there are so many alternatives out there. Every software service has numerous competitors doing similar things, and it makes it all but impossible to dominate proceedings without remarkable optimization. Secondly, online software transactions are incredibly easy to back away from: stock (such as it is) is unlimited, after all, meaning there’s reduced incentive to act quickly.
But how do you go about earning more conversions? What can you do to take advantage of the changes that come your way? That’s what we’re going to focus on in this piece. More specifically, we’ll cover four tactics that SaaS businesses can effectively deploy to earn more customers. Let’s get started.
Deploy optimized pricing tiers
You might think that cost shouldn’t prove too significant when it comes to the conversion stage. After all, it immediately follows the product selection stage, and a visitor can’t proceed through the checkout if they haven’t added something to their cart (suggesting acceptance of whatever price you listed). But someone heading to the checkout can still be undecided, and thinking at length about pricing can lead to a last-minute decision to leave.
Subscriptions can be tough to price, of course: you need to think about your margins and the viability of varying tiers (these can offer access to additional features, or simply provide distinct rates based on the commitments involved). Tweaking your pricing tiers can have a major result on your fortunes. Also, remember to keep up with what your rivals are doing. When competitors lower their rates, you can lower yours to combat that or focus on quality to maintain contrast.
Using tools can also help here. Leaning on subscription management software (Chargebee being a strong example) can make it significantly easier to adjust pricing on the fly, something that can help hugely given how iterative the process must be. Keep a close eye on your conversion stats as you make changes, and you’ll be able to achieve improvements.
Support more payment services
How you charge for your core business offering is also extremely important, because asking someone to use a payment gateway they don’t typically consider slows things down and gives them a chance to strongly reconsider. Do they really want to continue in spite of the inconvenience? If you’re causing them frustration before they’ve subscribed, aren’t you likely to cause them further frustration down the line? It sets a bad precedent.
So unless you have a truly compelling reason to do otherwise, you need to support payment methods like PayPal and Google Pay. It’s particularly crucial given how common it is for people to purchase things through their phones. Completing the subscription should be a one-click event. This also applies to user accounts: if you need someone to create a user account before they buy, it’ll cause unnecessary delay. Accepting social logins will speed things up (Auth0 can make them easy to implement).
Feature limited-time deals
Since you can’t lean on supply being naturally limited, you need to introduce scarcity somehow, and the smart option is to have ephemeral deals: you could offer discounts, for instance, or bonus inclusions (creating cost-effective software bundles, perhaps). Anything you can do to add a ticking clock will work to your benefit. “Complete your purchase by the end of the day and receive 10% off” is a simple message, of course, but no less powerful for it.
It always works well to find external reasons to justify deals, too — however thin those reasons are. For instance, seasonal occasions tend to drive traffic. If you’re selling around Christmas, creating a festive deal with suitable graphics can garner great results. But you can also contrive simpler reasons. Run a sale to mark the end of the month, or simply to celebrate the arrival of Friday.
Keep in mind the average visitor won’t know how many deals you run. They’ll only stop by for long enough to decide whether they want to sign up. Some companies always have deals running, cycling endlessly through countdowns to establish an omnipresent sense of urgency. You don’t need to go that far (it can seem tasteless, too), but don’t be afraid to embrace gimmicks if they further your goals. Your primary objective is to make money.
Directly reference competitors
It’s common for SaaS businesses to avoid talking about other businesses that do similar things. Why would they mention their competition? Surely that only serves to give them free publicity and encourages visitors to look elsewhere — or at least that’s the typical conclusion. In reality, prospective SaaS users are keenly aware of how many options they have. It isn’t exactly hard to find roundups of software services filling particular niches.
Due to this, it doesn’t make much sense to act as though your value proposition exists in a vacuum. Instead, you can directly bring up your competitors, taking the time to point out everything that you do better. Maybe your service costs less, or has additional features, or supports more platforms. Towards the end of your conversion funnel, going into detail about your competitive edge (get as specific as you can: it’ll lend an essential air of legitimacy) will make it less likely that prospects will look elsewhere, not more.