
I've compiled the best SaaS Landing pages and broke down all their secrets - pedrocortes
https://www.cortes.design/post/best-saas-landing-page-examples-inspiration
======
shubhamjain
Want to know my personal favorite? It's ConferenceBadge [1]. The design is
clean and the page is very snappy. But what I absolutely love is how they
answer every question that I might have on the landing page itself. I am not
personally a fan of Close.io's that sells itself as "close more deals," but
doesn't answer how.

I think a landing page should answer what it does, and how it does it in very
unambiguous terms. Too bad so many SaaS companies try to make promises without
giving an idea on how they'll deliver them.

[1]: [https://www.conferencebadge.com/](https://www.conferencebadge.com/)

~~~
plehoux
I'm the CEO at Conferencebadge.com but I also happen to be the CEO at
[https://missiveapp.com](https://missiveapp.com), a team communication SAAS.

Both home pages were designed by the same team.

Designing Missive's home page was way harder.

Why Conference Badge:

\- I have a conference in a few days, I have absolutely no time, I don't know
how to do this but I need badges. HELP!

Why Missive:

    
    
      - I have a shared inbox, I need to easily collaborate around some emails.
      - I want to consolidate all my shared inboxes into one app.
      - I have an assistant, I want to her/him to help me with my emails.
      - I want to merge back both internal and external communication into one app.
      - I receive hundreds of orders a day, I want an app that let me share the load in between my production team.
      - I'm a solo user I just want a fast email app that works fast on Android and a Mac.
      - I want an app that lets me auto send confirmation SMS to my customer when their order is ready.
      - I want to chat with my team in a threaded interface
      - …
    

Some products are easier to market.

~~~
vegasje
They are both beautiful landing pages, and I do agree that some products are
inherently easier to market.

Was the team that designed these pages an internal team, or hired externally?

~~~
plehoux
Internal

------
chiefalchemist
Solid article, but essentially nothing new. For me it boils down to:

1) Have a product the market needs (even if they don't know they need it yet.)
Yes. Easier said than done. The point is marketing mumbo-jumbo won't make a Me
Too product unique.

2) Explain __crisply & clearly__ why I need it. Focus on benefits more than
features. In short: Why should I care?

3) Make finding a complete features list easy. If I'm interested (i.e., I
think I will benefit) I'll want to see in detail all you can do for me.

4) Making finding a product comparison (e.g., free v paid) easy.

5) Making finding an FAQ is easy, and make sure that FAQ is an FAQ and not
more marking spin.

6) Make finding pricing easy.

7) Maintain a semi-active Twitter accnt. If that looks left for dead then I'm
going to presume you're soon to fade as well. I can't commit to and invest my
time in a solutions that'll soon be MIA.

8) A free trial is NOT a proxy for any of the above. My time is valuable, so
free is not really free. If you can't clearly communicate your brand / product
to me then I'm going to presume you don't know, or are too lazy. In any case,
it's a red flag. I'm leaving.

9) Speaking of leaving: conversions are a false god. What's more important is
churn / retention. High conversions aren't good if there's also a lot of
churn. You want to build relationships, not one night stands.

10) If you think you're special and that any of the above doesn't apply to
you. Think again.

~~~
decentralised
7) Maintain a semi-active Twitter accnt. If that looks left for dead then I'm
going to presume you're soon to fade as well. I can't commit to and invest my
time in a solutions that'll soon be MIA.

I abstain from Twitter because I don't believe it's a good place to actually
communicate and I refuse to buy followers and likes to keep up with the
Joneses. Not saying you're wrong, but there's a disconnect between being
"social" in a specific platform and being able to do the job.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Again. I'm not sure how else to say this...

It's about me (i.e., the buyer).

I don't think I'm alone when I say, Twitter is a fairly healthy signal. That
is, having looked past Twitter activity (read: the lack there of) in the past,
that signal has come back to bite me in the arse.

Perhaps you're the exception? But I, the buyer, don't care. I'm not going to
risk shaming myself again. And if you abstain from Twitter - even if __you
believe__ you have good reason - I don't care. It's not about you ;)

It's 2019, I don't think it's too much to expect to see:

\- system status \- new product announcements \- product updates \- relevant
industry shares \- trade show presence \- etc.

Basically, something / anything that shows me you're alive, you['re well, and
you actually care. Again, I've ignored this (lack of) signal before and I've
paid for that. Sure you can ignore Twitter but then you all the questions I
have above better be addressed somewhere; in a place I care about.
Because...you got it now :)...it's all about me!

For the record, I'm not a big Twitter fan either. But it's not about me.

~~~
ensignavenger
There are lots of ways other than Twitter to show those signals you talk
about. Your own product blog would be a good place, for example. If I had
market research that showed a significant portion of my target audience were
active Twitter users and cared to see me active on Twitter, sure, I would meet
my audience where they are.

~~~
chiefalchemist
"There are lots of ways other than Twitter to show those signals you talk
about."

Yes there are. At no point have I suggested otherwise. What I'm saying is
this:

\- A dicey Twitter accnt is a red flag.

\- The lack of a Twitter account (very often) a __red flag__.

Of course there are exceptions. Always are. Let's not get stuck in the weeds
over the obvious :)

If you think you are an exception (read: you're 99% certain) then yes, of
course, don't worry about. But if your "logic" is, you don't care about
Twitter (and have not considered that I, the buyer, do) then good luck. My
confidence in you being able and willing to serve me has dropped, likely
significantly.

The original article was about SaaS. If there's a SaaS that (e.g.) never ever
goes down (or anything else mentioned) then sure. No Twitter. Anyone else
should probably not ignore it. Is it really that big of a deal to be safe
rather than sorry?

------
ccantana
For what it’s worth, we’ve had a lot of success with a strategy not mentioned
here: hosting a site that’s intentionally mysterious, if not slightly
provocative.

About 35% of all visitors to our site end up subscribing.

We’re not a SaaS company, so I realize this may be comparing apples to
oranges, but we had experimented with a lot of different, elaborate, shiny
landing pages that were similar to a few encouraged here.

And after falling flat on our face for months, we realized that an incredibly
simple, borderline-mysterious landing page converted users far more
effectively.

(For the curious, this is the landing page:
[https://techloaf.io](https://techloaf.io))

~~~
capkutay
That's probably good for getting a lot of sign-ups with no intent to become a
paying customer/active user of your product, but I'm curious how many of those
users would convert down funnel.

~~~
staticautomatic
Convert to what? Croutons?

~~~
dplgk
To sign ups or subscribers.

~~~
ccantana
They’re one and the same for us; our core product is a weekly newsletter.

------
jschulenklopper
IMHO, "I’ve compiled the best examples of SaaS Landing pages I’ve seen over
the years (1000’s of them) into actionable examples you can use as reference!"
is incomplete without mentioning actual statistics about conversion -- or any
other measurable goal that the company might have for the landing page.

Without that, what would be the qualification of "best"? The best the OP has
seen... but then that's comparing landing pages mainly from the perspective of
one person (that may or not be part of the target group of the SaaS).

~~~
pedrocortes
That's true but you can't get that data so I have to compile the examples that
startups can apply in the right context to get them better results.

~~~
jschulenklopper
I understand that conversion data is hard to get... but it would put a real
number to explain “best” or “better results”.

Now it’s a (nice) collection of pages the OP found eh...
nice/interesting/attractive (and likely to convert well, since these are
actually in use - insert “survivorship bias” here), but no real explanation
for why these are measurably better than others.

Appreciate the effort though. Just questioning the wording like “best” and
“better”.

~~~
pedrocortes
I understand your point, it's definitely something to consider as I'm still
trying to find ways to write the best or most actionable articles possible.

Thanks for feedback, cheers! :)

~~~
jschulenklopper
Just thought about this: could you ask the companies in your list how/why they
ended up with these landing pages? What where the alternatives and smaller
variations they tried? Tried for how long (or are they still optimizing)? Did
they A/B test between alternatives and options? What did they measure, or
tried to optimze for? What was their sample size, the outcome and their
decisions? What was “best or better” for them, specifically?

That could be a very interesting follow-up to your analysis, also by providing
data that sometimes “best” is an opinion or hunch, sometimes a choice or
preference, sometimes a measurable result. Cheers!

------
yabatopia
Without conversion data it's impossible say something meaningful about the
effectiveness of the showcased landing pages.

The author gives several reasons why he likes the examples (creating
curiosity, layout, using case studies, ...), but without data it's more about
personal preferences, current best practices and common sense. No real
secrets.

~~~
FollowSteph3
I’m amazed that your comment isn’t higher. That was my first thought as well.
They may be great design wise but if they don’t covert at all it means very
little. Many tv commercials than win awards are terrible at converting for
example.

------
oldmancoyote
I mean no disrespect, but I am horrified by your first case. If I don't know
what a product does and the basics of how it works in the first 15 seconds, I
move on. I never give personal info in order to proceed into the web site. Not
ever!

~~~
supersrdjan
Good observation. The reason that CrazyEgg can get by with such a headline is
that they count on their audience (marketers) already being familiar with the
tool. If you look at older versions of their website through the web archive
you'll see that they used to have more informative headlines, such as "Get
Immediate Insight Into Your Visitor's Behavior"[1] followed by actual
descriptions of what the product does.

When creating their landing pages, people often model pages of well-
established companies, missing the fact that their audience's awareness level
is totally different. It's a common mistake. You end up with a website as
pretty as the one from your favorite startup, but with horrific bounce and
conversion rates.

I call it the cargo cult[2] approach to marketing

\--- [1]:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20110225071634/https://www.crazye...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110225071634/https://www.crazyegg.com)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult)

~~~
cpburns2009
CrazyEgg is a real product? I thought it was a mock-up with the vaguest
description possible. I clearly do not understand this article.

------
andrewstuart
I feel like pretty much all websites and landingpages are the same - a single
page, broken into sections, plenty of space, some happy people, some key
points, a pricing table, maybe a section that scrolls in parallax. In fact
this is such a pattern that pretty much all website builders put together this
formula of site.

Indeed I noticed this pattern in 2014 and suggested the idea to a colleague
who then built the first website builder around this pattern:
[https://www.redferret.net/?p=45278](https://www.redferret.net/?p=45278)

These days, a site has to completely break this pattern to be innovative.

------
xtrapolate
Do people _actually_ give away their email address when stumbling across a
mysterious non-descriptive landing-page that says nothing about who or what a
company is? In other words - what's the point of having "we're in stealth
mode" landing page in the first place? Might as-well point your domain at an
ambiguous Tumblr blog, or a Facebook page. Thoughts?

~~~
mring33621
I do. If I'm curious about something, I sign up. I already ignore thousands of
emails a day, what's a few more?

------
kbos87
This is the dozenth post of its type. The truth is that there isn’t some
secret sauce when it comes to marketing and conversion. What makes an
effective landing page is pretty well documented at this point.

~~~
funfunfunction
Documented where?

~~~
avip
Sign up to find out.

------
dzonga
Frankly, Medium killed objective analysis. Even though that site is not
hosted, on Medium, it's junk like most Medium articles, based on confirmation
bias. I can bet +1 that you can have a plain HTML page, that explains what
your SAAS does and still make a killing, if you build a product that the
market wants/needs! Without all landing page gimmick.

~~~
tonystubblebine
Re: "Junk like most Medium articles"

Thank you for saying this! I've been pressing Medium for a long time to be
more aggressive at shoving crappy publishers off of the platform.

I think what happened is that Medium was originally great for content
marketers. There was a growth hack that let certain publications get big just
by publishing any remotely relevant article. Many of these published 30 times
a day (and still do). Additionally, the Medium algorithm seemed to reward
articles mostly for having a clickable title.

However! Medium made a recent change to manually review all articles before
allowing them to get algorithmic boosts. That did a ton for weeding out the
junk articles and removing the incentives for these content-mill publications.

You can see this in action if you go to one of the big publications and append
/latest. Most of the articles these pubs are publishing now are getting fewer
than 50 claps. In other words, nobody is reading them. I think eventually,
most of these pubs are going to end up leaving.

Then on the flip side, Medium is partnering/paying a lot more for high quality
writing. And as a result of less competition with content marketing junk,
those high quality articles are getting a lot more views. I just published
something the other day that I spent two years writing and researching, and
it's got 250k views (and I think will make $10-15k in their network over its
lifetime). I'm not going to link it, but I think it met a bunch of standards
of quality that many past Medium articles haven't: all the advice had been
tested on multiple people by the author, the article was peer reviewed, it was
copy edited.

My world is mostly personal development writing and we do have a partnership
with Medium. It's just a weird middle ground where the old growth hackers are
still around and have been offered a chance to participate at a higher level
of quality. But I'm finding that most of them either aren't able or don't want
to. From my world, the old definition of quality was an article that was a
summary of something the author read but probably never personally tested,
i.e. "10 Foods That Made Ben Franklin Crazy Productive." And what got us a
partnership with Medium was putting together a style guide that had a much
stronger opinion about what goes into a high quality personal development
article. Style guide here, but you'd really have to be a nerd to read it =)
[https://betterhumans.coach.me/draft-style-guide-for-
personal...](https://betterhumans.coach.me/draft-style-guide-for-personal-
development-articles-6f641023347f)

------
mannykannot
The first rule of effective writing (of any sort) is to imagine yourself in
the position of the reader. It's not about what you want to say or get done,
it's about what they want or might be interested in.

------
dandare
Am I the only one who thinks "Creates curiosity in visitors" is a horrible
idea?

"Make your website better. Instantly." is a totally meaningless header that
will only frustrate visitors.

~~~
intellent
Exactly my thoughts. I hate things like that. It’s an art to tell visitors in
one or two snappy lines, what your product is all about.

------
therealchiko
I have Googled for Roadmap listed, no luck yet. Anyone know the url to that
website?

~~~
pedrocortes
Weird...It's : onroadmap.com

~~~
cocoflunchy
Thanks! I was looking everywhere without luck too

------
cpburns2009
The examples in the first half of this article are supposed to be sarcastic,
right? _EmbedSocial_ is the first one to show any semblance of information,
and even then it doesn't say what it does.

------
ScoutOrgo
For a site design blog, the "What to read next" covering the bottom corner of
text isn't too great.

~~~
pedrocortes
You're right, it's supposed to show up only near the end but i'm having
problems getting it working :P

~~~
CodeWriter23
Even if it reveals at the end, it should still be dismissible. That kind of
dark pattern gets me hitting the Reader button every time. And setting it to
always go to Reader mode on such a site.

------
TomK32
Pity you don't have screenshots from their mobile versions in you own mobile
version.

