SaaS Conversion Teardown - Klaus

Making yourself the "cat person" of SaaS is a bold move. In the ever-raging dogs vs cats debate, the cat people get the shaft.

Dog people get the association of loving "man's best friend" while the cat people get the association of the "cat lady." You know, the crazy recluse with 12 cats and a house soaked in pee.

Well, I came across a SaaS website that went full cat in their branding. And you know what? I didn't hate it. In fact, I was really impressed. They just did so many things well I decided I have to share it with you.

So I'm going to break down what makes it awesome from a conversion and design standpoint.

The website is klausapp.com.

Clarity

Their most important principle for creating copy and design that converts is clarity. I see way too many websites, billboards, etc. that try to be cute at the expense of being clear.

Every website needs clearly answer 3 questions:

  • What is it?
  • Who is it for?
  • Why you?

The headline very clearly answers what it is: a "conversation review and quality assurance platform." And it very clearly answers who it's for: "for support teams."

The only thing that's lacking in the headline is the benefits. Now, this isn't a criticism. Headlines are tricky. The more clear you are about what something is, the less you are able to convey benefits. And the more clear you are about the benefits, the vaguer you sound about what the thing actually is or how it accomplishes those benefits.

It can be hard to get all that in a headline and that's fine because that is what sub-headlines are for.

The sub-headline is clear about the end benefits: "measurably improve customer service quality" and "make internal feedback easy and systematic."

Quality assurance (QA) managers are in charge of improving the customer experience via their support team. This often means spending hours and hours combing through phone recordings and chat transcripts.

QA managers then rate the interactions they find and give compliments, constructive feedback, and training. If it sounds like a lot of repetitive work you're right.

This sub-headline highlights the end benefit and addresses the pain points that the customer is feeling. We all like things that are easy and automatic and if you can't promise automatic then promises like "systematic" or "step-by-step" are close seconds.

Call to Action

The calls to action are clear and pretty standard. "Get started free" is a pretty common call to action for SaaS companies and that makes it a pretty good one because most people probably know exactly what it means: You get to create an account to try it our for free.

The second call to action "Book a demo" is also super standard. When it doubt, stick with what people know and understand. Remember, clarity above all else.

Advice around conversion rate optimization often gets too caught up with button text and button colors. Is red better? What about orange? This advice is worthless because it misses the overarching principle.

For a call to action to be good it needs to:

  • Convey what happens when you click it.
  • Stand out.

The color doesn't matter, as long as it stands out in contrast from the rest of the colors and elements on the page.

Your calls to action should withstand the 10 foot rule. That is to say you should be able to clearly see them at a glance if you are standing 10 feet away from your screen.

Ideally, you should pick a single color that stands out and use it exclusively for your calls to action. Notice that their salmon pink color is used very sparingly and exclusively for important calls to action. They don't use it for headlines, they don't even use it as their link color.

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Principles of Influence

Persuasive web design is clear, conveys value, removes friction, and wraps all of that up around the 7 principles of influence.

The most impactful business book I've ever read might be Influence by Robert Cialdini. In it he talks about the 7 principles of influence:

  • Social Proof.
  • Authority.
  • Reciprocity.
  • Commitment and Consistency.
  • Liking.
  • Scarcity.
  • Unity.

We're not going to talk about all 7 but I'd like to dig into the ones that Klaus does a really good job with.

Social Proof

Social proof is incredibly important. I love how Klaus brings social proof above the fold through their high star ratings and client logos. Then just below the fold, they have a fantastic testimonial and the logos of the companies they integrate with.

One of the challenges of designing a great landing page is providing depth without bogging the page down with too much clutter.

It's great to provide lots of testimonials but doing so pushes the rest of your content further down the page. This landing page addresses that by allowing the visitor to click or swipe to view more testimonials like a carousel.

Each review is also made easier to digest using yellow highlights to draw a skimmer's eyes to the most important pieces of information. And let's get real. Every visitor is a skimmer. If you're not designing your content with that in mind, your visitors are missing important information.

The use of a profile photo is also essential to making a testimonial more believable and relatable.

Many pages suffer from a problem called a false bottom. You need to use visual cues to guide visitors down the page.

This page uses their reviews section in a really clever way to break the false bottom.

Authority

In addition to showing the logos of their star clients, Klaus also displays the logos of the companies they integrate with right after the testimonial section. This is a great way to create authority...

This is also a great tactic to use if you don't have a bunch of client logos that people recognize yet. You can give yourself credibility and authority by association through your integrations.

So if you have integrations display those proudly. Not only is this useful information but the legitimacy and trust in the brands and logos of the platforms you integrate with rubs off on yours. It allows your brand to occupy the same mind space that has taken years and millions of dollars for these big brands to create.

If you have integrations display those proudly. Not only is this useful information but the legitimacy and trust in the brands and logos of the platforms you integrate with rubs off on yours. It allows your brand to occupy the same mindspace that has taken years and millions of dollars to create.

What can you do if you don't have any integrations? Well, you can still benefit from borrowed authority by citing credible sources about the problem you solve or the need for a solution like yours.

Check recognizable publications like HBR, Inc, Forbes to see if they have written about your space and especially look for any data with hard numbers you can cite.

A good example of this is Socedo, a Twitter lead gen tool that was later acquired and disbanded. Before they had any recognizable customers they used testimonials and quotes from authoritative publications. This helped them to eventually land big names like Microsoft and Salesforce.

Socedo used "borrowed" authority before landing recognizable logos

Original Research and Data

Klaus also shares original research and data. The biggest benefit of doing this is that it provides customers who aren't ready to buy an avenue to engage with you and become a lead.

But providing guides, especially if they are backed by original data, also positions you as an authority.

Reciprocity

Civilization was built upon reciprocity. It's a fundamental part of what makes us human and the bedrock of collaboration and society.

Find ways to provide value that is so far above what you ask in return that it blows your prospects and customers away.

Free software or content isn't ever free. Every transaction has a cost. When someone reads your blog article they are giving you their time.

When someone reads a gated piece of content it's because they paid for it by giving you their email and possibly other personal information AND their time.

You need to exceed your customer or potential customers' expectations far in excess of what they expect.

Doing so does a few things. It positions you as an authority. It creates trust. It begins a relationship and allows your brand to set up camp in their mind space.

But perhaps the most important thing it does is create reciprocity. Customers will feel indebted to you and when you do give them a call to action and ask them to open their wallets and spend their time with you, they will.

Use of Space

The problem with adding more and more content is that it makes the existing content harder and harder to find. Every additional word, every additional element, dilutes what is already there.

That is why good writers ruthlessly cut every word that doesn't bring the average value and clarity of the whole up.

But there is another way to bring clarity and focus to your copy...

Good websites use clever design to reduce the cognitive load that comes with comprehensive content by making it easy to dive deeper into anything.

Having lots of testimonials is a good thing. Scrolling past 2 pages of testimonials to find the content you're looking for isn't.

Klaus uses space cleverly by using a carousel of testimonials. This allows an unlimited number of testimonials to be added in a small section. The only thing I would improve is to make it more obvious that it is a carousel. Perhaps add some arrows to either side that are visible all the time, not just when you hover your mouse over them.

They also do a great job with giving a lot of information about their features using tabs. The combination of the use of tabs and animation compresses what might have taken 10 pages into less than one page.

Unity

Case studies are so important. Case studies also have elements of social proof and authority but I'm going to put it in unity.

Case studies show how other people, just like you, have benefited from a product or service.

Don't underestimate their value. When I've used multi-touch attribution software, case studies routinely end up among their highest-value content.

The Best Way to Increase Your Conversion Rate

You have 3 types of visitors:

  • 0-18% are ready to buy.
  • 11-29% are interested but not ready to buy.
  • 79-89% are not interested but searching for an answer.

If you want to maximize conversion, you must target each segment.

Most websites do a good job with the "ready to buy" segment. The people in this segment are evaluating vendors. They care about getting a demo and trying out your product. Telling them about your features and benefits is what converts this segment.

But the vast majority of visitors are NOT ready to buy. They have different questions and want different answers.

While the "ready to buy" segment is evaluating vendors, the "interested but not ready to buy" segment is evaluating buying criteria. They're not quite sure what they need or want yet.

And the "not interested but searching for an answer" segment knows they probably have a problem but are only in the beginning stages of learning about it and how to improve it.

Klaus does a great job at targeting the people who aren't ready to buy yet.

First, they have their "2021 Support Quality Benchmark Report." This is a GREAT piece of collateral.

Original data frames you as the authority

It uses original data, which has a very high perceived value. It also allows companies to benchmark themselves against industry averages to see where they stand. The genius of this, is that it helps support teams realize they have a serious problem. And when you help your customer realize they have a serious problem, you can come to the rescue as the natural solution.

This is marketing judo. You don't want to chase people around trying to convince them to look at your solution. You want to educate them on why they have a problem. Your customers will thank you for the free education and then they'll come to you because you can now solve the problem they are finally realizing they have.

What a great headline too on their benchmark landing page: "Download now to see how you compare."

Something I would experiment with is to create an interactive quiz. Take this quiz to see how you compare. And then right at the end ask for the email address they'd like you to send the results to.

Conclusion

When talking about conversion rate optimization, it is often most helpful to see HOW other companies are implementing these principles in action.

Truly great artists steal from the best and make it their own.

Next time you're visiting a website, think about how they are implementing the principles of conversion and psychology so you can take what works and make it your own.

And let me know if you'd like me to break down a specific website, be it yours or one that you find. You can message me on Twitter or my contact page.

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