Learn B2B SaaS Marketing

B2B SaaS Landing Page Checklist

by 

Lauren O'Bryan

Last updated: September 3rd, 2024

As a B2B SaaS marketing manager, you understand the critical role landing pages play in your conversion funnel. To optimize your landing page so it converts and drives results, we’ve created a B2B SaaS landing page checklist that addresses the unique challenges of the SaaS industry.

But before we get to the checklist, let’s cover some essentials first.

Why Use a Landing Page and Not a Web Page?

Landing pages vs web pages – what’s the difference?

For one, landing pages offer better control over the user journey through the sales funnel. Unlike general web pages, landing pages are designed with a single, focused objective, whether it’s lead generation, product sign-ups, or free trial conversions, which significantly impacts conversion rates.

In addition, the average web page has a conversion rate of just over 1%. An analysis done by Unbounce found that PPC campaigns with dedicated landing pages converted 65% better than those directing leads to a homepage.

Moreover, landing pages allow for more accurate tracking and A/B testing, providing valuable insights into user behavior and preferences specific to your SaaS offering.

Why Optimize Your Landing Pages?

Optimizing your landing pages is a great way to refresh a previously high-performing page or bring a poor-performing landing page up to standard. Regular optimization ensures your pages remain effective and relevant.

Beyond that, optimization allows you to:

• Adapt to changing market conditions
• Incorporate new product features
• Align with evolving customer needs
• Leverage new conversion rate optimization techniques

The data speaks for itself – a quality long-form landing page can generate up to 220% more leads. So, landing pages are worth the effort, but to get these results, they must be optimized for high conversion rates.

Before Your Start

Before you start optimizing your landing page, analyze its performance using tools like Google Analytics or specialized SaaS analytics tools like Heap. Assess key metrics like CTR, conversion rates, bounce rates, and time on page. This data will help you identify your lowest-performing pages and guide your optimization efforts.

Once you’ve done that, you may need to review your buyer personas to be sure your audience preferences haven’t changed. If they have, conduct surveys or interviews with existing customers to gain fresh insights into their pain points and decision-making processes. Understanding your audience and their pain points is crucial to crafting copy that resonates with your potential customers.

Another easy way to understand what resonates with your target audience is to look at what your competitors are doing. Analyze their most successful pages, focusing on design elements, messaging, and unique value propositions. Check out our top 10 examples of the best SaaS landing pages for another great source of inspiration.

From this point, you can begin working through the SaaS landing page checklist.

SaaS Landing Page Checklist

Our comprehensive checklist covers all crucial aspects of your landing page, from copy and design to often-overlooked optimizations that can also impact conversion rates.

1. The Content

Landing page content should be brief and to the point, highlighting the value proposition with persuasive copywriting. To improve readability, try breaking up the content into scannable subheadings and use bullet points where possible. Also, incorporate industry-specific keywords naturally to boost SEO without compromising user experience.

Because the headline is a core element of a high-converting landing page, it needs to be crafted carefully. Create headlines that directly address your audience’s pain points using data-driven insights and emotional triggers. However, be careful not to create clickbait-style headlines to avoid your page getting penalized by search engines.

Adding social proof to your landing pages is a great way to reassure potential customers of the quality of your product. Seeing a happy testimonial from a client with a similar business will help them visualize how the product could work for them. Essentially, people care what other people think – landing pages that include testimonials display a 34% increase in conversions.

2. The Form

The landing page form is where you collect crucial information like contact details or customer feedback. However, poor form design can frustrate users and potentially cause them to leave the page before completing the form.

The general rule is to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to complete the form. That means including pre-filled sections where possible and reducing the total number of fields. Only ask for the information you need to serve the purpose of the landing page. For example, if the page asks people to sign up for a mailing list, you only need a name and email address.

For forms with five or more fields, use a multi-step form that doesn’t appear time-consuming to complete. Similarly to a call-to-action, the form can be designed with visual cues like color contrast and white spaces.

3. The Design

When designing your landing pages, avoid elaborate and overwhelming designs with distracting animations or too many images. Any images used need to be relevant to the message and not included for the sake of including imagery. Keep it clean and simple so that you don’t pull the visitor’s attention away from the real purpose of the page.

Key design elements of an effective landing page include:

• Consistent colors and font styles
• High-quality images
• Mobile-responsiveness
• Effective use of white space to keep the page clutter-free

It’s worth noting that the overall design of the landing page should be consistent with your brand and website, which can be achieved by using the same style, color palette, font, etc.

4. The Call-to-Action

Include a single call to action that draws attention and encourages action. Make sure it’s designed to look like a clickable button and stands apart from the rest of the page’s content. It’s important to A/B test different variations of design and copy so that you end up using the best version.

Additional Optimization Tips

To further improve the user experience and SEO, there are some technical aspects to consider.

Slow loading pages will send a visitor off the page faster than you know it – if the time for a page to load moves from 1 second to 10 seconds, the probability a visitor will bounce increases to 123%. Analyze your page loading speeds and optimize your landing page with speed in mind, aiming for load times under 3 seconds to minimize bounce rates. Implement lazy loading for images and use CDNs to improve performance globally.

Also, before launching your landing page, test your pages for performance and double-check for errors. Create several variations and split-test them on your audience to see which appeals more and drives higher conversions. You can then run the extended campaign using the better-performing landing page.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Landing page performance can fluctuate over time due to market changes, competitor actions, or shifting user preferences. You can freshen up your landing pages by frequently monitoring and evaluating their performance.

Look at metrics like bounce rate, CTR, and heatmaps that pinpoint areas of the page that get the most engagement. This data will help you make any necessary tweaks to bring your landing page up to speed.

Common Landing Page Mistakes

Avoid these common mistakes when optimizing your landing page:

• Having more than one call-to-action: In some cases, marketers feel they can get more bang for their buck by including more than one call-to-action on a single landing page. However, this is confusing and the page ends up lacking a focused purpose.
• Slow loading time: A poorly optimized landing page will likely take a long time to load. A slow page loading time will frustrate visitors, leading to a high bounce rate and lower conversion rates.
• Not mobile optimized: A large majority of internet users browse from a mobile device, and only 50% of landing pages are mobile optimized. Without a mobile-responsive design, you’ll lose a big chunk of potential customers.
• Unclear copy or too much content: Landing pages work better when they are focused on a specific purpose. Write too much or produce confusing copy that doesn’t resonate with visitors, and you will lose conversion opportunities.
• Targeting multiple buyer personas with one landing page: Each landing page should target a specific buyer persona and a specific pain point. Don’t try to squeeze too much into one page or it’ll lose focus.
• Requesting too much information on the sign up form: People don’t like to spend too long filling out forms and questionnaires. Only request the information you need to fulfill that purpose, and where possible, use pre-filled sections.

Other Considerations to Get More Out of Your Landing Pages

Creating a landing page along these best practice guidelines is not where it ends. Interlinking your landing pages to your sales funnel is the key to getting the most out of your landing pages.

Rather than thinking of the funnel as top, middle, and bottom, it’s better to look at the funnel from the customer’s perspective. Your customers will be either problem unaware, problem aware, or solution aware. For problem-unaware and problem-aware users, the aim is to move them along the funnel to become solution-aware. This is the same as moving from the top of the funnel to the middle or bottom.

Problem-unaware users need content that resonates and helps them realize they have a problem. With problem-aware users, your landing page should reinforce the understanding of their problem. Solution-aware users are closer to making a purchase and will be more receptive to a trial or demo offer.

However, in all cases, the number one thing marketers forget to put effort into are the follow up emails. We recommend a 2-step email automation that first delivers the lead magnet and then engages the user. In cases where there isn’t a lead magnet to deliver a sign up, thank you email is sufficient.

Wrapping Up

Now that you have all the tools and knowledge from this B2B SaaS landing page checklist, you can optimize your landing page for conversion success. And with improved conversion rates you can look forward to improved business growth. On that note, get a headstart and take our SaaS scalability score self-assessment to find out how well your company currently attracts, engages, and converts leads. It will give you insight into how your business compares to the competition and will drive your growth strategy forward.