Articles Web

January 24, 2025

10 min read

How to increase SaaS website conversion rates using customer insights

Steven Peters

Conversion Copywriter

Why customer insights matters for conversion rate optimization (CRO)

Improving SaaS website conversion rates can feel like solving a 100,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. There are countless variables to test — headlines, CTAs, visuals, layouts, navigation (the list goes on and on) — and it’s difficult to know exactly which changes to prioritize.

While A/B testing button colors or layouts can be valuable, only real customer insights offer the depth needed to address the "why" behind user behavior. You just need to know what to test — and how to apply the results. This article will teach you how to use customer insights to:

Prioritize conversion opportunities
Craft high-impact messaging
Improve website navigation
Boost the credibility of core pages
Measure impact on CRO initiatives

1. How to prioritize conversion opportunities

Use hard data and soft data

Effective conversion rate optimization (CRO) requires hard data (quantitative metrics) and soft data (qualitative insights). Hard data, like traffic volume, clicks, and heatmaps, highlight areas of concern, while soft data, like Voice of the Customer (VoC) research, helps uncover the reasons behind user behavior.

Starting with analytics is important to focus your optimization efforts. It will help you diagnose the most likely problems and then make informed decisions to fix them. Think of it like a doctor diagnosing symptoms before prescribing treatments. And customer insights? They’re the guide that helps you know which treatment is best.

Maybe your “diagnosis” will uncover an overlooked call-to-action, a confusing navigation menu, or a dead zone that nobody’s clicking. From there, the "treatment" could involve redesigning layouts, improving messaging, or simplifying the user journey. You can use these insights to form a hypothesis about the most likely cause behind the issue — and how to solve it.

Gather VoC insights to validate your hypothesis

With a problem identified and a hypothesis in mind, it’s time to collect customer insights through surveys, interviews, testing, and CS team feedback. There are a lot of potential ways to do this, but some effective upfront data collection methods include:

ICP surveys: Gather specific insights about customer needs, behaviors, and preferences. Depending on how deep your pockets are, you can even pay to get feedback from lookalike audiences in specialized niches (e.g., CEOs in Fintech).
Messaging tests: Evaluate how well your messaging resonates with your target audience, ensuring that value propositions and key messages are clear, relevant, and compelling.
Tree testing: Assess the findability of topics in your website's structure by having users navigate a simplified version of the site's hierarchy (without visual design elements) to identify navigation issues.
Landing page testing: Evaluate different versions of a landing page to determine which design or content layout achieves higher conversion rates or better resonates with the target audience.
Sales and customer success team interviews: Speak directly to the internal team members who interact with your customers day in and day out. Sales and CS teams usually have a 30,000-foot view of customer problems — they can tell you which questions they get asked all the time and how they solve those problems.

Note that this is just a small sample of possible tests that you could conduct. For a more complete list, check out our free Voice of the Customer (VoC) ebook. The testing method you choose will vary depending on the problem you’re trying to solve and your hypothesis.

E.g., if nobody’s clicking your homepage’s “Free Demo” button despite strong traffic, you could reasonably hypothesize that your audience doesn’t understand the value of your product. A messaging test will help you learn if your homepage has misaligned messaging.

Organize opportunities by impact and effort

Depending on your VoC collection method, you may wind up with a long list of potential improvements. Maybe too many. How do you prioritize conversion rate optimization efforts when you have a list of hundreds of improvements to make?

To prioritize CRO efforts across multiple pages — Concentrate on high-impact pages throughout the SaaS user journey, such as landing pages, pricing pages, and demo request forms. It’s easier to measure the success of changes made to high-impact pages vs. low-impact pages, like an updated careers page.

To prioritize CRO efforts within a single page — Weight opportunities according to:

Potential impact: Will addressing this concern significantly boost conversions?
Effort required: How much time, labor, or budget does the solution require?
User alignment: Does resolving this issue align with user feedback?

Prioritize high-impact, low-effort tasks for quick wins. This structured approach ensures that you focus on changes that offer the most substantial return on investment.

2. How to craft high-impact messaging

Address objections and tailor messaging

Messaging is at the heart of SaaS website conversion rates. Strong headlines, CTAs, and product descriptions that align with what customers say and how they think will always outperform copy that’s buzzword and jargon-heavy.

If your initial VoC tests included message testing, ICP surveys, or landing page testing, you may already have a good idea of where your messaging misses the mark. Use these insights to identify doubts about pricing, functionality, or onboarding, and then address these objections head-on.

Extract customer language

Real customer feedback is your best source for creating compelling copy. Use VoC data collection methods like messaging tests with lookalike audiences, review mining, and customer interviews. Analyze the results for trends — such as the most-talked-about features, pain points, and the way most people use your software.

Using customer data will cut through internal back-and-forth and give you a reason to narrow your focus. If you’ve ever found yourself humming and hawing over messaging, or axing headlines because a stakeholder “doesn’t like it," this is the solution.

Test and validate your messaging

Once you’ve drafted new messaging, you can use other VoC collection methods to test and validate the impact. Preference tests, which compare specific page elements, and five second tests, which gauge if your audience instantly understands your offer, are both invaluable when you’re ready to optimize.

3. How to improve website navigation

Simplify decision-making

When it comes to improving SaaS website conversion rates, you can’t underestimate the importance of managing cognitive load. Customers should intuitively find what they’re looking for without unnecessary friction.

VoC feedback ensures your site structure aligns with user needs. Too many options can overwhelm them, leading to higher bounce rates and lower conversions.

To simplify decision-making:

Prioritize the most important actions: Identify key actions users need to take (e.g., sign up for a demo or explore pricing) and make those options prominent.
Group-related content: Use intuitive categories that align with user expectations, like grouping features by use case or industry.
Streamline menus: Avoid overcrowded navigation by limiting top-level options and relocating less critical pages to footers or submenus.

Card sorting is a powerful tool to organize your content effectively. By asking users to group and label content in ways that make sense to them, you gain invaluable insights into how they think and what navigation structures will work best.

Recognition over recall

Effective navigation should rely on recognition, not recall. This principle means users should see clear visual cues that guide their journey without having to remember where they came from or guess what’s next.

Breadcrumbs are an excellent example of recognition-based navigation. They provide users with a clear path of where they are on your site and how to backtrack without frustration. For instance, a breadcrumb trail might look like this:

This simple addition reduces cognitive load and keeps users oriented.

To ensure users can easily find and click on desired elements, consider conducting first click testing. This method assesses whether users intuitively know where to click to achieve their goals. If users struggle to find the right starting point, it’s a sign your navigation needs refinement.

Progressive disclosure

Progressive disclosure is a design principle that reveals information incrementally. By presenting only the most critical details upfront and allowing users to access additional content as needed, you prevent information overload while improving user experience.

Tabbed menus are a good example of progressive disclosure. Instead of listing all features on a single page, you can use tabs to separate features by category. Similarly, collapsing secondary content under headers allows users to explore at their own pace without feeling overwhelmed.

Tree testing can validate whether your progressive disclosure strategies are effective. This test evaluates how easily users navigate a simplified site structure to locate specific information. If users consistently struggle to find what they need, you’ll know where to adjust.

By applying these principles and tools, you can create a navigation experience that aligns with user expectations, reduces friction, and ultimately drives more conversions.

4. How to boost the credibility of core pages

Need for trust signals

When visitors land on your SaaS website, they’re not just evaluating your features or pricing — they’re also asking, “Why should I trust you over your competitors?” If you don’t answer that question convincingly, even the best offer might fall flat. This is where trust signals come in.

Customer insights from landing page testing or ICP surveys can help you uncover red flags that indicate low trust like:

Feedback showing doubts about your product’s reliability or customer support.
Questions about hidden fees or concerns over pricing transparency.
Comparisons to competitors where your unique value isn’t obvious.

For example, if survey responses repeatedly ask why your solution costs more, that’s a cue that they don't understand the value of your product vs. competitors.

Strategic inclusion

Proof that fits the context will have a much bigger impact on SaaS website conversion rates vs. generic “fluffy” proof plastered all over your website. Take your pricing page, for instance. This is a prime spot to showcase a results-driven testimonial.

For example, if we compare these two testimonials...

“Company X truly feels like part of our team.”

vs.

"Switching to Company X saved us $50,000 a year by automating manual data entry."

...one addresses specific objections and demonstrates value much more concretely than the other, even though both are "positive."

You can see this strategic inclusion at play on many leading SaaS websites, such as monday.com’s dashboard feature page, which includes a few very recognizable logos and testimonial specifically about the dashboard feature.

Optimize placement

Social proof comes in all shapes and sizes — testimonials, case studies, industry awards, media mentions, and more — but where and how you display them makes all the difference.

Here are a few examples of how to place trust signals strategically:

Homepages: Use big-picture proof points, like awards or client logos, to establish credibility fast.
Product pages: Showcase testimonials or data points that reinforce specific features or benefits.
Pricing pages: Highlight ROI-driven proof, such as financial impact testimonials or relevant case studies.

The key is balance. Weave a few relevant and powerful trust signals into each page to give visitors confidence that your solution is the best solution.

5. How to measure the impact on CRO initiatives

Quantifying the impact of VoC

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”
— H. James Harrington

Ongoing testing, iteration, and improvement are important parts of CRO — and measuring the impact of your customer-centric changes is no different. To measure the effectiveness:

Set clear baselines: Before making any changes, document your current metrics to establish a performance benchmark.
Be methodical: While it’s tempting to make many changes at once, optimizing specific pages (or sections of pages) and then measuring results before applying the next change will enable attribute improvements and gauge what’s working.
Use analytics tools: If you pull baseline user behavior metrics from Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you can monitor how VoC-inspired modifications influence user behavior.
Conduct A/B testing: Test different versions of a page or element to determine which performs better, providing quantitative data on the impact of your changes.
Monitor over time: Keep an eye on your metrics over a set period to account for variables like seasonality or marketing campaigns.

By following these steps, you can effectively measure and understand the impact of VoC research on your SaaS website conversion rates.

How to calculate conversion rates

At Tiller, our conversion rate formula is:

(Conversions / Total Engaged Sessions) x 100 = Conversion Rate*

Where:

Conversions = Leads taking a desired action (e.g., “Book Demo” or “Contact Us”).
Total Engaged Sessions = Unique visitors who spend more than 10 seconds on a page.

*Note that some CRO specialists choose to divide conversions by total leads or visitors instead of engaged sessions to calculate SaaS website conversion rates. At Tiller, we analyze engaged sessions to avoid muddying the data with views that last <10 seconds and repeat viewings.

How to calculate the impact of VoC optimization on conversion rates

To track the impact of specific VoC initiatives, we can use the same formula post-optimization:

(VoC-Influenced Conversions / Total Engaged Sessions) x 100 = Conversion Rate

Where:

VoC-Informed Conversions = Total conversions attributed to VoC-driven changes (e.g., optimized messaging, improved navigation, added trust signals).
Total Engaged Sessions = Unique visitors who spend more than 10 seconds on a page.

Now, we can compare the two numbers to track the change in relative conversions and overall conversion rate.

Example Calculation

A SaaS company optimizes its pricing page based on VoC feedback, addressing customer concerns about transparency. Here's how they might calculate the VoC Conversion Rate Impact:

Pre-Optimization

Total Engaged Sessions: 10,000
Baseline Conversions: 150 (before VoC changes)
(150 / 10,000) x 100 = 1.5%

Post-Optimization

Total Engaged Sessions: +10,000 net new
VoC Informed Conversions: 350 (after VoC changes)
(350 / 10,000) x 100 = 3.5%

Relative Difference

3.5% - 1.5% = 2 percentage point lift
(350 / 150) x 100 = 233% increase in conversions

This calculation shows a significant conversion rate improvement from 1.5% to 3.5%, a 233% increase in visitor conversions directly attributable to VoC-driven changes like addressing pricing clarity and including trust signals.

A simple formula like this can help you demonstrate the ROI impact of your ongoing CRO efforts.

Ready to improve SaaS website conversion rates?

Combining hard data with customer insights is our secret to crafting messaging that resonates, creating intuitive navigation, and building trust at every touchpoint. It’s how we conceptualize and execute high-impact SaaS websites for every client we serve. And we’ll do the same for you.