But you aren’t crossing a finish line; you’re summiting a mountain. Reaching the peak feels like completion, but experienced climbers know that’s only halfway. The descent is equally challenging and requires different skills and focus. In the same way, optimization requires a different approach than a website launch.

You’ve successfully achieved a huge accomplishment, but you’re only partway through. You still have to climb down the mountain or, in this case, optimize your website based on user feedback.

In our decades in business, we have discovered that the most successful companies view launch day as “day one” of an optimization journey. If you want to do the same, this is the playbook to follow to maximize ROI on redesign investments.

The benefits of optimization post-website launch

By leveraging optimization post-launch, you can expect benefits like the following:

• Objectively and quickly determined opportunities for change
• Easily determined priorities according to potential impact
• Less waste of resources on changes that won’t work
• Higher ROI because you have success rates at a lower cost

Leveraging optimization after launching a website is a high-performing, systematic way of getting better results from your hard work.

In an ideal world, you conducted a data-driven redesign. You carefully derived measurements of what was actually happening on the site and feedback from customers to inform the process.

In this case, you have already conducted user testing and received clear customer feedback on your new site. You’re set up to seamlessly start collecting post-launch data and begin identifying improvement opportunities to build on the momentum you’ve generated.

If you haven’t, don’t fret. You can still reap the rewards of optimizing your site post-launch. As long as you don’t “set it and forget it,” you’re in a much better position than most of your competition.

The best optimization tools post-launch

What do you need to get started?

Our recommended toolkit for optimization post-launch includes:

Quantitative data

• Google Analytics: Analyze traffic sources, user behavior, and conversion paths. GA is essential for comparing pre/post-launch performance and identifying underperforming segments or pages.
• Heatmaps: Visual representations of user clicking, scrolling, and movement behavior that reveal which elements attract attention and which are ignored. Allows you to optimize content placement and identify what does/doesn’t resonate.

Qualitative data

• Usability testing: Structured observation of real users completing key tasks on your new site. Reveals pain points invisible in quantitative data alone and provides direct insight into how customers actually experience your redesigned user journeys.
• Session recordings: Video captures of actual visitor interactions with your site that expose unexpected navigation patterns and friction points. Helps you identify where users get confused, hesitate, or abandon their journey on specific pages.
• Customer feedback tools: Direct voice-of-customer collection mechanisms, such as surveys and feedback widgets, that capture qualitative insights about the redesign, highlighting immediate improvement opportunities from your most valuable asset: your customers.

Experimentation

• Rapid testing: Quickly validate design and content changes without dev support. Get efficient feedback on elements like CTAs, headlines, and pricing or product page components.
• A/B testing or multivariate testing: Get statistically significant proof to validate riskier design and content changes without full deployment. Test in context and make sure any further website updates will drive target user behavior.

What to do post-website launch step-by-step

With those tools in mind, you’re ready to get started.

Step 1: Rapid response protocol and the basics

The best way to celebrate a website launch is to get your organization together for a post-launch bug-squash-a-thon.

During the first 72 hours post-launch, get cross-functional teams together to hunt for bugs on the new site. Document any technical issues in a central location and use a simple prioritization framework so your devs know what to tackle first.

Implement fixes while the bug hunt is going on so people see the improvements in real time and are motivated to keep searching. Keep in mind that some of these bugs will indicate larger UX issues, so don’t delete them after solving them; keep them available for review later in the week.

Your only other priority in the first three days post-launch is to ensure all of your tooling is set up correctly. Make sure your Google Analytics is tracking the right metrics, get your heatmapping software working on the new site, and be sure any customer support functions (chatbots, etc.) are up and running.

Step 2: Compare pre and post launch data

Revisit your baseline metrics to get started reviewing pre- and post-launch data. Specifically, compare KPIs before and after the redesign and compare those across top channels and device types to get a foundational understanding of what is working and where to dig in.

Example key performance indicators to track immediately:

• Conversion rates by traffic source and device type
• User engagement metrics (time on site, pages per session)
• Cart abandonment and checkout completion rates
• Customer acquisition costs vs. lifetime value

To effectively do this, set up before/after comparison dashboards and circulate them with your team.

Layer heatmaps on top of this to understand how performance changed on a page-by-page basis with more context.

When you identify where things aren’t improving, you can identify low-hanging fruit optimization opportunities and areas that need more testing to understand what is going wrong.

Step 3: Refresh user testing and competitive analysis

Once you have a baseline of data and changes, you’ll want to conduct user research and testing. Have real people use your new site to discover its flaws and give their feedback. If you didn’t conduct testing during the refresh process, you might also find it helpful to have them use both versions of your site (the old and the redesigned) to tell you which they prefer.

Even if you have plenty of user testing data on the old site, it’s crucial to gather impressions of the site update and collect ideas for additional optimization. You can send the site to the same user testers for comparative feedback, and also be sure to get your site in front of new users for an unbiased and completely fresh perspective.

Specifically, conduct usability testing with new users to help uncover accessibility issues and where customers are getting stuck on the path to conversion.

It’s also a good time to study your competitors. What features and systems work well for their digital properties? Their success doesn’t guarantee success for you (even if your audiences overlap perfectly), but it can be a good reminder of what’s going on in the competitive landscape after many months of focusing on your own website.

Step 4: Build an optimization roadmap

Based on your GA data, the heatmaps you’ve set up, the user testing you’ve conducted, and the competitive analysis, you’re ready to start building an optimization roadmap.

A clear roadmap will help align optimization efforts with business objectives, allocate resources for continuous optimization, and generate buy-in from leadership at your organization.

Theme the categories of problems and opportunities that you identified in steps 1-4 (more on this in our article on theme-based roadmaps). Then, prioritize the themes to create a clear 90-day plan of action.

Some outcomes of your roadmap could be:

• Using initial post-launch data, you identify underperforming customer segments and decide to theme personalization opportunities based on their early behavior patterns.
• Traffic source performance is lower than your benchmark, so you create a plan for optimizing landing pages based and adjusting paid media strategies.
• Session recordings show customers getting lost while looking for more information on a specific product, so navigation and directional guidance become the main focus for your next phase of optimization.

Step 5: Delegate or outsource

With a roadmap in hand, it’s time to optimize. At this stage, the post-launch excitement might be starting to fade, but this is the step that sets successful teams apart.

If you have an internal optimization team, set up a meeting cadence and reporting framework that drives accountability, and you’re off to the races.

For teams that are struggling with:

• Data interpretation challenges
• Testing velocity limitations
• Expertise gaps in specialized areas
• General confusion about what to do next

You may need external support. Sometimes, it’s hard to read the label from inside the jar when you’ve been working on the site for so long. A partner like The Good can lend the expertise and fresh perspective to make sure you drive ROI from your redesign investment.

Double down to keep the momentum going

Your website improvement journey doesn’t end with launch; it evolves.

The businesses that treat their website as a living, breathing asset rather than a static project are the ones that consistently outperform competitors.

By implementing the five-step process outlined above, you’re positioning your organization to capture immediate wins while building a sustainable optimization practice that drives continuous improvement. 

Each insight gained, each test run, and each improvement made compounds over time, creating an ever-widening gap between your business and those that “set it and forget it.”

The post You Launched A New Website; What’s Next? appeared first on The Good.

But I’m here to tell you that while you might be raring to take action, there is one more key step to ensure success: sharing the roadmap across your organization.

And by this, I don’t mean sending out a single ‘FYI’ Slack message and calling it a day. I mean real communication that fosters understanding and alignment for what you have outlined in your roadmap. The way you communicate your roadmap could make or break all the incredible product optimizations and plans you have in there.

When cross-departmental teams are on board with your roadmap, there is no question about plans or prioritization. The roadmap serves as a shared plan of action and keeps the organization on track for product goals.

Here’s how you do it.

Give your roadmap a home and start building visibility

The first step in communicating a roadmap across the organization is creating a home for it. It needs to be visible and accessible to your team. Ideally, it lives somewhere that is natural to your internal workflows/tooling and is frequently accessed by your team.

This could mean:

• Uploading to Google Drive or Sharepoint
• Pinning to a dedicated Slack channel
• Creating a shared Airtable or Notion base

For the perfectionists out there, there’s no one right or wrong way to store your roadmap. It will depend on your organizational structure, size, and goals.

Once you have a home for your roadmap, start building visibility. While it’s good for you to know your roadmap like the back of your hand, it’s even better for your teammates to get invested.

A siloed roadmap is a debilitated roadmap, so make sure various team leads can access it.

Tailor the messaging based on stakeholders

A good product leader can bridge the gaps and translate messages across teams. This is a skill you’ll need to leverage when communicating the roadmap across your organization.

The best messaging for sharing the roadmap will likely look different based on the stakeholders you’re working with.

Leadership

Generally speaking, organizational leadership prefers to focus on high-level goals and outcomes rather than the specific features you’ll use to achieve those goals. While this isn’t true for every leader, it’s a good place to start.

Focus on themes in your roadmap to explain to your leadership or external stakeholders what you hope to achieve and your expected performance. How you achieve it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re solving the problem.

Outline what you’re trying to achieve and share what this stakeholder audience will find most relevant. For example:

• Themes
• Objectives
• Initiatives
• General timeframes

Individual contributors

When sharing with individual contributors, you’ll likely want to get into more of the “why” and the “how” than you would with leadership. It may spur some debate, but it will allow your team to discuss tactics within the context of the theme and possibly come up with unique ways to achieve your goals.

More specifics will come in handy, including:

• Specific tasks and milestones
• Detailed timelines
• Ownership

Shoulder teams

There is also value in sharing the roadmap with people who might not always be part of the product strategy or executing the roadmap but can offer a lot of valuable input based on their experience in other areas of the company.

Connecting across departments and getting early buy-in makes teams work faster and ship better products.

The most effective products are built with human-centered product management in mind. This ​​approach creates products and makes decisions based on and for the user, and it also prioritizes collaborating with teams outside of the day-to-day work and connecting with them where they are.

Shoulder teams benefit from knowing more theoretical elements like:

• How the roadmap impacts their roles/department
• Overview of projects
• What benefits and value it can drive

In many cases, working with different experts means learning to speak their language and translating between teams. Getting everyone on the same page can be tough, but it is worth the effort.

Pick the right forum and format

“The medium is the message” is a mantra repeated by communications leaders around the world. The forum in which you share a message is equally as important as or even more important than the message itself. This rings true for sharing roadmaps as well.

A roadmap isn’t just a list of priorities; it’s a story of where you’re going and why. Sharing that story in the right forum builds alignment and trust, while sharing it in the wrong one can leave it overlooked.

So, what are some ways to communicate your roadmap beyond typical sharing methods like a presentation or email?

In our conversations with B2B research leaders, René Bastijans gave some tips on how to circulate research that can be applied to roadmap dissemination as well. Visibility is key to making sure that teams reference the roadmap and use it to help make decisions.

He builds alignment and visibility through what he calls “Learning Lunches,” 25-minute presentations with Q&A designed to share insights and keep everyone moving in the same direction. You can apply the same approach to your roadmap by creating an informal, open forum where teams can ask questions and gain clarity on how the roadmap impacts their work.

Get together to present the roadmap and share updates on progress. This more casual approach to a presentation offers learning opportunities for the team, helps them feel ownership over the product, and, in turn, continued buy-in.

Another effective forum for communicating your roadmap is one-on-one conversations with the team. While you may not be able to get to everyone at the organization, finding ways to share your plan in a more intimate environment fosters trust and helps show more individually what impact the roadmap will have on their role.

At your organization, a presentation to each team or even an email might be the right fit. Just be sure to leverage a dedicated time when your audience is focused and invested.

Make sure your roadmap drives growth

Your roadmap is more than a strategic document. It’s a powerful tool to align teams, prioritize efforts, and deliver better user experiences. But even the most thoughtfully crafted roadmap can only reach its full potential if it’s communicated effectively across your organization.

By giving your roadmap a visible home, tailoring your messaging to different stakeholders, and selecting the right forums to share it, you can foster alignment, buy-in, and momentum for your product vision. Thoughtful communication transforms your roadmap from a static plan into a shared mission.

If you’re looking to build a customer-centric roadmap or need help identifying the highest-impact opportunities for your product, The Good can help. Our team of digital experience experts partners with companies to uncover customer insights, prioritize optimizations, and deliver measurable results.

Let’s work together to turn your product roadmap into a growth-driving force.

The post How To Communicate Your Roadmap Across The Organization appeared first on The Good.

About This Episode:

Creating a well-designed SaaS website requires a strategic approach. In this episode, Jon and Ryan discuss the key fundamentals of creating a SaaS marketing website that not only attracts and engages users but also converts them into customers.

Check out the full episode to learn:

• Why identifying your target audience’s needs, behaviors, and pain points comes first.
• How to deliver a seamless experience that connects with your customers, answers their questions, and shows them how to take the next step.
• The importance of regularly testing and validating your website with your audience.

If you have questions, ideas, or feedback to share, connect with us on LinkedIn. We’re Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

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Episode Transcript:

Announcer: [00:00:00] You’re listening to Drive and Convert a podcast about helping online brands to build a better ecommerce growth engine with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

Ryan Garrow: Jon, you without much of an argument or debate, do know quite a bit more about sales. SaaS products than I do. Your team has done phenomenally well at helping SaaS companies scale over the last few years. A ton about ecomm, we know that, but SaaS is a, it’s a unique area for me because I don’t lean into it nearly as much as I should probably, especially hearing some of the things you talked about leading into this podcast recording, you have some great insights on what you need to be doing from a SaaS company when you’re building the website. And there isn’t necessarily, and maybe you’ll correct me through this podcast, but it’s not as simple as Oh, there’s like a Shopify for SaaS. You just put it up and then it automatically converts at this range.

And it’s yeah, you’re done now. You just collect money and it’s awesome. There probably needs to be, maybe we need to go [00:01:00] on another tangent and solve for that and create a Shopify for SaaS because when you’re going B2B, I feel like there’s a really high expectation of what you’re going to get on the marketing site.

There’s so many ways to do it wrong because you can go so many different directions and you’re applying probably to a vast spectrum of clients on that first marketing page, not knowing what you’re going to hit. So you’ve got a lot of data here. So I’m excited to hear about this. You’re going to talk to us about how to, I assume, remove some friction on these sites and make it super simple SaaS product. Is that right?

Jon MacDonald: That’s right. Yeah, I think begin and maintain as well.

Ryan Garrow: Got it. Okay. And so when you’re setting up your SaaS website, you’ve outlined in the notes here, 11 fundamentals for a marketing website that you want to cover today. And there’s different pieces of SaaS, right? There’s the front end marketing site, and then there’s the actual product that you can optimize as well.

So we’re focusing on Marketing, which I like, but it’s how you’re acquiring customers. Customer acquisition websites, essentially.

Jon MacDonald: [00:02:00] Exactly. Yeah. This is for the marketing website. Let’s just say pre conversion to becoming a trialist or a paid user of your SaaS tool.

Ryan Garrow: Okay. So there’s 11 things we need to be paying attention to when we’re looking at the design on these that are going to make sure that we don’t do something dumb and create a bunch of friction. We don’t need to.

Jon MacDonald: There you go. Before we jump in, I just want to be clear about one quick thing, and that’s that. You called it out, right? The SaaS digital journey does not always begin or end with your website. For instance, your user’s journey might start when they read a recommendation on another site.

And in SaaS, there’s several of these, right? You got G2, you’ve got all of these other top whatever sites that are out there for apps, right? You got Product Hunt, you got all these. Great resources for small, especially small and medium businesses that are looking to purchase a new tool, right? And solve a pain point that they have.

Usually, it starts with them doing some research. Okay? And then it [00:03:00] ends when they have a conversation with enterprise, with a salesperson, or with them converting into that trial user.

Ryan Garrow: Okay. It’s obviously imperative to have a seamless experience that connects with the customers. Answers questions and then basically tells them how to take the next step because it’s, we’re multi step.

It’s, I joked about click funnels. It’s all about click funnels to a degree. It’s you’re just moving people down a process and it’s not where to. And you

Jon MacDonald: mentioned earlier that there’s not like a Shopify for SaaS brands, and I would say that there’s several tools out there that are trying to do that.

So there are tools that can help you now for the front end marketing side, right? Not necessarily for the app itself, although AI is coming a long way. And maybe that’s a whole nother show about how you can, as a single person, tell AI what you want and have it generate the entire app for you now. The code may or may not be usable, but it’s there, right?

It’s the one thing to debate, but I think, creating that well designed SaaS website does require a strategic approach. And that’s the thing [00:04:00] that I want to break down and talk about of these fundamentals, because it’s important to focus on these several key fundamentals. There’s not just one, there’s actually 11 that we’ll talk about quickly today.

If you’re listening to this, 11 sounds like a lot. I promise you we’ll move through them pretty quickly, but they’re all important and things that we’ve seen come up time and time again. And these all enhance that user engagement and customer satisfaction. What we’re aiming to do with these fundamentals is to help you to create a SaaS website that not only attracts and engages users, but also will convert them into customers.

Ryan Garrow: I like it. Okay. Look, let’s dive in then. I want to start getting through this list. Yeah, sure. I’m going to learn some cool things here. Okay. So step one where do you start in this journey? Like I’m based on your car conversations, I guess I could hypothesize, but

Jon MacDonald: yeah, the first one is starting by understanding your user.

So you begin by identifying your target audiences, needs, behaviors, and pain points. These are all things that would be key to good product design [00:05:00] anyways. If you have a great product design team, getting them involved in the marketing side can be helpful here. But this understanding also guides the design and the content strategy of your site and really helps you to ensure that your website serves your users well.

Ryan Garrow: What happens if you’re not necessarily sure about who your user is going to be? Do you have to have multiple instances you test at the same time for that or do you have to pick one and go?

Jon MacDonald: Normally, if you have product market fit, But you should have a good understanding of who your consumer is going to be.

Where in ecomm, that could be much wider. In SaaS, you typically have somebody who’s approaching with a very specific problem that you’re solving for them. So you’re able to talk to that problem. That’s where I think, it varies from e com, but also it is something that is actually helpful because that’s really going to be able to guide talking to consumers because you’ll be able to find the right people.

And guide actually writing [00:06:00] content for them, where you’re going to be able to address that specific pain point at each step.

Ryan Garrow: Got it. Okay, that is much simpler, actually, because you go into e com thinking you know where you’re going to be, and then all of a sudden you’re like, Oh, we, these people found us and liked us even more.

Jon MacDonald: Honestly, that may happen SaaS, and it does quite often. You think about Slack is a great example of this. Slack did not start out as a company that made a chat, right? SaaS, I believe that Slack was a gaming company at one point, and they had built this tool to have internal conversations.

And then that became the thing that everybody wanted and was like, this, we have something here. This is pretty cool. We should sell this. And so that’s how they ended up down the line. There are now a billion dollar companies sold to Salesforce.

Ryan Garrow: Taking lots of my money every month. Okay. So we know who our user is.

And you mentioned the content, so I guess we’re informing our content creation on the site to make it, to put it there, right? But is there more about the content we need?

Jon MacDonald: [00:07:00] Yeah. So the second thing is keeping that content compelling. Because it’s very easy if you feel like you know the audience to not make it compelling.

Make it as engaging as it could be. You really want to make sure your content is engaging. And it, that really, I keep saying that word because it’s crucial. It is crucial for capturing and retaining interest, right? You really want somebody to be reading down the page and say, yes, that’s me. Yes. I have that problem.

Yes. Great. This sounds like the solution for me. And as they continue down that journey, so using clear, concise, and persuasive language here, that’s going to speak directly to that audience’s needs and highlight the benefits of how you solve that for them. So you can do things like using imagery. People love actual product shots, not just illustrations, right?

They love videos. Anytime you do a video walkthrough or click snippets of things being used, it really helps visitors to learn. about the product.

Ryan Garrow: Don’t just give me a marketing video on the marketing page. I think [00:08:00] that’s where people will often confuse Oh, I’ve used your video that we used to run an ad one time.

We should put that on there.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. No, you definitely, it goes back to the same thing as ecommerce. I say all the time that marketing’s won once somebody’s gotten to your site. Time to actually help them solve their pain or need.

Ryan Garrow: And number three is use directional guidance to help users find what they need.

Thanks again. And directing them down the page further or to contact forms?

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. Directional guidance is this kind of umbrella term that really encompasses anything that puts the user on a path to help them find what they want. That can be navigation, calls to action, strategic use of white space, right?

Nothing at all could be helpful. I think, you start, working in that direction. on how you’re going to guide people along that journey and help them find the necessary information and tools that’s important for them. It’s a very kind of umbrella term, but it really is something that needs to be considered.

Where are you telling these people to go next? Where are you influencing [00:09:00] their journey on your site?

Ryan Garrow: That helps quite a bit there. Your next point might be one of my most frustrating in the business B2B world. As I search for apps and things that help my business, but it’s a seamless customer experience.

The website on the desktop complements what I’m seeing on the, on my mobile device. Cause I often am jumping devices throughout days, weeks, even, and not everybody does this very

Jon MacDonald: well. No, but I think, the key here is to have a smooth user experience that optimizes the website’s performance.

You can make it responsive, but. Ensuring usability across all devices, as you mentioned, you really just need to fix anything that’s broken or introduces friction into that experience and consider each step what devices they might be on all the way from that initial conversion and beyond. How many times have you have fired up an asset, a SaaS app and tried to use it on your iPhone in a mobile browser, and it just doesn’t even work, right?

You’re just like, Oh, what am I doing here? I can’t, [00:10:00] it’s way too big, and it’s not responsive. There are tools that are just meant to be used on desktop, and I understand that, but not delivering a seamless user experience across all devices is a huge issue for a lot of SaaS brands, and you really want to make sure that’s touched on your marketing site.

You’re setting the tone for the rest of what it’s going to be like. And if your marketing site doesn’t work across different platforms, then people sure aren’t going to think that your app is either.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah, there was even just, I think, I forget which one it was. It was a competitor to DocuSign. But I had to execute something on a mobile device, and it was the worst.

I actually stopped and had to wait till later in the day to get back to my computer because it was like, I just, I couldn’t get the fields to work. It was embarrassingly bad. I’m sorry to hear that. I can’t blast them, but I hope it wasn’t Panda Doc. DocuSign does a great job at that. Yeah,

Jon MacDonald: DocuSign does a great one.

That’s one of the benefits of pretty much owning the realtor and real estate, because those folks are setting those things up on [00:11:00] the go all the time. If you’ve ever had to sign a real estate contract, 99 percent chance it came from DocuSign. There’s a lot of them out there now, and they’re all competing on very similar functionality.

So if you don’t have a seamless journey, you might as well just stop.

Ryan Garrow: If that ever happened again, I’d be like no, I’ll send you a docu sign. Let’s do it this way.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah, exactly. Download the document, resend it to them.

Ryan Garrow: Yes. All right. Number five is design with product verbs in mind. This is not something I would have thought of.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah, we actually have a whole article about product verbs up on the good. com. Just go search verbs or whatever you feel comfortable with on the good. But the reality here is that you really want to focus on action oriented language that emphasizes the core functionalities of your product. Okay. So that’s why it’s called verbs, product verbs, because you’re really trying to convey actions that users can take, such as create, manage, track, analyze, right?

These are all things that make the [00:12:00] benefits of the product clear to the end users.

Ryan Garrow: And I would imagine this is not one where you’re going to be like, Oh, let’s think of some cool synonyms to maybe sound different. This is just keep it simple, stupid almost. Yeah.

Jon MacDonald: You don’t want to get cute with this by any means.

But you definitely want to communicate in a manner that is going to help people understand what it’s like. You hear this all the time about resumes. If you’ve ever read a resume filled with these type of verbs, it feels like that person’s way more qualified, right? They’re like, I curated, I influenced, I managed, I did these things, right?

Where if you just say I was part of a team. That doesn’t sound as good. If you say, I led the team, or I did, had some action with the team. I was an integral part of the team. You really want to influence with the verbs. And it’s the same thing here. You’re trying to sell your product through.

You really want people to understand how it’s going to benefit them.

Announcer: You’re listening to Drive and Convert a podcast focused on ecommerce growth. Your [00:13:00] hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with ecommerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers.

And Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay per click management, search engine optimization, and website design services to brands of all sizes.

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you.

Ryan Garrow: Oh man, this one is probably, I mentioned the non seamless experience. But being clear about pricing and plans, Oh man, maybe I’m young enough. I don’t like it. Maybe I’m too old. I just don’t like, I don’t know. There’s something in there that I do not want to talk to sales. What does it cost? Okay, great.

Does it make sense? Let me make that determination, but don’t force me to talk to somebody before you tell me how much things cost.

Jon MacDonald: Ryan is a hundred percent of get off my lawn guy.

Transparency [00:14:00] and pricing and subscription plans builds trust, okay? So that’s what you’re talking about. Like you say, Hey, I want to know what I’m getting into, right? You want to aid that decision making process. And that is what’s key here, clearly presenting all the options available. Including the features and costs and then helping consumers choose the plan that best fits them.

All of that can be done without a salesperson. And in fact, so many SaaS brands try to integrate salespeople, they think that’s the route they need to go. When in reality, they’re probably any gains they have by. inserting a person who’s really just there to convince often, unfortunately, they lose by people who just give up and go to a competitor who makes it real easy in that research phase to understand what they’re getting into.

Ryan Garrow: I feel like if you need a sales people or sales person to get it across, your product probably isn’t developed well enough. So that’s just the way my perception is. When I’m looking at it, if you can’t tell me how much it costs, you have to get somebody [00:15:00] on the phone to sell me because it’s not good enough on its own.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah. And that’s how I personally approach it.

Jon MacDonald: There are benefits from the SaaS perspective, right? Of saying, Hey, I’m going to have a salesperson on my team and really what they’re doing is not there to sell and convince. They’re there to understand what are the common questions? What are the key pain points?

Why are people calling? What did they think our app does? When I give them a demo, where do they go? Oh, I like that. Or, Ooh, that’s a problem. Or I, does it also do X, Y, and Z? That’s very similar to what customer service role plays at Ecom. And I say consistently. Get customer service involved and optimizing your e com website.

It’s the same thing here. If you have salespeople, they should be contributing content back to the site. And ideally, as a SaaS brand, a salesperson gets on the call, and they should just be confirming. If you’ve done the right job, that person should just be saying, yeah, so you need this customization.

We can work out a [00:16:00] custom plan for you. Or saying, yeah, our feature does that you do you want a demo? Let me give you the demo answering questions you have. That’s great. But they shouldn’t be there to do cold calls and outbound calls and then say, I got to convince you of X, Y, and Z. They should be more of a consultative sale at that point.

Ryan Garrow: Love it. Okay. I knew this one was coming because it’s Jon MacDonald, but we’re going to test and validate with our audiences.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. Are you surprised this is more than halfway down the list? I would say regularly test your website with real users. I, we could probably almost skip this because it’s a broken record with me.

A/B testing, user surveys, analytics, validate your design choices to ensure they’re meeting that user expectations and produce a user friendly design before you do anything. And I’ll just say here, I understand if you need an agency to help you with this. Might we might know somebody

Ryan Garrow: a little hint there. Jon. There you go. It’s not the first thing [00:17:00] you do though it’s are these kind of in order of a process you would have somebody go through like this is Generally best after you’ve been already clear about your pricing and plans and before we get to the next step

Jon MacDonald: I would say You know, you can pick and choose from this list.

They’re not in any specific order, but I do think that they are in the order of, I would say, to me, anyways, importance. You’re going to start with one and work your way down to the bottom of the list because they start building off of each other, right? You can’t really test and validate until you have some idea of who your audience is, right?

So you have to have that understanding first, right?

Ryan Garrow: Once you have some traffic, you’re testing and validating. Getting some feedback and then you’re going to use that feedback, I assume. And you’re going to iterate on your website design and feed that loop back almost. So like the seven and eight points probably are almost circular constantly.

If you’re really trying to grow your SaaS product.

Jon MacDonald: And that’s really why they’re lower on this list because they’re going to continually. cycle through making sure [00:18:00] that you’re validating and testing, but then you’re iterating on your website design. So you’re putting that test and validation back into your site and, every website, including SaaS, should evolve based on user feedback.

There’s always technological advancements, there’s changing market trends. The reality here is, Just continually update and refine, right? Same thing you might do with ecommerce, but I think you have a lot more leeway with SaaS to do this because you’re not stuck to having to find a template that works across hundreds of SKUs.

You’re really trying to hammer home one key solving point that you have. That’s really something that’s going to enhance that user experience and stay ahead of the competitors.

Ryan Garrow: Now, one thing this doesn’t mention in your notes is landing squeeze pages on your website, you should have lots of them.

Jon MacDonald: It’s not here.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah, it’s not here.

Jon MacDonald: And I think that’s a great point. Almost what’s not on these lists as much as what is, right? I think that having a hundred [00:19:00] different landing pages is a sign that you still don’t have great product market fit. Now, if you have a handful that are around specific pain points and you know you can solve a couple of pain points or maybe there’s a couple of industries like we talked about DocuSign and Realtors or maybe DocuSign and legal like lawyer teams or, there’s a whole bunch of different ways you could use a tool like that at that point, you can have a landing page for each of those that talks to the specific page.

angle on that same pain point for them, right? You got to get documents signed in an efficient manner. What does that look like for them? It’s different. I guarantee you a lawyer, not guarantee, but I will say high likelihood your legal team is not sending a docu sign from their phone. Just probably not.

But a realtor on the road, ready to get that offer in a hundred percent, probably doing that. They would approach that a little differently.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah, I like that. Okay, that leads right into your ninth point, ensuring mobile optimization.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. So with an increasing number of users accessing websites on [00:20:00] mobile, you need to make sure it’s optimized for mobile.

I almost feel like I shouldn’t have to say this one, but unfortunately we do. And for as much as people have pushed it in ecommerce, SaaS is still behind on this. They really are. They often aren’t using responsive design. The loading times are slower because they just expect you’re on a corporate network or that, you’re okay with it being a little slower.

And in a lot of cases, consumers are, so that’s fine, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to optimize, especially for smaller screens, right? You want that smooth experience across all devices.

Ryan Garrow: And Google’s ranking those first time from an SEO standpoint. Yeah. So if you’re going to compete, you got to go to that Google site and see what Google thinks of it. Yeah.

Jon MacDonald: That’s a great idea.

Ryan Garrow: Mobile first. Not desktop. Love it. Even if that’s what your users will do.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. And you can understand too. There are plenty of SaaS tools that are really desktop first and I get that. I wouldn’t want to be doing QuickBooks on my phone. I just wouldn’t. There are some functions of QuickBooks that I would want to do, but I [00:21:00] would not want to be maintaining a P& L and running reports and doing that type of stuff on my phone.

But, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t functionalities that I would want on my phone. And it doesn’t mean I’m not going to do research about the tool itself on the marketing website on my phone. That is something that is very likely. Regardless of whether or not your app is Desktop first or mobile first, you should be making sure your website is mobile first.

Ryan Garrow: Your next point, 10, I would say is probably an area that SaaS is ahead of a lot of the ecomm potentially, but it’s focusing on accessibility and those with certain abilities or lack of ability to read and engage with your site. ecommerce has struggled at scale for sure to label their images and.

Jon MacDonald: Which is interesting to me. I often wonder why ecomm struggles with this as much as they do. And I think that you’re seeing over the past five or six years, a lot of those lawsuits from lawyers who do nothing but chase down these e com sites. [00:22:00] And, I think that’s because they’ve already, those same lawyers have already run their way through every SaaS site.

And so they made their way to ecomm next. Because SaaS has all the money in the world to, to pay them off, right? And settle. But ecomm typically doesn’t. So they knew the margins were thin there. They’re not gonna, go after where the margins are thin. It’s just not as big of a return. I think they’ve worked through most of SaaS now.

SaaS is really good about accessibility. But I think, number 10 on this list is focus on accessibility. You have to design your website to be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. It’s just, you need to do it. You’re leaving out. A large segment of the population. If you’re not doing that, all texts for images you mentioned, that’s great.

Keyboard navigation is huge color contrast. If you even go to HubSpot’s blog, now HubSpot’s blog. I’ll let you do a high contrast mode and they have a on every single page, they have a toggle. It’s like high [00:23:00] contrast or not. It really is something that you can tell if HubSpot’s doing it. It has really worked its way into SaaS.

If you’re not focusing on this and haven’t came this far, you’re behind

Ryan Garrow: for sure. So focus on that accessibility. And then final point, number 11 is leveraging social proof, which in e comm comes naturally you gotta have that, but

Jon MacDonald: Exactly. It does come naturally, and you see there’s so many tools out there asking for reviews.

There’s really only one that I ever hear about from B2B, and that’s G2. It’s the only one that ever emails me and says, Hey, leave a review for this product. And you’re just like, Okay, I don’t know. But here’s the reality is that if you incorporate customer testimonials, case studies, even reviews build credibility and trust.

You’re going to be ahead of the game. You can’t forget to do that. And I promise you, just putting a star rating, et cetera, is not going to get the job done. Same thing that you have on e com. You really need to make sure that you are showcasing world [00:24:00] success stories here. And you really want to make sure positive feedback is from existing users.

You’ll see a lot that will have influencers in SaaS world. That’s happening more and more now, and not just in e com.

Ryan Garrow: There’s more money. Yeah,

Jon MacDonald: yeah.

Ryan Garrow: You can pay those influencers more.

Jon MacDonald: This is where the whole cottage industry now of LinkedIn influencers, right? They’re all going on there and getting paid quite a bit by B2B companies to, to influence around their products.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah. No, I agree. I think it’s definitely valuable there. We’ve gotten through 11 and the punchline feels that designing a SaaS website is about more than just making it look pretty. Yeah. And have high contrasting covers.

Jon MacDonald: A hundred percent, right? How did you know that was coming? Because the reality is it’s very similar to what I’ve talked about with e comm and I think the play here is a lot more similar than not.

The fundamentals don’t change. Your visual appeal of your website, it’s important, but it’s important to remember that websites are made to be used, and that goes for e com or [00:25:00] SaaS. SaaS website design is about creating a user experience that clicks with your target audience. See what I did there.

But there’s this wireframe in design should be validated with real feedback before you launch anything and test it with your ideal audience before you start building. Why waste the money? Your development team has better things to do inside the app. I promise you that’s where they want to focus.

And if you validate everything, you say, Hey this has already been proven out. We’ve already refined and iterated. Now I just need you to build this version. I promise you the relationship with your development team. Between marketing and development is going to be that much better and I hear this all the time from product design and product development folks.

If you are a product manager design development, you often have a rift between you and internal implementation teams, the technical teams that are actually building something because They are getting pulled in so many different directions and marketing is [00:26:00] unfortunately not usually a priority for them.

They’re solving bugs, looking to retain customers, add new functionality. So you really need to be able to speak to them appropriately.

Ryan Garrow: I love it. That was helpful for sure. I think we’re all going to be doing a lot more SaaS marketing and growing of those brands in the near future. I’m excited for it.

Jon MacDonald: It is where it’s headed for sure, especially as I mentioned earlier with AI being able to build SaaS apps. You’re going to see a lot of these. Small creator sites popping up the time and again, so

Ryan Garrow: Excited. Thanks, Jon. I appreciate the insights.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah, thanks for hanging with me today through my head cold.

Appreciate it.

Ryan Garrow: Anytime.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert com.

The post Drive and Convert (Ep. 124): The Fundamentals of SaaS Marketing Website Design appeared first on The Good.

About This Episode:

Aligning your online experience with user expectations is crucial. In this episode, Jon and Ryan discuss how to leverage the priming & expectation setting heuristic to increase conversions.

Check out the full episode to learn:

1. what the priming & expectation setting heuristic is, and how it works.
2. how to determine if you are violating this heuristic.
3. examples of tactics that leverage this heuristic.

If you have questions, ideas, or feedback to share, connect with us on LinkedIn. We’re Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

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Episode Transcript:

Announcer: [00:00:00] You’re listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better ecommerce growth engine with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

Jon MacDonald: Hey Ryan, have you ever felt frustrated by unexpected fees when shopping online.

Ryan Garrow: No, never. That’s weird. Yeah.

Jon MacDonald: It’s a weird question, right? Look, it’s such a common experience and it so quickly turns customers away that I even recently encountered this while trying to purchase concert tickets.

I went through the long process of selecting seats, looking at all the views, doing all that stuff, got the checkout, had the countdown timer, I was all stressed out about it, finally got it done, and then I got hit with exorbitant convenience fees. It almost doubled the price, needless to say, I abandoned that purchase despite the time investment, et cetera.

And I’ll put in air quotes, [00:01:00] the convenience of having gone through that process that I was paying for. But I think this really highlighted a critical aspect of digital experiences for me, and that’s priming and expectation setting. Leave it to me to have a bad experience online and bring it to a positive psychological principles and make a

Ryan Garrow: podcast out of it

Jon MacDonald: and then make a podcast out of it. Nerd central here, but

Ryan Garrow: oh man, those expectations are the worst. Like I think almost everybody listening has done the same thing. I almost bought tickets to What was it last week? My wife wanted to go to book of mormon and it’s coming to portland I was like, oh, I got an adam metaphor.

Let me go find that click the ad got to the end and then I picked the seats and then they’re like Oh, it’s not even on sale yet. And these may or may not be the seats you get, but they’ll be as good. Or I’m like, I tried to find where the real tickets were instead of these secondary site that I accidentally, I felt embarrassed because I went to a secondary site thinking it was a real, I’m like, ah, man, some [00:02:00] expectations.

Meta did that. Is that his algorithm is really good. Because I’ve been listening to my wife talk about wanting to go to Book of Mormon. Love it. I’m assuming we’re talking today about priming and expectation settings to help drive conversions, I’m guessing.

Jon MacDonald: Yes, spot on. Look at your deduction capabilities are prime right now.

I appreciate that. Yeah, look, there’s nothing more frustrating than feeling like a company is giving you that bait and switch and user experience design. We call this poor priming and expectation setting. It’s really a violation of one of the six Heuristics of digital experience optimization. As a reminder here, heuristics of those mental shortcuts, the use to solve problems quickly and effectively, that we all take these shortcuts.

I know we’ve talked about it on the show a handful of times, but knowing that our brains are wired to take shortcuts and make these quick decisions. You can imagine how heuristics play that critical role and how customers navigate and just perceive digital experiences.

Ryan Garrow: [00:03:00] Yeah, just even saying the word heuristics, I go back to that podcast.

There’s a shortcut there that takes me there. But I’m priming an expectation setting. I understand expectation, but the priming piece, I guess you’ll have to explain that piece of heuristics and how that works here.

Jon MacDonald: The concert ticket buying story tells almost everything you need to know about that.

Because it can either set people up for success or complete failure. And it does that by clarifying how the interface will perform, indicating what actions users should take, and then managing those user expectations along that journey. So digital experiences that adhere to this may apply tactics like it.

Explicitly mentioning free shipping early in the journey or reducing cart abandonment rates or sharing estimated delivery dates to manage customer expectations, or just saying, Hey, you know what, you’re going to pay double for this ticket because we want to get rich too. Just say that up front and I probably would have been okay with your,

Ryan Garrow: I expect you to charge me 150 [00:04:00] bucks.

That’s great. So convenient. But something else stuck out just now, because you said that there were six heuristics for digital experience optimization. We only mentioned one. What are the other five? You might have told me before, but you don’t have to remind me. Yeah.

Jon MacDonald: When we talked about heuristics prior, we did talk about this briefly, and I’m not expecting you to have memorized all six of these by any means.

No, that’s your job. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That’s what I’m here for. So just call me next time you forget. But look, our team is the good has identified six of these shortcuts, right? And any site Whether it’s software as a service or ecommerce should be considering each step of these in their digital experience.

All six of those include, of course, priming and expectation setting. Easy win right there. You should get an A for getting that one because that’s what we’re talking about today, right? Trust and authority. Ease, how hard is something to do, right? Benefits and unique selling points. Making sure those are clear.

Directional guidance. Helping people through that journey. Making it easy for them to [00:05:00] get to the next step. And then six is incentives, right? So given them that little push over the edge, what that might be, I think in the future, we could probably do an episode on each, but today we’ll just focus on that primary expectation setting and we can fix those damn convenience fees while we’re at it.

Ryan Garrow: I sure hope so. Hopefully all your ticket companies listen to our podcast and then let us work on your sites.

Jon MacDonald: We have Taylor Swift on our side, I’m told. So that’s a positive. That’s

Ryan Garrow: true. Taylor, give me a call. We got to fix this. And my daughter’s won an autograph. So if I’m, if I’ve got my site, other than a convenience fee, that’s ridiculous, how do I know I’m violating this heuristic?

Is there some easy things I can see without thinking too hard?

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. Before you can start to address any of these heuristics to improve that digital experience, you have to understand if. When and where users are getting stuck and to understand if your digital experience is violating this priming and expectation heuristic, a great place to start is in user research.

You probably could have guessed that one. It seems like it comes back. [00:06:00] I think I could think of a

Ryan Garrow: jar Starbucks line. I’ve got all of that, right?

Jon MacDonald: So start talking to your users or just observing their behavior. That’s a great place to start. And as you analyze that, look for patterns. So there’s patterns like rage clicking.

I know you love that name.

Ryan Garrow: Oh, this is the first time I’ve heard rage clicking from you, I think. But I know exactly what it is because I do it.

Jon MacDonald: Everyone does it, right? And usually this signifies that experience doesn’t provide enough cues, semantics, or even timely feedback to keep you informed.

You’re clicking on something and you’re like, why is this not working? And here it’s not a link at all, maybe. Right? Low directness is the next one. This is an interesting pattern because this can be a sign of unmet expectations, meaning your systems interactions, the navigation or the language don’t match the user’s mental models of the real world or normal site conventions.

Okay? So you want your site to be direct if you think about it that way, right?

Ryan Garrow: How do I notice low [00:07:00] directness? Like I can’t see that in rage clicks.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. So this is a very one sentence summary of the entire book. Don’t make me think. Oh, so read the book. It’s this one. Yeah. The reality here is make it easy.

Be direct in what people are supposed to do. We call it low directness because the idea is if I’m looking to do something, I should be able to go right there and directly do it because I have an expectation, right? I want your phone number. Yeah, I want your phone number. I’m going to scroll down to the footer.

I’m not going to click all over your site. And if it’s not there, I’m like, Oh God, I got to click around to find this. The worst is you want a company’s address. The hack for that every time, if they don’t show it anywhere else, it’s in their privacy policy because that has to be my law.

Ryan Garrow: Or they’ve used the Shopify template and haven’t filled it in. It’s all caps in brackets address. I’m like,

Jon MacDonald: Yes. Which case their lawyer should probably call them.

Announcer: Yeah. You’re listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast focused on ecommerce growth. [00:08:00] Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with ecommerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers. And Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you.

Jon MacDonald: The third is price sensitivity. Okay, so you’re looking for this in that feedback. It often indicates poor priming, right? Because it’s unclear or maybe missing elements in that interface that typically guide people to inform them of what to expect next around pricing. So just tell me about that darn convenience fee up front and I’ve been primed.

But the good news is once you identified all these patterns, you’re You can address them with tactics to improve priming and expectation setting. It’s not hard. And doing this is a [00:09:00] really ethical way to improve customer sentiment and increase conversions.

Ryan Garrow: Which is what we all want. Now, I obviously am a very visual person, and so in this, can you paint me a picture or give me an example you’ve worked on where this was obvious to you or became obvious to

Jon MacDonald: Yeah, I have two that come top of mind. First is with a company called eManual Online. Oh, that’s right. We share them as a client. They are the largest repair manual database online, right? Our research revealed that users were confused about how eManual Online delivers the manual. Some are digital downloads, some are physical editions. And because of this mixed delivery message throughout the entire site, customers just didn’t know what to trust when they confronted this issue on the website.

They were like do I have to wait for the mail? I’m going to get a download. I have no idea what I’m buying. And so we decided to test out highlighting the delivery methods to clarify that confusion, increase transactions, etc. Not a [00:10:00] surprise, but the clear delivery method language showed a 14 percent lift.

So definitely worth it. Now. To clarify access methods for offline downloads, this resulted in a person and a stronger purchase intent as well. So not only were people converting a higher rate, but they also went directly to purchasing as opposed to clicking around the site a lot more because they felt clear that expectation had been set.

So it’s a great example of priming and expectation setting at work. Yeah, the second is with residential furnishings company. No, you’ve probably heard of Herman Miller, Yeah. In Knoll, I think they’re now called Miller Knoll, they merged, and they also own Design Within Reach, or design not within reach, depending on your budget, your financial bracket. But I will say that Knoll has a range of uniquely crafted and handmade products that you honestly can’t find anywhere else. The care and detail that goes into each piece means a lot longer lead times. [00:11:00] Everything’s handmade and shipping and delivery just takes longer. So you don’t order something from them expect to have it tomorrow.

It can take months. So what we did is we went on the site and we wanted to prime and set that expectation. So we changed the wording from lead time. Eight weeks. Okay. So it was two months to get a product. And it said lead time, eight week consumers looking at that. Like I get what lead time means, but it’s very commercial also eight weeks.

Oh my gosh. And then we changed it to made for you ships in eight weeks. Very different. We turned a negative into a positive. We primed them with that. And we said, okay, you guys, we’re going to make this just for you. And yeah, it ships in eight weeks, but it’s made for you. That makes sense. Now, why it takes that lead time makes it think, wow, they have to just go get it from the warehouse.

It takes forever with somebody walking it to me. What’s going on here. But this change had the biggest test win of the year for them in terms of revenue. And it had the benefit of turning that challenge or really long lead time into a compelling conversion [00:12:00] booster around it being made for you or custom made.

Ryan Garrow: Transparently. It sounds like making your checkout button orange instead of blue. When you’re talking about that, those words. But is it as simple for a lot of brands to almost wordsmith some of the things on their call to action arena? Not as simple as changing a button color, but thinking through that, that seems like I could help in a lot of sites.

Jon MacDonald: Oh, without question I can. And I think the reality here is the intent behind the change. Right here. We are trying to set them up. So when they get further into checkout and they’re reminded of when this is going to ship to them that they aren’t surprised because we have clearly up front told them that it’s going to be eight weeks.

But what we did is we changed the language to prime them in a way that made it more beneficial for them, right? And set that expectation up in a positive light. So there’s a lot of psychology happening in one line here that we changed. And [00:13:00] so you can easily do something similar, I would look at all of the expectations throughout your entire site.

We mentioned the cost of no products. The reality is most of the people who are coming to know, understand that the cost is a little more. So it’s not so much about priming the price. Although when you say something is handmade for you or made for you, you expect to pay a little more. You feel like there’s more value there.

Okay. So it has that helpful effect there as well, too.

Ryan Garrow: Oh, 100%. And I think that if I could force a change to every Shopify site, it would be to leverage that, the bar above the header that you can put a message in, that almost everybody on Shopify uses it for their shipping callout. Yeah. If that was just standard, like even if you said, we charge you shipping on everything.

I’m like, okay, great. I’m here because I want to buy this. But now I know that when I get to the cart, there’s going to be a four 99 charge or whatever. Yeah. Rather than trying to figure out on the site, what am I paying for shipping? Cause I usually don’t even want to put it in the cart until I know I’m like, Oh, free shipping at 99.

Okay, great. This is a 79 product. There’s going to be something, but. I’ll probably add something to [00:14:00] get me to 99 because the shipping cost annoys me.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. That right there is a great example of priming. You’re priming people to spend more, increase our average order value, which is a big tactic that we use shipping costs for quite honestly, right?

Free shipping above a certain amount. Look at your current average order value. There’s two ways to do this. The first is look at your current average order value, and then set the shipping rate to be slightly above that. Okay. That will help increase it. I promise you. The second is to look at what your most popular product is and set free shipping just above that.

And that will mean people buy the most popular product, but they’re also going to add something else to their cart. Another way, do a bundle. Right there. We’ve talked a lot about increasing average order value. Bundling is a huge way to do this, just tax something else on, and then it adds up that price you can offer it to them.

And then even as part of that bundle, you can advertise it as free shipping.

Ryan Garrow: And even when this comes out, we’re in the midst of holiday season, but one of [00:15:00] my, favorites, but also frustrating, but it works well for me is you discount a product to just below the free shipping threshold. Like your free shipping is a 49 and this gets discounted from 60 to 45.

That’s I have to have the deal because I’m cheap. I always shop deals in my nature, but then I’m like, Oh, I’m not paying for shipping. So I’m going to spend another 5 at least. And I ended up spending 15 and I spent 60 for two things. So I essentially bundled myself, but really creative discounting like that gets me.

It’s a product that everybody wants at a discount, even if it was, you have a lot of games you can play right now with pricing with discount and free shipping thresholds and adjusting those for new file customers. So many cool things you can do there.

Jon MacDonald: We even talked about that method in terms of Amazon.

And their prime day, I think that we did a recap episode on prime day and you brought up, what is it called? The arrow garden? I think it was something of that name where it’s like a little mini garden that they had lowered their price and sold way more and then immediately raised it back up and it [00:16:00] was like, they were playing the same sales

Ryan Garrow: velocity.

Yeah, because people saw the rank was like, Oh, this is Amazon’s choice in reviews on Amazon. Don’t stay on Amazon. Say historical pricing. So it’s super easy to do there.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Expectations. If you just give me the right expectations, I do most thing. Most of life is setting the right expectations.

Jon MacDonald: That’s a great way to put it. If you come into something with the right expectations to been primed on it, it’s really hard to be upset. Yeah, it’s all about aligning this experience with user expectations. So companies that nail this, though, as we’ve talked about today they see improved customer satisfaction, higher conversion rates.

It’s a win for everybody. And those that aren’t doing this, they’re just damaging their reputation. Ticketmaster has made billions off of this while also damaging their reputation to the point where Taylor Swift refuses to use them whenever possible. The key is putting yourself in the user’s shoes.

And what information do they need? What might surprise them? What’s going to confuse them? And then address those proactively. It’s all you can [00:17:00] do. And you’ll create that digital experience that feels intuitive and trustworthy. And I don’t know about you, but that’s really all you want, right? You don’t want to be left guessing.

So set those clear expectations and watch your conversion soar.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah, it’s just that easy. It’s actually not complicated. So it’s easy. But also you think about you’re paying money for traffic at any time. So that company paid for your traffic to get you to the cart and then to have you leave that’s just a waste of your spend and then it makes your

Jon MacDonald: agency look bad and we didn’t do anything wrong maybe it’s a waste of the skill set that you have hired let’s put it that way

Ryan Garrow: yes a lot of waste when you need to cancel expectations right well Jon thank you for this i’m excited to hear about the next five in the heuristics lineup As we get through this process, we will

Jon MacDonald: have you memorize them. There’ll be a quiz at the end.

Ryan Garrow: I’ll fail it. I stopped taking quizzes so many years ago.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert with Jon MacDonald and Ryan [00:18:00] Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert.com.

The post Drive and Convert (Ep. 122): How To Leverage Priming & Expectation Setting appeared first on The Good.

But have you thought about how you might leverage your current user base to increase product relevance and reach?

This can be a low-cost, high-impact way to improve product quality, re-engage dormant users, or get in front of some new eyeballs.

It’s hugely beneficial to both your tool and the users by creating positive network effects. The more people that use your product, the more valuable it becomes. It’s a self-propelling mechanism to drive growth.

What is a positive network effect?

A positive network effect is when the value of a SaaS tool increases as the user base grows.

Take LinkedIn, for example. It becomes more valuable for users if their peers, colleagues, and dream employers use the tool. You can make more connections, learn more from the user-generated content, hunt for more jobs, and generally get more out of the tool.

For SaaS companies, larger networks can lead to several competitive advantages, such as:

• Are more trustworthy
• Entice advertisers
• Encourage referrals and word-of-mouth
• Build more unique user-generated content that can’t be copied by competition
• Increase retention

Understanding network effects is only the first step. The real challenge lies in building strategies that activate and sustain these effects. Creating positive network effects typically starts by leveraging your current user base, so let’s explore five proven ways to mobilize your users for growth.

5 ways to mobilize your user base to drive growth

Products like Pinterest, SurveyMonkey, or LinkedIn use network effects to grow. Each new user or engagement encourages more new users or engagements.

Tools target different objectives with their efforts. Some might prioritize user acquisition, while others reinforce retention, monetization, or product quality.

The most effective SaaS companies often find a couple of different ways to leverage current users as part of their growth strategy. Here are some examples to inspire your efforts.

1. Increase reach with shareable features

One way to leverage your current users’ network is to build product features that encourage natural sharing and engagement. To maximize reach, they need to be easy to use, helpful, and solve a real problem for users.

Pinterest allows users to create shared ‘boards’ to collaborate on home decor, event planning, and more. This either re-engages current users or prompts new sign-ups by sharing their board with both current and new users.

Here’s how it works:

1. A current user returns to Pinterest, ready to explore new content.
2. The user creates a ‘board’ to collect commonly themed content in support of a goal (redecorating their home, brainstorming for a trip, planning an event).
3. The user saves, pins, or repins content to their board.
4. The user shares the board with a collaborator (decorator, travel partner, event planner, etc) either directly on Pinterest or via a messaging tool.
5. The collaborator is either re-engaged or prompted to sign up for an account to collaborate on the board.
6. If the board is public, other users can stumble upon a piece of content and pin to their own boards.

Another example is Calendly, which builds natural sharing into the user journey. They incorporate simple scheduling and the speed of using invitation links. It’s also brilliant in that you don’t need an account to add yourself to a user’s schedule.

Here’s how Calendly includes shareable features to increase reach:

1. A Calendly user sends an invitation link to book a meeting. The invitee can select a time without the usual back-and-forth emails.
2. The invitee schedules a meeting without the typical friction of the scheduling process.
3. If an invitee schedules a lot of meetings themselves, they’re likely to sign up for Calendly to streamline their own scheduling.
4. As new users share Calendly links, more people experience the simplicity, driving additional sign-ups.

2. Drive referrals with growth loops

While shareable features focus on increasing reach, growth loops create a self-reinforcing cycle of engagement and referrals.

Think of a growth loop framework like a flywheel: Once it’s moving, it picks up speed and sustains momentum. For example, a user finds your product, interacts meaningfully, and creates content or engages in a way that attracts other users who repeat this cycle.

The goal here is to maximize viral reach without high acquisition costs. For a viral loop to succeed, the incentive needs to resonate with the users and align naturally with the product.

DocuSign’s growth loop leverages the need for digital document signing. Every document sent for a signature serves as an introduction to the platform.

Here’s how it works:

1. A user uploads a document to DocuSign and sends it to recipients for signature.
2. Recipients receive an email with a link to the document. They review and sign without needing an account. This helps them experience the platform’s convenience.
3. Impressed, recipients often sign up for their own accounts to send and manage their own documents, especially if they frequently need to get things signed.
4. As new users send their own documents for signatures, they introduce even more users to the platform. Each document sent by a new user brings in additional recipients.

3. Improve product quality and engagement with user-generated content

In addition to growth loops, user-generated content can amplify engagement and improve product quality by turning users into contributors.

Content engagement relies on user-generated or brand-created content to attract and retain users. This thrives when content shared or created by users on the platform is accessible to non-users. New visitors become intrigued and decide to join or engage.

GitHub, for example, leverages network effects to improve product quality. The collaborative coding and open-source project visibility encourage the use of their tool. Developers join to contribute to existing projects and then end up hosting their own projects.

Here’s how Github’s engagement of their customer network works to improve product quality:

1. Developers upload projects or contribute to open-source repositories.
2. Other developers discover these projects and contribute code, fix bugs, or fork the project for personal use. Each interaction boosts the project’s visibility on GitHub.
3. Developers who were attracted by the collaborative environment sign up to host their own code. This contributes to the platform’s network effect.
4. These new projects become additional attractors that bring in new developers.

4. Drive acquisition with incentives

A way to incentivize current users to aid in acquiring new users is through referral programs. Build shareable moments, incentives, and visibility into the user journey. Each new user not only becomes a customer but also a potential referrer by making sharing a natural part of the user experience.

The best referral programs provide support and education to users, making sharing about the product as simple as possible.

A great example is Airtable, which credits $10 to your account automatically when you invite new users to the tool.

Here’s how it works:

1. Current users invite new users to Airtable or share your unique referral link.
2. When a new user signs up and verifies their email address, $10 is automatically credited to your account.
3. You can see the credits on your account page and apply them to your charges.
4. Users can accumulate the credits, so the incentive to invite new users continues.

5. Re-engage dormant users

Social community features and push/message notifications prompt dormant or inactive users to re-engage with your tool.

For example, Venmo builds social engagement into its payment tool and uses these features to drive engagement. Each transaction re-engages the network of contacts with ‘reminder’ functionality and social engagement features.

Here’s a breakdown of how Venmo re-engages users:

1. A user requests payment from a friend, roommate, or coworker. If they don’t pay promptly, the user can ‘remind’ their contact about the pending payment.
2. Once complete, Venmo posts this transaction to a public or semi-public feed. This visibility serves as social proof.
3. Friends see the transaction and can like or comment on the payment.

Tools can leverage multiple strategies

From shareable features to re-engagement tactics, each strategy leverages your users’ networks in unique ways. By combining them, you can unlock exponential growth.

Let’s use LinkedIn as an example again:

• Referrals: New LinkedIn users are encouraged to invite their friends to the tool. This creates a positive network effect by increasing acquisition immediately with each new user.
• Re-engagement: When users join LinkedIn, they’re encouraged to connect with their contacts. Each connection re-engages current users on the platform. Users post updates, share articles, and comment on others’ posts. This drives users back to the platform frequently, increases time spent, and encourages interactions that deepen the network’s value.
• Registrations: Companies post job listings on LinkedIn and widely share the URL. There is a ‘quick apply’ function for LinkedIn users, which incentivizes applicants to sign up for their own profile.

These are just a few examples of how a tool might incorporate multiple strategies leveraging their customer’s network.

Start growing with support from your user base

Ready to start leveraging your customers’ network to increase product relevance and reach? Start by defining your goal and key metrics. Do you want to improve referral rates? User activation? New registrants?

Monitor these metrics to identify bottlenecks and opportunities to improve. If a specific action isn’t driving the desired results, you may need to adjust the user engagement structure, incentives, or experience.

Other best practices for leveraging your customer’s network to increase product relevance and reach:

• Segment customers
• Leverage social proof
• Make it easy
• Celebrate success and loyalty

Ready to amplify your SaaS growth through positive network effects? Our Digital Experience Optimization Program can help you identify and implement strategies tailored to your user base.

The post Leverage Your Customers’ Network to Increase Product Relevance and Reach appeared first on The Good.

Ultimately, the buyers aren’t cowardly; they are rational and thorough in their decision-making. Forrester reported that “an astonishing 43% of B2B buyers admitted that they make defensive purchase decisions more than 70% of the time,” meaning that less than 30% of B2B buyers are risk-tolerant.

And it makes sense. They are on the hook with their company and colleagues regarding the spending. In many cases, the purchase also has a direct effect on how they do their job day-to-day.

So, this raises the question of how B2B companies, like SaaS tools, can bridge the gap between risk-averse and purchase. The answer is trust.

There is plenty we could go into on the theory and psychology of trust-building, but instead, I’d like to focus on the actionable. Specifically, one great lever SaaS companies can use to build trust with their users is website optimization.

Read on to learn:

• How trust and authority fit into the Heuristics for Digital Experience Optimization
• Strategies for identifying the trust gap in user research
• Specific tactics to build trust via the UX design and content of your website

What is the Trust & Authority heuristic?

It takes longer for B2B leaders to trust vendors, and on top of that, according to PWC’s Trust Survey, it is harder to regain that trust once lost. So, it’s crucial that SaaS companies establish and maintain trust in all their sales avenues, one of the most important being the website.

So, how do you ensure your website not only looks credible but genuinely inspires trust? The key lies in aligning your website with proven trust-building principles, like The Good’s Trust & Authority heuristic, and implementing targeted strategies to address common user hesitations.

Trust & Authority is one of the six Heuristics for Digital Experience Optimization, a tool developed at The Good to theme common optimization issues and opportunities with the user at the center of analyses.

The Trust & Authority heuristic focuses on establishing and maintaining perceived trust, authority, and security throughout the digital experience. Issues like bugs, AI-generated images/quotes, or other elements that violate users’ sense of trust can lead to disengagement. Building trust, as we know, enhances users’ confidence in the website and typically leads to a better conversion rate.

To follow this heuristic and build trust with users, you can try tactics like mitigating bugs, featuring social proof, or adding additional educational “how it works” content for complex products.

But, before you begin to solve trust and authority issues, it’s important to identify where in the funnel users are dropping off because of heuristic violations.

Identifying user trust gaps through research

User behavior often reveals where trust is lacking. Here are a few signs you’ve violated user trust that you can look for in user research.

Bugs: When site elements or pages don’t function as intended or when they produce error messages or glitches.

Attentive/Intentional Reading: When a user slowly scrolls over content on mobile or desktop, their mouse hovers over text, typically line-by-line.

Halted Scrolling: When a user pauses on the site to possibly engage with content/reorient themselves, it could indicate that the user perceives a false bottom.

Dig even deeper by speaking to your customer support teams and conducting data analysis. Try to gather both quantitative and qualitative data that helps identify violations of the Trust & Authority heuristic.

Tactics to build user trust on your SaaS website

A visually cohesive and intuitive design contributes significantly to perceived trust. Users judge credibility in milliseconds based on aesthetics alone. Clean layouts, consistent fonts, and strategic use of white space can make your website feel more authoritative. But beyond visual design, what can you do to build trust with users? Here are tactics we’ve seen work time and time again.

Get creative (and more detailed) with your social proof

When marketing and optimization teams hear they need to build trust with users, minds rightfully jump straight to social proof.

But, to effectively signal authority in today’s digital world, you need to get even more creative and even more human. Here are a few ways to do it.

Try adding social media handles to customer reviews like ActiveCampaign

We all know that featuring expert testimonials can increase trust and confidence and increase conversions in the same way positive reviews can build user confidence to make a purchase decision.

But, it’s table stakes to include reviews on your site. Try to take things a step further and make those reviews more human. ActiveCampaign, for example, uses X handles on featured reviews to increase the credibility of quotes from real users.

Or add “customer since” dates like Dynamic Yield

Alternatively, if your reviews don’t come from social media or you’re featuring a case study as social proof, you can try other added authority indicators. In the case of Dynamic Yield, a label with “customer since” dates shows the loyalty of current users along with the results they achieved with the product.

Build social proof into the user journey, like U-screen’s forms

Humans tend to “reference the behaviors of others to guide their own behavior” (NNG, 2014). To leverage this tendency, you can build different types of proof, such as social proof, testimonials, and proof in numbers, into unique areas of the site. One place that can make or break the experience is form design.

U-screen does this well on their registration page with clear proof in numbers to accompany examples of their products’ output.

To achieve similar trust-inducing outcomes, the numbers, testimonials, and social proof you’re using should be the primary, or at least secondary, text on the form screen to catch the user’s attention.

Build trust with logos and badges

Another way that SaaS companies might think to build trust with users is by featuring client logos on their sites. But again, this is table stakes for most.

To build a stronger bridge between the risk-averse client and your product, try taking a supplemental approach to featuring logos and badges.

Borrow credibility from partners like Zapier

To integrate social proof and demonstrate the value of your product, you can borrow credibility from partners.

Zapier clearly includes logos from their integration partners in the hero section of the homepage, immediately building trust with customers who are familiar with or use any of the tools they partner with.

Show your certifications and badges like Dynamic Yield

Similarly, you can feature privacy certifications or data policy badges on your site, similar to what Dynamic Yield does. And if it is close to the CTA, even better!

Offer (and then stick to) a guarantee like Freshbooks

Guarantees can help prime users to make purchasing decisions and incentivize them to purchase. They give users a feeling that the brand is making a commitment to them. Highlighting guarantees in a quickly scannable way can increase a sense of trust, reduce decision paralysis, and highlight the value of a product.

Highlighting guarantees is great for sites with high-value products and/or companies with trust-reducing user-dependent variables. Freshbooks offers a full refund within 30 days of purchasing their product. It is similar to a free trial but framed differently.

Add a how-it-works model like SignNow

Describing “How it Works” for some business models and/or features can give users the context and confidence that they need to understand competitive differentiators like price and quality.

Doing so for complex products will boost user trust, encourage buy-in to the brand, and instill purchasing confidence.

SignNow describes the steps to enable dual-factor authentication for a PDF while showing a summary of how it works to show users how simple it is to protect a document with their tool.

Improving user trust increases registrations and retention

All of these are proven tactics we’ve seen across clients, but let’s remember one key part of optimization. Not everyone’s users are the same.

Adding an industry license badge to your product page is a great way to build trust. But you shouldn’t simply add the badge and pat yourself on the back. Job well done, right? Not quite. Now, you have to actually measure whether it creates the intended trust. Otherwise, you have no idea if your tactic satisfied the issue.

To track and measure this, we suggest planning with a theme-based roadmap.

With a theme-based roadmap, you can plan, communicate, and track the initiatives and associated metrics. You also have a clear path to conduct testing to make sure changes achieve results.

By aligning your website with The Good’s Trust & Authority heuristic, you not only build confidence but also position your SaaS business for sustained growth. Take the first step toward a more trusted digital experience—and watch how it transforms your registrations and retention.

Ready to optimize your website for trust and authority? Let’s talk.

The post How to Build User Trust on Your SaaS Website appeared first on The Good.

About This Episode:

We’ve made it through Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In this episode, Jon and Ryan discuss the benefits of taking a break post-BFCM.

Check out the full episode to learn:

• Why prioritizing time away from the business is important.
• When during the business cycle it’s most valuable to step back and think. 
• Tips for making the most of your time away.

If you have questions, ideas, or feedback to share, connect with us on LinkedIn. We’re Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

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Episode Transcript:

Announcer: [00:00:00] You’re listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better ecommerce growth engine with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

Ryan Garrow: All right, Jon, it is an interesting time. In the ecommerce world right now, yesterday was Cyber Monday. We’re in it. This is the thick of it. If you’re taking time to listen to this on the date of its release, good job. You’re taking a break from something to not focus on the data in front of you. We had to record these before that, but I’m guessing some of you did not hit the expectations you had for Cyber Monday.

Some of you probably knocked it out of the park. I don’t know which ones they are, but I think either scenario, you’re at a point in the holiday season and the chaos of finishing 24, that the actions you’re going to take in the next day or two are probably not going to make or break you. It’s going to be what’s the plans and the strategy have been set.

Making one additional change may not be enough to push it one way or another. So it is what it is. And I think if you [00:01:00] can accept that, it can allow you to do some pretty cool things in 25. And that’s so rather than talk about traffic today, necessarily, I want to talk about how do we as business owners, marketers, Occasional podcasters, how do we allow ourselves to take a break?

Because I personally am, I’m terrible at it. I think I’m really hard on myself, honestly, if I take a break from business and I think it comes down to like the FOMO, the fear of missing out that if I’m not in front of my phone or computer, I mean, I might miss a call from a client. I might feel help them. I might miss a call from a company that wants to work with us or a partner that needs help.

And so I, I don’t give myself the opportunity to do that. Hardly at all. But if I’m using logic and I think about, okay, if I reach out to a company, I’m considering working with or partnering with or doing something and I get an out of office response. I don’t immediately pick up the phone and call a competitor in anger or email somebody else, but I got this person’s out of office and I can’t work with me.

It’s like, I provide grace to that business owner, that team member saying, Hey, they’re out of office. That’s I get it. That [00:02:00] happens. It’s necessary. But I don’t give that grace to myself. And I’m guessing I’m not alone in that. And on the flip side of that, I can look back and say, when I’ve taken the time to think, I find that I can think further outside the box or come up with ideas that in my role, a good or bad idea comes down to does my wife shoot it down immediately?

Or let me take it a few steps to see if it has legs. And many times I’ll get less shot down before getting off the ground. If I do take some actual time to dedicated to thinking and preparing. And so today, right after Cyber Monday, we’re not talking about predictions for next year or tactics to prepare.

We’re going to talk about stepping away to think. 

Jon MacDonald: So the first plot that comes up for me on this is I wonder. So for those who are listening to that, don’t know, Ryan ran a successful agency for years before a Logical Position acquired them. And that’s how he got folded into Logical Position. The question I have out of that is [00:03:00] I’m wondering, because what you’re talking about sounds very familiar to me as a business owner, I am wondering, do you think those traits are one related.

You still have that traits because that is what has gotten you to be successful throughout your career, including business ownership. And two, do we feel like that is what has led to your success or are there other alternative paths to success there? Right. I think we probably do a lot of thinking, but those dedicated days off to do the thinking and, and.

In mass, right? As opposed to, Oh, I’m having a cup of coffee and I’m thinking about this challenge and writing through scenarios, et cetera, right? You’re saying, Oh, no, I’m going to set a full day aside. 

Ryan Garrow: Yes. 

Jon MacDonald: Or multiple days,

Ryan Garrow: Well, it’s probably both.

Jon MacDonald: Take time off. 

Ryan Garrow: And I think you have to layer in different levels of breaks for thinking.

I think there needs to be those, you know, at a coffee shop thinking and not having [00:04:00] distractions from work. Right. You know, you can be distracted watching people, letting your brain wander. You can do like a couple of years ago, my wife and I went away for our 10 year reunion to Hawaii. No kids, no phone, nothing, just beaches.

And it was great. And that didn’t have a lot of business thinking there. And then there’s also days off. There’s nothing but focus on business, prepare, plan, insulate, whatever it happens to be. But there’s also a guilt that comes through. And if something gets has to be pushed off, it tends to be the thinking things like, Oh, I’m under pressure for, you know, we missed numbers.

I can’t possibly take time off because that would, it would show maybe that I’m not working hard enough, or if it fails, I would look back and say, Oh, if I would’ve just, I’m just taking that two hours where I went and took a walk and thought I could have been doing something productive. And so I don’t think that success has come because I didn’t take breaks or I pushed hard.

Like, I think that’s just, that’s a personality that you’re just going to push and you are who you are in that regard. I think it does require [00:05:00] somebody in your life that can recognize maybe when you’re redlining to be like, Hey, you might need to take a break and don’t know what that looks like, but just.

Maybe take a break. And there’s, there’s honestly not a lot of people in my life that can do that successfully. My wife can thankfully, and then one or two other people that can, you know, that I’ll, that are probably bold enough to say what’s wrong. Like you have, you’re not yourself or you need to take something there, 

Jon MacDonald: but I mean, paying somebody to tell you that.

Yeah. I mean, that’s. That’s, that’s essentially what therapy is for a lot of us, is to go pay a counselor to, to essentially tell you the things that you need to hear. Yeah, but you 

Ryan Garrow: can’t maybe, maybe you know them, but you’re not going to tell yourself to do it or give yourself permission. Whereas if a therapist gives me that permission, I’m like, Oh, I can do that.

You know, for you, cause you’ve had lots of success in business and all kinds of things. Where is it that you take your breaks? Is it something that you naturally do and you find time in your day? And you’ve gotten the habits or is it awkward and [00:06:00] frustrating to get to that point? 

Jon MacDonald: It is awkward and frustrating.

I have found that the reason even though my body is old and broken down in terms of basketball years, it is why I continue to play basketball and go through that pain because it is literally the one time of day that I don’t have a device in my hands, that I don’t have a screen in front of me. That I don’t have any space in my head to be outside of the moment.

Meaning I have to focus on what’s in front of me while I’m playing basketball. And the minute I don’t do that is when it starts to go downhill very quickly and downhill very quickly could be getting hit in the face of the ball. Could be whatever, right? But, you know, they talk a lot about in sports, like being in the zone.

I call, I’ve just had a great game. I just felt like, I don’t know what happened. I was in this zone. Well, that’s a state of consciousness that is really hard to get into, but you have to be Really [00:07:00] have all of your thoughts in that moment to get there. And that’s really where it’s gives me the time to step away and take a break.

Now I’m not doing a lot of thinking, right? I’m not doing a lot of thinking in terms of the business or what I should be doing next. I actually build those into my calendar and how I do that is, is I block out one day, a quarter and. My leadership team all does two days per quarter, and I do one day per quarter blocked out because I have a lot less on my calendar than they do.

So I’m able to find times here and there to work on, you know, larger items, but the team, I require them to book every quarter at our quarterly leadership session. They go through and they have to book two days, and we do that for, An interesting reason we do that because it gives them a time where they’re not going to be bugged by their team, gives them a time to go off and work on whatever they need.

It gives them a time to. You ever seen in [00:08:00] Parks and Rec on TV, they called them treat yourself days, treat yourself day. I love that show. Yeah. I don’t care if they go spend it as a treat yourself day, like have fun, go make it happen. Right. But my one ask is that they disconnect and they do, you know, if you’re going to do thinking you do it with a pen and paper or maybe writing on iPad.

What? The, not have everything turned on, you know, and 

Ryan Garrow: it seems to work. Folks seem to really, really like it. How do you measure the success of that for the team? Since it’s not necessarily a quantifiable, like we did this two days for everybody and we got this.

Jon MacDonald: What happens is, it’s not two days in a row, it should be two days spread out, ideally.

So at the end of that one day, the way we judge success is, are you coming back? We call them clarity breaks. Are you coming back with more clarity on something? So it could be that you have a client challenge that you’ve just been banging your head against. You don’t know what’s going on, why it’s happening.

You’ve [00:09:00] tried it. You think you’ve tried everything, right? And you take the clarity break and you get a little bit of distance and you’re just sitting on it. You know, sometimes people say I get my best ideas in the shower, et cetera, right? You’re taking a bit of a mental break. You’re focusing on something else for a minute, and then it’s like, oh, I haven’t thought about that.

I haven’t tried that yet. That’s what a clarity break can really do for the team, and all I ask is when they come back, That they share what, what clarity they had, what was that? And without fail, every time we’ve come back with some problem being solved. 

Ryan Garrow: Super valuable there. So for you personally, you do it once a quarter for the business.

And are there different topics that you want to think from a quarterly standpoint? Like for me, it’s, it’s all about the business cycle. Usually at different times of year, I can take better breaks, but how does it work in your world? 

Jon MacDonald: Well, I think, you know, for In short, we do quarterly sprints with quarterly rocks, so that we can do a business cycle, [00:10:00] right?

But I also think that it doesn’t need to be tied to any particular time period. Necessarily. One of the most reflective time periods for me is the break forced break between Christmas and New Year’s. So every year we shut down the good between Christmas and New Year’s, because like you talked about, we just had, you know, all the holiday sales going on with our clients.

They are burned out. They’re also to the point where, Hey, we hit Christmas. Return season is going to start, you know, we’re gonna have to process all I get through that season, but there’s this lull in between where everyone has who can purchase a gift has done it. And now you hit the 24th, 25th and you’re like, sigh of relief.

I’m here. Right. And so we’ve been able to take advantage of that. And that’s been probably the closest thing to a business cycle, but it’s, it’s. Paid time off that it’s just forced for everyone on the team. And it’s, that has been a great way to recharge. Yeah. I like that. How about you? [00:11:00] What, what, what are the periods you find more valuable to step back and think?

Ryan Garrow: I have similar things like in e comm like that last week of the year is it’s, it’s very easy in the ecommerce world just to be like. unplugged because almost everybody else is. Google shuts down for that, that period. Like there’s, there’s still advertising that happens. There’s still people making transactions, but at the end of the day, like it’s a pretty lights out, like take the time.

And so my wife has pretty much locked that down and said, you’re unplugged, whether you want to be or not. And we’re having family time. And so she has very strong guardrails around that. So that time is actually not great from a business standpoint to come up with ideas. That’s more about being present with kids and making sure I’m, you know, around for those important things happening.

This period of time right now, like in the thick of all the intensity, it’s actually a downtime for me in the business cycle because all the strategy is done. Like, there’s no companies thinking about moving or very few thinking about moving agencies. They may be angry right now. And if you’re angry, give me a call right after [00:12:00] this, but it’s the, it’s the execution time right now.

So our team that we’ve spent the months before planning all of this and getting into it, they’re now like in the thick of it. They’re not happy that I’m not working probably as hard. As they are right now, but looking back at September, October, that’s when a lot of our, our e com execution team, they are taking vacations and they should, because there’s a lot less time to do that between Thanksgiving and New Year’s for us as a team.

So now is a great time for me because Q1 is usually a really big hit the ground running. Yeah, you know this. There’s just tons of content that gets put out on what happened at 24. What’s happening at 25? How did holiday do great? How did it suck? We’ll find out soon But and it’s like q1 econ travel events.

I think last year there was like six weeks where It was just a gauntlet where every single person we work with in ecomm was like, Oh yeah, I got to be in LA this week and the next week I have Vegas and then I go back to San Diego and I go back to Vegas and it’s just, Q1 is not the time to be trying to set plan because it’s just draining the speaking and the [00:13:00] meetings, all that.

But so putting it, I think breaks in your schedule around that and intentional is important and understanding and giving yourself grace to do that. I think it’s even more difficult when the business is not doing well. To do that and say, Oh my gosh, like if you own the business and it’s down year over year, and the team is struggling to keep up or think of options, I think it’s probably the more important time that you as a business owner or head of marketing steps back and says, man, I got to get some, something’s not working and we can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Therefore I’ve got to. You know, take a break, step away, figure out how we’re going to think through this and how we’re going to brainstorm new ideas and do that. So that’s, and then when it’s going well, it’s like things are going great. Just keep redlining pedal to the metal and let’s keep doing it because it’s working.

Announcer: You’re listening to Drive and Convert a podcast focused on ecommerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate [00:14:00] optimization agency that works with ecommerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers, and Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization, and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you. 

Jon MacDonald: Where are some of the places you do this thinking, right, because when you find the right time, where do you go? What do you, what do you do? 

Ryan Garrow: I have to find it. I can’t do it in the office or I’m normally doing all the work things because it’s too easy for me to like, think of like, Ooh, I could just flip the computer on or it’s a phone ding. I’m like, Oh, I got to get that.

Um, so I’ve got to separate myself. So thankfully I’ve got. I’ve got nine acres and multiple buildings. So I can do some of that on the property itself. But even then, because it’s, I work from home most of the time, it’s, you know, just going to the barn and doing a [00:15:00] workout, not quite going to cover it for me.

So some of it happens here, but I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Mount Angel Abbey, but I love It takes me about 45 minutes to drive there and they started, they started brewing beer. So I haven’t been there since, tried their beer yet, but in the next couple of weeks I get to go there and I’m going to go try their beer after I’m done thinking, hopefully.

But they’ve got a library there. And most people don’t go to libraries. And they’ve got a periodicals room right off the side. And these monks never come in there. I’ve been there so many times. And they have great comfortable chairs. I just plop down and I’m usually there for usually about eight hours.

And totally unplugged. I’ll have, you know, my notebook, some of my past notes of times there, what I’ve done, and I’ll usually come with some data preprinted out on what I may be trying to solve. And so I plan to go there in the next couple of weeks and it would be what worked, what didn’t work in 24. Um, what are the goals that I’ve hit and what did I not hit?

And then what are we trying to do in 25? And those would be the things that I’m [00:16:00] really trying to think through and Process during that day and try to come out with some clarity, kind of my version of a clarity day. 

Jon MacDonald: I think I just put two and two together that that is also when maybe the grow with Garo email comes out after one of those days, because it kind of sounds like the team that you’ve done it and sent out the email.

Ryan Garrow: You know, and my, my emails have gotten wordy lately. So I’ve had to like, okay, do I need to start splitting these up into multiple emails or the one right now that’s good? While we’re recording this, there’s one that was supposed to come out yesterday and ended up being way too long. So I’m trying to, is it a two part?

Is it, that’s a giant blog post and I changed it. Who knows? But yes, lots of thinking comes out and lots of emails and words. 

Jon MacDonald: Better to have more than this. Yeah. Well, bring the, the kind of floor topics that we’re here. We’ll talk about it. Maybe they’re a little too meaty for an email, but we could have a conversation.

I love that. I, I love that. As you were saying that. I googled Mount Angel Abbey because I need to go check that out. It’s a really cool place.

Ryan Garrow: and you can actually, there’s a great, a good German sausage place. It’s where they do, it’s right there around Mount Angel. They [00:17:00] have the big giant Oktoberfest in the Portland area, I guess in Silverton. Yeah. Love it. 

Jon MacDonald: Okay. Count me in next time I’m, I’m there. What kind of things do you, processes thinking about in that time, right? So we have a great location. We kind of, well, first of all, we set the time, you found a great location. Now, what are the types of things that you’re thinking about processing during that time?

Ryan Garrow: Well, I want to come out of these times with new ideas and things to try and to scale and build on what we’ve already gotten to. And so, you know, from a, from a brand standpoint or growing a brand, it’s going to be great. We saw these things that worked and where was the most valuable business? Like where was the, the, I spent, you know, minuscule amounts of effort for massive return.

I want more of that if I can, rather than even medium return for medium effort or little return for lots of effort. I mean, if I have a choice and I can, I’m brainstorming anything as possible. That is another thing I think about in brainstorming, like I, I have to approach it [00:18:00] from anything as possible.

Like you just have to, if you have a brainstorm like that, like you need to mentally get to a place that you can do that. I think that really get the most impact out of thinking clarity breaks. But it’s okay. How can I duplicate that? You know, what does that look like in 25? Like if I had this one great success that, and I’ve worked backwards on how I got to that.

Cause it’s usually not just a magically some deal came about and produced a ton of revenue and profit. I love those, but I still haven’t experienced one yet. So I want one. If you’ve got one, send me, send me a few hundred grand. I will take it. And, uh, I will agree that it can happen. But I want to see, you know, for somebody in ecommerce, it’s which products just converted really well.

Were there, can I duplicate those or expand on that product line? It was there an email campaign that stands out. There’s like, man, when we sent this one email to this audience, it was like an explosion of revenue and goodness that came out of that top influencers. There’s always going to be winners and losers in your [00:19:00] influencer realm.

So. Which ones just engaged and leaned into the brand a lot and provided you a lot of value? How do you find more of them? How do you maybe just deepen that relationship, too? How do you provide more value from them? And i’ll start to filter those down as i’m thinking through which one was more than likely a random one off And then which one maybe could be duplicated and that’s really where I start Thinking through and I like a mood board almost like okay.

I thought that I see this thing here I’m I don’t take mood boards to the periodicals room, but mentally I’m thinking through that.

Jon MacDonald: I thought the Abbey’s surely would.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Like, Oh, this guy brings like, Oh, it’s like dumb empties is giant SUV into our periodicals room and sits for 10 hours. But thankfully iPads have lots of storage and they can get lots of things in there.

So, so yeah, it’s about, uh, more with less effort so that I can test more things. So if I can duplicate this one big thing that lets me maybe spend more effort in nurturing something that may not pay off in 25 or may not work right, but it’s going to possibly be my [00:20:00] 26 or 27 payoff. Or maybe I need to invest in developing a product, but that’s two years out.

So I really have to manipulate product A right now to get me through 25. And how do I make that happen in a way that’s going to make my clientele excited. 

Jon MacDonald: That’s a lot of thinking about data sets. A lot of times people are going and they’re looking to brainstorm something new. What, what, do you have a process for how you kind of think about overall growth, more of a brainstorming, less of a beyond, you know, or beyond data, really?

Ryan Garrow: Yeah, there’s a couple things that I think it’s usually comes down to I’m solving a problem. So I’ve got a problem that I just haven’t been able to solve and so it’s like when your team goes out for those clarity breaks, like I can’t solve this problem. I need to step away and think about it from a different angle.

And so I think if you’re solid, like if I’m coming up with a new product, It’s man, my product doesn’t do this specific thing. And I don’t know how to make that. I don’t know how to make it happen. Maybe it needs to do X, Y, Z. Okay. Well, they may need to take a break [00:21:00] and start thinking about this from a different perspective.

Or, you know, one of the things you tell is like, okay, go to, go to Starbucks and buy somebody coffee and ask them some random questions. That may not be Starbucks, but there’s Slack channels. There’s. Reddit forum. I mean, there’s so many ways to find relatively intelligent people to ask questions to, and, and they’ll, they’ll engage, they’ll give you answers that they think some of them may be worthless and some of them might be really good.

But I like, so I like trying to solve a problem. If I’m coming up with a new product or new idea, like I really want to solve this and I think there’s potential because I see the total addressable market for this particular thing. Let’s think through that. If I’m expanding a current business, I almost always and you’ve seen this for, I don’t know, close to 13, 14 years.

I think about it from a partnership standpoint, because I think coming alongside another company that’s got similar clientele or similar access to the people or groups that I want to target is so much easier than trying to You know, go out and fish for them individually. So how can I [00:22:00] make 1 plus 1 equals 4 rather than 1 plus 1 equals 2?

And I try to do that a lot of times with partners, both in a product based business and in a service based business, like Logical Position and The Good. And so I’ll think through, and when I’m brainstorming, it gets really weird and all over the place, but you know, it might be If I’m trying to target 5 million e com brands, I have to think really far outside the box because there are so many agencies trying to target a 5 million e com brand.

I would hate to have my phone on the internet as a 5 million e com brand. That would just be terrible. I mean, everybody’s every day, there’s probably 10 emails coming into, I want to buy a list of this or this or this. I’m like, ah. Don’t know why they can’t figure out another way to try to sell me a list.

Maybe that’s what I need to solve. Selling data lists to people that can buy them. I think that they’re selling it by putting you on the list. That’s what it sounds to me. They just make sure I open emails evidently, even though I take read receipts off. But let’s think through like if you’re thinking through five million dollar online e com brands, that owner, [00:23:00] yeah, may have kids, they vacation somewhere, they, they, eat food, I’m guessing.

They probably work out, they go to events, they go to concerts, they have their favorite football team. I mean, it’s not like they’re not humans and have different things they’re paying for. So it’s figuring out, okay, what’s an, a company that has them as a client that doesn’t compete with me and has maybe never thought about digital marketing ever as a partner.

And so I’ve done some, Just, I’ve got some really out of the box partnerships that we’re nurturing, but like some of them are like plugins for QuickBooks. Like okay, they’d probably hate marketing numbers. I’m like, Hey, you see them though. You see the credit card transactions. Let’s think about this. Or the bookkeepers that are working with all, like the bookkeepers see all these transactions.

There’s one. One company that I was talking to that has a, uh, they process most of the accounts payable, and they work with a company that you may know called Brex and process all of their rewards on the back end, like tons of data. Like I want to see [00:24:00] everybody that spends at least 10, 000 a month on Google.

You’ve got the data. And you’ve never thought about, what could I do with that? I’ve got an idea. 

Jon MacDonald: I think a lot of folks don’t know that part of your role at LP is, is partnerships and you’ve always brought creative ideas to partnerships between Logic Position and The Good. So that’s, that’s always been awesome to see as well.

We know based on the conversation today, you got to really dedicate the time to take the break. Right. And you can do it preplanned like I do it, or you can, you know, like, Hey, you got to have two per quarter or whatever, or you could do it more of like, Hey, I, you know, I’m redlining and you’re bright and let’s go make that happen.

A break could be two types could be taking that personal side or focusing on the business side, right. And trying to solve a problem or brainstorm. Got to have a great setting for either. Beach, no kids, just your wife, you know, awesome. Or that periodical room at an Abbey and Olympic Valley. You gotta have the right, right spot.

Right. And, and then there’s a lot to think about once [00:25:00] you’re there that I don’t think a lot of people. Realize until they’re in that moment. So really interesting. 

Ryan Garrow: And I think if everybody, you know, whether you can take the break now, depending on where you are in the marketing chain, if you’re the one actually pushing buttons, it may be more difficult to step away from your Google account for the next couple of weeks.

In the next month, you should take one because I think you’re 25 will benefit. The more people like Jon that you require to take a clarity day, say, Hey, at this point, I don’t know who the president’s going to be. We may, we may know later it, the economy is going to go up. It’s going to go down and the, your market will go up and go down.

And the key is going to be, how do you continue to scale and grow regardless of what that looks like? And if you take some clarity days, I think it’s possible. Even if you don’t have time 

Jon MacDonald: right now, the one thing you could do is open your calendar and block out that day so that nothing gets booked on that day in the future.

Ticks 30 seconds, just roll the die and pick that number of days away and see if it happens, whether it’s a couple of weeks or maybe it’s, it’s a month from now. But just picking that day, putting it aside, [00:26:00] and you don’t even have to plan it right now, but put it on your calendar is, is what you can do. So nothing else.

Ryan Garrow: Everybody can go put a calendar appointment on it. It’s all you do every day anyway, probably. 

Jon MacDonald: Well, thank you for sharing this, Ryan. I appreciated this, this topic that’s not necessarily about driving traffic or converting sites. I, I thought that was great, so thank you. 

Ryan Garrow: Thank you. Best of luck the rest of this year, Jon. Let’s make it happen. 

Jon MacDonald: Let’s do it.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe@driveandconvert.com.

The post Drive and Convert (Ep. 121): Don’t Forget to Take a Break Post-BFCM appeared first on The Good.

For everyone else, the holiday season can feel like the worst time to wedge in annual planning. User behavior is erratic. Campaigns planned months ago are finally put into play. And with only 16 working days between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, there’s hardly enough time to finish this year, let alone plan for next.

Despite the time challenges and the tasks at hand, annual planning is an essential part of every mature product team’s success. We asked eight digital leaders for their take on how to make OKRs and roadmaps sing.

Keep reading for insights and advice from:

• DiAmanté Astillero, Sr. Manager of Product Strategy & Operations at Skims
• Christine Basile, Director of Product Management, Spins
• Rosie Hoggmascall, Fractional Head of Growth and Founder at Growth Dives
• Sumita Paulson, Senior Strategist at The Good
• Ariana Cofone, Fractional COO and Founder at Secret Ops
• Yao Wang, Group Director at Mercury Insurance
• Maggie Paveza, Senior Strategist at The Good
• Trina Moitra, Head of Growth at Convert

Start with goals, then tap your team for intuition

So, what is the best first step for annual planning?

According to successful product teams, the recipe is a clear North Star, the right people in the room, and a data-driven mindset.

Layering these three elements gives you a great foundation to start your planning.

Start with a clear North Star

Our experts were clear on one thing, which is that rallying the organization starts with a clear vision at the top. Without direction from leadership, it’s hard to involve the team.

“Annual planning really does start at the top,” says DiAmanté Astillero, Sr. Manager of Product Strategy & Operations at Skims.

“It’s super important for us to understand what the North Star is. If [leadership] is able to set that vision, set those goals for the company, then your team or your organization can start to bubble up and speak to what initiatives can drive and march to that North Star.”

Tap the team for insights

Once the North Star is clearly defined, Astillero suggests tapping into the embedded wisdom within each department, including engineering, marketing, product, and customer service, among other disciplines.

“Every team - whether it’s sales, marketing, customer success, legal, or product - contributes unique insights, from revenue trends to customer feedback to market shifts. It really requires teamwork to shape the bigger picture,” says Christine Basile, Director of Product Management at Spins.

Ariana Cofone, Fraction COO and Founder at Secret Ops, puts it this way, 

"Annual planning is like hosting a potluck—you need everyone to bring their best dish to the table. Founders, leadership teams, department heads, and customer-facing voices (like sales or support) are non-negotiable. You want high-level strategic thinkers and those who are in the trenches daily, so you get a well-rounded view of what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s got potential.”

Using this embedded knowledge helps leaders understand what challenges and opportunities are at the top of each department's mind and what themes are common across the company.

Give users a seat at the table

In addition to tapping departments for their perspective, experts stressed the importance of giving the end user a seat at the table in your annual planning. “I consider customer data non-negotiable in planning,” says Basile.

For Rosie Hoggmascall, Fractional Head of Growth and Founder at Growth Dives, the key is using data to understand where users get hung up in the conversion funnel.

“Look at the bottlenecks. Really look at the data and work out where the biggest area of improvement needs to be. That’s a full-funnel analysis of each step of the customer journey.”

Astillero suggests that customer experience teams should play a big part in forming your OKRs. Common complaints that come from users directly are an incredible way to include the user perspective in your work. “That first-party, real, qualitative data is super super important.”

So, for Hoggmascall, analyzing user bottlenecks through data is essential, while Astillero emphasizes leveraging customer feedback to inform planning directly. Together, these approaches ensure the user’s voice is present at every stage of the process.

Evaluate the previous year’s experiments

While we’re planning for next year, it’s important to evaluate the current year. “Lessons from 2024 should guide where you double down, experiment, or pivot,” says Cofone. 

If you have an active experimentation program, our experts suggest you review the tests you’ve run in the past year.

“Previous experiments offer a trove of insights,” says Sumita Paulson, Senior Strategist at The Good.

“Reviewing ‘learners’ especially, which is what we call tests that don’t win, is a great way to understand what you haven’t been able to adequately solve for. There’s usually a ton of opportunity there.”

To Paulson, reviewing learners is a critical step because it helps shorten the time-to-action.

“You have the background from original research, and you’re armed with insights from the variant that didn’t perform as you hypothesized. You’ll be able to apply that to a roadmap.”

This retrospective approach not only identifies gaps but also accelerates progress by building on past learnings.

Opportunity size with the right data

Once you’ve touched base with the experts around you, reflected on the last year, and know what might move the needle, it’s time to do some opportunity sizing. That’s where good data is essential.

“You may have a hunch as to what you need to work on, but bringing data to the conversation adds a level of clarity and direction that is non-negotiable,” says Maggie Paveza, Senior Strategist at The Good.

For prioritizing on-site or in-app changes, Paveza recommends running a report in Google Analytics for a 12-month period, paying special attention to the effectiveness of various segments and understanding how metrics vary across page, device type, user groups, and channel groups. To Maggie, it’s all about understanding where effort and impact are at an optimum. “I like to ask myself, ‘If I could get a 5% uplift in any of these areas, what would that look like?’” says Maggie.

For Astillero, being able to define the potential ROI of the opportunities doesn’t just support prioritization but helps you advocate for resources.

“If you're able to assign some dollar amount impact or KPI-driven impact to whatever initiatives that you're working on, you have a better chance of negotiating and compromising with your stakeholders and the resources that you need to get those things over the line.”

Practice two-way communication

The level of fidelity decided on during annual planning varies widely from company to company. While some leaders build roadmaps with Gantt charts and loose timelines, others simply set OKRs and expect apt teams to figure out how to do it.

Each approach has earned valid criticism:

• Roadmaps with rigid sprints can instill a false sense of confidence, and their inflexibility can put unnecessary pressure on the team
• OKRs that come top-down without loose initiatives often feel like “extra work” to the individual contributors on the ground

Whatever approach you decide on, experts agree that the key to making a plan that’s both meaningful and actionable is transparency. “When in doubt, involve the team; they’ll often have great insight on what matters most,” says Cofone.

Yao Wang, Group Director at Mercury Insurance, says transparency and authority are key to making OKRs meaningful at every level of the company. “We are trying to find a balance of OKRs that guide the specialist on the ground to make a decision.”

To Wang, transparency is a two-way street. Leaders need to provide clarity about how the vision was formed, and individual contributors need a mechanism to share how their work contributes to the larger objectives.

Don’t forget about research

While it’s tempting to look at the opportunities at hand and want to jump into action, experts caution not to forget about research. Hoggmascall puts it bluntly: “Put research on the roadmap.”

“It’s a valid use of time and can mean that you are not wasting resources on areas where you don’t understand the customer.”

Paulson says carving out time for research initiatives is especially important for those who don’t have an “always on” research mechanism like on-site surveys or CSAT scores.

“We’re always working to improve the customer experience, and an important part of that is just keeping an eye out for hidden friction. It’s a great way to catch bugs and make immediate improvements, but it also means that we’re always adding things to the backlog and building a deepened understanding of your audience.”

Paulson stresses that for her clients, “once per year research is nowhere near enough to get an edge.”

Trina Moitra, Head of Growth at Convert, agrees that research can make or break your annual planning efforts.

"Original research is non-negotiable. Put together a team if you can … and go after qual/quant data. You are sitting on both. You just don’t know it."

Prioritize ruthlessly

Once you’ve crafted an aspirational yet actionable annual plan, don’t be afraid to express priorities with cutthroat clarity.

As Wang expressed, giving employees clarity as to which objectives and KPIs are top priority emboldens them to make decisions that truly support the company.

“It's hard for the top to guide everything. But if each person can ask in their own right ‘Is that the most important thing?’ that’s valuable to everyone.”

Moitra added that the team at Convert uses a helpful three-step framework to prioritize initiatives. The team asks:

• What are the current business priorities (strategy review) and how would the undertaking impact them? 
• What can I project about the outcome? 
• What can I delete to free up additional resources to tackle both?

"By the time we’ve answered all three questions, we know what to do," she says.

Set a good foundation for 2025

Instead of approaching annual planning like a task to check off, embrace the opportunity to align your organization around common goals.

“Planning is about bringing people together to create a shared understanding of what success looks like and crafting a roadmap that everyone can rally behind,” says Basile.

Hopefully, you can find inspiration in the delicate balance of strategic vision and practical execution that the experts summarized in their tips. Their success is proof of concept.

If you’d like to learn how to incorporate experimentation and compounding growth into your planning, get in touch here. The Good works with product teams to optimize the digital experience with research, validation, and implementation.

The post Eight Product Pros on How to Ace Annual Planning appeared first on The Good.

So, once you acquire a new customer, it’s crucial you deliver the value and user experience to keep them around. This is the whole point of the product-led growth (PLG) movement and is usually a major optimization focus. Make the product so good that they can’t imagine life without it.

But, even though we believe wholeheartedly in PLG, it’s naively idealistic to assume you’ll never send a customer to the brink of cancellation on your product experience alone. So, another lever you can pull to reduce churn is adding or optimizing a cancellation flow.

Rather than approaching a customer who is looking to cancel as a lost cause, take it as an opportunity to listen to their needs and finally address them with the right experience or offer.

There are plenty of SaaS companies out there that are already getting it right. In our work with clients, we’ve researched and reviewed hundreds of cancellation flows and analyzed them to determine what works to reduce churn. We’ve also conducted rapid tests to validate our ideas.

In this article, we’re opening the box on these learnings to show you what the best SaaS cancellation flows have in common and what really saves users within the online cancellation journey. Make the most of that sunk CAC, and let’s optimize your flow.

What is a cancellation flow?

A SaaS cancellation flow is the process that guides users through the steps to cancel their subscription or account for a software tool. It typically takes place while the user is logged into their account and includes multiple steps that gather data/feedback about their experience and offer alternatives or incentives with the goal of retention.

The cancellation journey can happen either on-site or in-app, depending on the tool. Either way, it typically follows a flow of:

• The user navigates to their profile/dashboard and clicks ‘cancel’
• They are prompted to choose a reason and sometimes a sub-reason for cancellation
• The tool offers some sort of product switch/downgrade offer
• The user either accepts the offer or proceeds to cancel
• Post-cancellation, the tool typically sends a follow-up confirming cancellation

For product teams, the cancellation journey can offer rich insights into what your customers value and what is missing from your product experience. The ‘reason for canceling’ along with the user profile data can paint a clear picture of where you might need to focus optimization efforts.

When to implement or optimize a cancellation flow

Beyond being good practice to review your digital journey regularly, there are some additional events that should prompt you to focus on the cancellation flow:

• High churn rates: If significant numbers of customers are turning over, it is probably time to address your cancellation flow. Review or add a step that collects feedback on why they are leaving.
• Customer feedback gaps: If you are collecting customer feedback but aren’t getting answers about why they’re leaving, a cancellation flow can help gather insights into customer dissatisfaction.
• Regulatory compliance: As your business scales, you need to ensure continued compliance with regulations like GDPR. Leveraging a clear cancellation process where users can opt-out is not only good practice but also a requirement in most places.
• New product launches or changes: If a company is launching new features or making significant changes to its service, a cancellation flow can gather early feedback on customer reactions and find ways to ease the transition.

What the best cancellation flows have in common (with examples)

From dashboard interactions to post-cancellation follow-ups, effective cancellation flows share common strategies for reducing churn.

Let’s break this down phase by phase, with real-world examples to inspire your optimization efforts.

Phase 1: Before initiating cancellation

The dashboard is the first line of defense against churn. Here’s what works:

• Reinforce the benefits of being a subscriber with compelling content.
  • Highlight subscription benefits like exclusive features.
  • Showcase features the user isn’t engaging with.
• Offer easy ways to solve common issues before users cancel
  • Let users validate their subscription status without clicking cancel
  • Show solutions to common technical issues
• Tailor the dashboard to the type of user
  • Require users with high cancellation intent to scroll through value-focused content before clicking cancel.
  • Give users with limited paid features the opportunity to upgrade from the dashboard.
  • For mid-funnel users, share options to downgrade their plan or, at minimum, show less expensive plan options.
• Provide alternatives to cancellation.
  • Offer compelling ways to manage their subscriptions that are not cancellation: pause, skip, snooze, report an issue, remind me later, etc.

Example: Canva value-focused dashboard

Canva is an online graphic design tool that lets users create visuals like social posts, posters, presentations, and more.

The Canva dashboard for premium users focuses on all the benefits and opportunities to use the tool. It includes new features, drops, and changes. It highlights where users aren’t making the most of their subscription ‘Star designs’ or ‘remove backgrounds’ as CTAs are benefits-focused. This keeps users engaged and always finding new value in the product.

Example: Opus’ clear subscription status and plan management options

Opus is an AI video repurposing tool that clips and captions long-form videos into short-form content.

Along with having quick reminders about how to use the tool on the main dashboard log-in (‘turn long videos into viral shorts’ and ‘add captions only’), once a user clicks on the ‘Subscription’ button, there is a clear overview of current plan status and management options. Users are presented with options to change their plan, add more packs, and review all of the features of their current subscription, all before the cancel button.

Phase 2: During the cancellation flow

Once users start the cancellation flow, the goal shifts to retaining them through clear communication and targeted offers. Key strategies include:

• Personalize offers based on the reason for canceling
  • For users who cite “too expensive” as a reason for canceling, an offer or discount is presented to appeal to their price sensitivity.
  • For users who cite “don’t use the tool,” an alternative to cancellation is presented (like pause, snooze, etc.)
• Emphasize the value users will lose if they cancel
  • Show the subscriber exclusive benefits to which they will lose access.
  • Remind free trial users of what they are giving up on by canceling their subscription before the trial ends.
• Differentiate the final cancellation step from the rest of the flow
  • Emphasize what the user is about to lose.
  • Ensure it’s visually distinct from the rest of the cancellation journey in messaging and design, instilling a sense of missing out and finality.

Example: Rocket Money engaging flow with multiple downgrade options

Rocket Money is a budgeting app that analyzes users’ bills and spending so they can find places to save.

In the cancellation flow, the tool offers multiple save tactics, including pick your own pricing, valuable features that haven’t been used (‘get your credit report’), and clear opportunities to reactivate post-cancellation.

Phase 3: After cancellation

Even after cancellation, there’s a chance to re-engage users. Effective post-cancellation strategies include:

• Sending emails highlighting new features or exclusive offers.
• Using the dashboard as a reactivation hub for canceled subscribers or free-tier users.

Example: Audible re-engagement offers after cancellation

Audible is an audiobook app from Amazon that allows users to purchase and listen to a library of books.

After canceling an account, a user is redirected to their dashboard, which clearly shows when they have their subscription, a special offer to reactivate the subscription, and recommended books that would interest the user.

Example: Evernote re-engagement offers after cancellation

Evernote is a task management and note-taking app that can be used as a virtual notebook.

Post-cancellation, Evernote sends an email letting the user know about new features: Evernote now syncs with Microsoft Outlook Calendar. The user is offered a week of Evernote Professional to try out the feature.

Example: Grammarly ‘Premium Update’ Weekly Emails

Grammarly is a cloud-based writing assistant that checks grammar, spelling, and more for users.

Grammarly Premium users receive a weekly ‘premium update’ email with statistics about their usage, writing, and productivity. The bottom of the email shows the features you are using and what you are missing. Post-cancellation, users continue to receive these emails until their original subscription period is up. This keeps the value in front of them and reminds them what they will miss out on when their subscription ends.

Reducing churn goes beyond an optimized cancellation flow

Optimizing your cancellation flow is only one part of the churn-reduction equation. The insights gathered—such as common reasons for canceling—can guide broader improvements in your customer experience.

Leverage surveys/customer service data to understand why people are canceling, their profiles, and when they drop off. Analyze the reasons for cancellations and retention rate data to find out why they are dropping off and optimize the experience long before they even get to the point of cancellation.

To reduce churn effectively, focus on:

• Transparency and ease of cancellation
• Feedback collection via short exit surveys
• Personalized retention offers
• Data-driven insights & continuous optimization

If you need support optimizing your cancellation flow or beyond, get in touch with our team at The Good. We operate as your fractional product team and can pinpoint opportunities you’d otherwise miss out on.

The post Reduce Churn: What The Best SaaS Cancellation Flows Have In Common appeared first on The Good.

I have no doubt that your SaaS product has countless things that make it great. But do users intuitively understand those benefits and unique selling points across your digital experience? Are you making sure they know exactly what sets you apart no matter where they are in their journey? 

If your answer is anything less than an enthusiastic “yes,” this article is for you. We’re sharing how you can identify and address the gaps in your benefits and unique selling points.

What is the benefits & unique selling points heuristic?

Benefits and unique selling points differentiate products/services by highlighting unique value promises. They show users why they should choose to purchase from you instead of elsewhere. 

Without clear benefits and unique selling points, you leave the user uncertain whether it is right for them. 

Digital experiences that adhere to this heuristic may apply a tactic like breaking down a differentiating feature in a demo video or building an interactive comparison chart that helps users clearly see the advantage of their service/product.

Benefits and unique selling points is one of the six Heuristics of Digital Experience Optimization developed by our team at The Good. The full list includes:

1. Priming & Expectation Setting
2. Trust & Authority
3. Ease
4. Benefits & Unique Selling Points
5. Directional Guidance
6. Incentives

These heuristics theme common optimization issues and opportunities. Optimizing your digital experience through the lens of heuristics keeps the user at the center of analyses. When done correctly, it will ensure your strategy creates journeys that feel familiar, do what they say, and function intuitively.

Knowing this heuristic is the first step. Now, let’s look at how to spot areas where you may be falling short.

Use research to understand where benefits & USPs are unclear 

It’s important to understand where and when users are missing the value promise of your product. 

A great way to deepen your understanding of the current experience is with user research. 

Research methods like session recordings, heatmap analysis, and user testing may indicate you are in violation of the benefits and unique selling points heuristic. Watch for these common signs that your benefits and USPs may not be coming across clearly:

Low Directness

• Research methodology: Session recordings
• How it manifests: Users can be seen scrolling through the site looking for specific content and struggling to find items of interest, possibly hesitating on the site, suggesting uncertainty.
• What it means: If you’re noticing patterns of users hesitating to click when looking at the menu or visiting several pages before finally lingering on a page, they may need support in wayfinding. 
• What to do about it: Take low directness as a sign that users need a little directional guidance and use it as a jumping-off point to further evaluate your navigation, labels, and page nesting. If you have a flagship use case that regular customers swear by, try to get users to see it (and its value) earlier, and don’t make them dig for it. 

Attentive/Intentional Reading

• Research methodology: Session recordings
• How it manifests: When a user slowly scrolls over content on a desktop, their mouse hovers over text, and when they are intensely reading, you might even see them go line-by-line.
• What it means: When users demonstrate a detailed reading of the fine print, it may indicate that they are looking for something they simply can’t find or trying to determine if the product fits their use case.  
• What to do about it: Keep an eye out for sessions that include intense reading and try to determine what content the user was looking for (and not finding) so you can serve that up more prominently in the user experience. For consumable products, that might mean clearer nutritional benefits. For a digital product, it might mean showcasing compatibility or use cases. 

Positive Sentiment or Negative Sentiment

• Research methodology: User testing
• How it manifests: User expresses positive or negative emotions towards the site/brand or an element of the site/brand.
• What it means: If, in early testing, users aren’t connecting to your product, you might hear subtle hints like “I would want to go back and make sure to evaluate the alternatives.” When users don’t clearly understand your unique value proposition, they’ll fail to connect and indicate they’re not sold. 
• What to do about it: Use those blasé moments to fine-tune your messaging until it starts to click. Make sure you’re articulating who your product is best for in the language of your users. 

5 Examples of SaaS companies that leverage the benefits and unique selling points heuristic 

Once you’ve identified the areas in your site or app that are in violation of the benefits and unique selling points heuristic, you can address them. 

The goal is to help users make their decisions faster and with ease. As a starting point for inspiration, here are five SaaS companies that showcase the effective use of benefits and USPs, each helping users make confident decisions more easily.

Give a holistic breakdown by value theme like DocuSign

DocuSign breaks down the security benefits holistically, reassuring security-conscious users about important benefits and unique selling points.

List features in a comparison chart like Indicative

Indicative adds CTA buttons to their comparison chart so that as they highlight core capabilities, users have quick-access entry points to get the offer.

Leverage guided tours like Outreach

Sales platform Outreach has use case-specific interactive demos on the website so prospects can see why the tool could be a good fit for them. 

Lead with core benefits like PandaDoc’s feature announcement pop-up

PandaDoc‘s pop-up for a feature rollout announcement leads with the benefit to the user, which makes users more likely to engage with the overlay. 

Animate your pricing page like QuickBooks

QuickBooks’ pricing chart has a visual cue for each feature that pops out with details, benefits, and a pitch video. This increases user confidence.

How to identify your benefits and unique selling points

It can be tough to find the right benefits and unique selling points to highlight across the digital experience, even if you can see where customers are getting stuck.  

Here are some tips to get you started: 

• Write a list: jot down all of the things that make your business, products, or services unique from your competitors – get specific, like your pricing model, customer service accessibility, and features.
• Research the competition: you won’t know what makes you different if you don’t know what you’re up against. Dig into their benefits and unique selling points so you can be sure to stand out.
• Identify your customers’ needs: research your customers using data and surveys to discover their most pressing needs and determine how your tooling is meeting those needs so you can more prominently feature it across the experience.
• Combine needs and differentiators: cross-reference the list of things that make your successful business different and your list of customer needs to pinpoint any that overlap. 
• Consider how you will implement: these points should be woven throughout the digital experience so that users are presented with benefits and unique selling points relevant to where they are in the customer journey.
• Test and validate: With your improvement ideas in hand, it’s time to test the optimizations. There’s no point going all-in on implementation if the language or functions don’t resonate. Consider a second round of user testing, some rapid testing, or A/B testing where it makes sense. 

For more inspiration, check out our article on 14 unique selling proposition examples. 

Heuristics build the foundation of an excellent digital experience

Most SaaS teams have a million things on their plate, juggling KPIs, internal politics, and all the day-to-day tasks to keep the product moving forward. However, nothing is as important as the foundational user experience and how your audience perceives your product.

This is where heuristics come in. You can uncover pain points that can be solved with tactics to address them. It may sound simple, but it can be a lot to accomplish without an external, user-centered POV. If you’d like support in your efforts, contact us.

The post Is Your Value Promise Falling Short? Here’s How to Identify and Upgrade Tired USPs appeared first on The Good.