We dove deep into the user experiences of 15 top AI tools, documenting over 100 monetization touchpoints, upgrade pathways, and conversion tactics. What we found were five distinct patterns that drive revenue for these leaders.

These strategies aren’t just for AI. They’re blueprints that any SaaS tool can adapt to accelerate its own growth. Here’s what we learned.

The data behind the patterns

Our analysis covered tools spanning text generation (ChatGPT, Claude), search (Perplexity), design (Ideogram, Leonardo.AI), video creation (Runway), and productivity (Grammarly, QuillBot). Each tool was examined across four critical areas:

• Monetization elements: Upgrade CTAs, limit notifications, premium feature gates, and more
• Monetization pathways: The specific user journeys from free to paid
• Pricing and payment screens: Where users actually convert when they decide to upgrade
• Missed opportunities: Places where tools could be driving more conversions

What emerged were five clear patterns that high-converting tools use consistently.

Pattern #1: The progressive squeeze

The strategy: Start with subtle hints, then gradually increase conversion prompts as users become more invested.

Who’s doing it: Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity have mastered this approach.

How it works: These tools begin with gentle upgrade suggestions embedded in the interface. A small CTA in the sidebar, a mention of plan limits in account settings. As users engage more, the messaging becomes increasingly direct.

Claude exemplifies this perfectly. New users see a subtle “Free plan” indicator and a small upgrade CTA. After several conversations, users get friendly notifications about approaching limits. Only when limits are actually hit does Claude present the strong upgrade push with clear urgency messaging.

ChatGPT follows a similar pattern but with more touchpoints. Multiple upgrade opportunities appear once logged in, but the real conversion push happens when users try to upload files or access advanced features.

Why it converts: Users invest time and mental energy before hitting any hard walls. By the time they reach limits, they’re already committed to the tool and see clear value in upgrading rather than switching to alternatives.

The missed opportunity: Many tools go straight to hard limits without the progressive buildup, losing users who might have converted with a gentler approach.

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How Top AI Tools Turn Free Users Into Paying Customers

Pattern #2: The feature tease

The strategy: Show users exactly what they’re missing by displaying premium features prominently, then gating access.

Who’s doing it: Ideogram, Grammarly, and Leonardo.AI excel at this approach.

How it works: These tools don’t hide their premium features. Instead, they showcase them prominently with visual cues like lock icons, blurred previews, or “Pro” badges. Users can see the feature, understand its value, and often interact with locked elements that trigger upgrade modals.

Ideogram shows locked features upfront on the dashboard, displays private galleries as gated sections, and lets users click through to see upgrade benefits. When users generate images, editing options appear with clear visual indicators of which features require upgrading.

Grammarly shows blurred premium suggestions alongside free ones, lets users see statistics with tone analysis grayed out, and provides partial feature previews that create curiosity about the full experience.

Why it converts: Curiosity combined with FOMO creates powerful motivation. When users can see exactly what they’re missing and how it would solve their problems, the upgrade decision becomes much easier.

Implementation tip: The key is showing enough value to create desire while maintaining a clear visual hierarchy between free and premium features.

Pattern #3: The moment of need

The strategy: Present upgrade options precisely when users are most invested and would benefit most from premium features.

Who’s doing it: Runway, QuillBot, and Character.AI time their conversion prompts perfectly.

How it works: Instead of generic upgrade CTAs, these tools interrupt workflows at strategic moments when users are actively trying to accomplish something and would most benefit from premium features.

Runway waits until users want to export in 4K resolution or remove watermarks, both of which are moments when they’re already committed to using the generated content.

QuillBot triggers upgrade prompts when users hit word limits mid-task, not during idle browsing.

Why it converts: Perfect timing equals the highest conversion rates. When users are already invested in a task and premium features would immediately solve their problem, the upgrade becomes a logical next step rather than an interruption.

The psychology: This taps into the completion bias. Once users start a task, they’re motivated to finish it, making them more likely to pay to remove obstacles.

Pattern #4: The transparent countdown

The strategy: Create urgency and build trust by clearly showing usage limits, remaining credits, and reset timers.

Who’s doing it: Perplexity, Grammarly, and Copy.AI have perfected transparent limit communication.

How it works: Instead of surprising users with sudden limits, these tools constantly communicate remaining usage through progress bars, countdown timers, and clear messaging about when limits reset.

Perplexity shows “2 queries remaining today” with each search, giving users clear visibility into their usage without anxiety.

Grammarly displays credit counts and refill timers for AI features, so users can plan their usage accordingly.

Copy.AI uses a prominent word count progress bar that updates in real-time, showing exactly how much of their monthly limit has been used.

Why it converts: Transparency builds trust while creating healthy urgency. Users appreciate knowing where they stand and can make informed decisions about when to upgrade rather than feeling tricked by hidden limits.

The trust factor: When users trust that limits are fair and clearly communicated, they’re more likely to see upgrading as a reasonable business transaction rather than being forced into paying.

Pattern #5: The omnipresent nudge

The strategy: Place multiple upgrade touchpoints throughout the interface without being intrusive.

Who’s doing it: ChatGPT, QuillBot, and Ideogram have mastered multi-touchpoint conversion.

How it works: These tools strategically place upgrade opportunities at different points in the user journey, including header CTAs, sidebar reminders, settings page options, and feature-specific prompts. The key is making each touchpoint feel contextual rather than repetitive.

ChatGPT places upgrade CTAs in the dropdown menu, file upload tooltips, model selection interfaces, and account settings. Each serves a different user intent and provides value beyond just asking for payment.

QuillBot integrates upgrade opportunities into the workflow, for example, in premium mode selectors, feature benefit explanations, and contextual prompts that feel helpful rather than pushy.

Why it converts: Repetition without annoyance increases recall and provides multiple chances to convert users at different readiness levels. Some users need to see upgrade options multiple times before they’re ready to act.

The balance: The key is ensuring each touchpoint provides value or information, rather than simply asking for money repeatedly.

The standout performers

While all 15 tools showed growth-focused design, three stood out for their sophisticated monetization strategies:

Claude excels at the Progressive Squeeze, building user investment before presenting upgrade opportunities. Their limit messaging feels helpful rather than restrictive, and the upgrade pathway is seamless.

Ideogram masters the Feature Tease, showcasing premium capabilities so effectively that users understand the upgrade value before reaching any limits. Their visual hierarchy makes premium features aspirational rather than frustrating.

Perplexity nails the Transparent Countdown, creating urgency without anxiety through clear limit communication and value-focused messaging.

Common missed opportunities

Our analysis revealed several patterns where even successful tools leave money on the table:

• Timing failures: Many tools show upgrade prompts during onboarding when users haven’t yet experienced value, rather than waiting for engagement.
• Value communication gaps: Some tools gate features without clearly explaining the benefits, leading to confusion rather than desire.
• Conversion pathway friction: Several tools send users to generic pricing pages rather than contextual upgrade flows that maintain momentum.
• Limit surprises: Tools that suddenly cut off functionality without warning create frustration rather than conversion motivation.

Applying these patterns to your SaaS growth strategies

These AI growth strategies aren’t limited to AI tools. The underlying principles work for any SaaS looking to improve free-to-paid conversion:

Start with your user journey mapping

Identify key moments where users experience value and where they encounter limitations. These are your conversion opportunity points.

Audit your current upgrade messaging

Are you using the Progressive Squeeze, or do you jump straight to hard limits? Are you showing users what they’re missing with Feature Teasing?

Review your limit of communication

Do users understand their usage limits, and when they reset? Transparent Countdown reduces churn and builds trust.

Optimize your touchpoint strategy

Map where upgrade CTAs appear in your interface and ensure each serves a specific user need rather than just asking for payment.

Test your conversion timing

Are you presenting upgrade options when users are most invested (Moment of Need) or just when it’s convenient for your UI?

What does this mean for your growth strategy?

AI tools are teaching us that successful monetization isn’t always about restricting features; it can be about showcasing value, building trust, and timing conversion opportunities perfectly. The tools growing fastest aren’t necessarily those with the best AI models, but those with the smartest user experience design.

These patterns work because they align business needs with user psychology. Instead of seeing limits as barriers, users experience them as natural progression points toward greater value.

The AI boom provides a unique laboratory for studying growth tactics at scale. These tools process millions of users and can iterate rapidly, revealing what actually drives conversions versus what we think should work.

As AI capabilities become more commoditized, user experience (including monetization design) becomes the key differentiator. The tools implementing these patterns now are building sustainable competitive advantages that will persist even as the underlying technology evolves.

Taking action on these insights

The most successful SaaS companies will adapt these AI growth strategies to their own products before their competitors catch on. Start by analyzing your current monetization approach against these five patterns:

1. Map your user journey to identify Progressive Squeeze opportunities
2. Audit your feature visibility to implement Feature Teasing where appropriate
3. Review your limit of communication to adopt Transparent Countdown principles
4. Time your conversion prompts to leverage the Moment of Need psychology
5. Optimize your touchpoint strategy using Omnipresent Nudge best practices

The data from these 15 AI tools provides a roadmap, but implementation requires careful testing and optimization for your specific user base and value proposition.

Ready to apply these AI growth strategies to accelerate your SaaS growth? The Good specializes in analyzing user experiences and implementing conversion optimization strategies that turn insights into revenue. Our team has helped dozens of SaaS companies optimize their monetization flows using data-driven approaches just like this analysis.

Get your personalized monetization strategy audit. We’ll analyze your current user experience against these proven patterns and create a prioritized optimization roadmap tailored to your product and audience. Schedule a consultation with our team to discover how these AI growth strategies can accelerate your revenue growth.

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How Top AI Tools Turn Free Users Into Paying Customers

The post 5 SaaS Growth Strategies That Work (Based On Analysis Of 15 Top AI Tools) appeared first on The Good.

So, as a leader, it’s important to adapt. Kalah Arsenault knows this well.

Over the course of her career, she’s been tasked with everything from turning data into actionable insights and advocating for data-driven analysis to building experimentation programs.

Currently, she leads the marketing optimization team at Autodesk, the global leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software.

We had the chance to sit down with her and get the inside scoop on:

• Standing up an A/B testing program
• A simple prioritization model making an impact
• Measuring and circulating optimization learnings

Marketing optimization for a leading software company

As the marketing optimization team lead, Kalah digs into all the nooks and crannies of the company’s marketing efforts to make it more effective and efficient.

The marketing optimization team at Autodesk sits on the operations team at the intersection between marketing operations and technology. Partnering with marketing teams to improve campaign effectiveness, Kalah and the marketing optimization team bridge the gap between data, marketing know-how, and testing expertise.

When shakeups a few years ago halted all A/B testing on the Autodesk website, Kalah was eager to partner with the website team to re-enable experimentation. A self-proclaimed marketing, analytics & optimization enthusiast, Kalah brings a consistent data-backed ethos to her work. And her background tee’d her up for success. Kalah jump-started her professional life in advertising and ecommerce. The experience working in stakeholder-facing roles gave her a unique ability to turn data into stories and prove the value of iterating your way to success.

Standing up an A/B testing program

The challenge was clear. Without an experimentation program in place, the team was left without the data needed to fuel good decision-making.

“The data will tell you what is the right choice and it takes decision-making out of the process,” she said when asked how data plays a role in her decision-making. It can even go so far as to be said that they don’t just affect the process, they are the process. “Experimentation and data can be the decision-making process.”

So, it was crucial to get the A/B testing program back on its feet in order to bring that clarity to the work she was doing day-to-day.

To start, Kalah and her team put their experience into practice, creating an A/B testing roadmap. This was a crucial step, requiring them to define goals, align with stakeholders, and assess priorities and risks of optimization. Because of a new organizational structure, on top of the complexity of rebuilding the A/B testing program, there was an added obstacle to working across different marketing teams.

The optimization and web teams worked together to establish clear parameters, agreements, and definitions of what could or could not be tested. There is now a huge, pre-approved sandbox to play in, allowing optimizers the chance to find iterations that improve UX and marketing KPIs.

Whether you’re a researcher, an analyst, a marketer, or an optimization specialist, a well-made roadmap connects you with the clear steps needed to begin experimenting.

For Kalah, this meant:

• Identifying objectives for the testing program
• Establishing marketing and website challenges
• Isolating testing opportunities
• Formulating testing hypotheses
• Prioritizing testing opportunities

With frameworks in place, they were ready to get back to work.

While other optimization leaders can follow a similar strategy of aligning with stakeholders and building a roadmap, standing up an A/B testing program is no small feat. So, if you don’t have the resources or a dedicated team like Autodesk, she has some advice.

“What I primarily suggest is hiring someone who specializes in the practice. I think the expertise to identify optimization opportunities, design the tests, see it through implementation, measure the results, and provide recommendations and next steps is incredibly impactful.”

And while there are some savvy marketers that can do this, she emphasizes that “it's a separate skill set and expertise.” So whether you hire for that as a full-time role or you look to agencies to bring that expertise, Kalah strongly recommends companies consider experts to lead the charge.

For example, “at a high level, a test may show one version outperforming another,” she says. “But digging deeper often reveals different results by segment, whether by job profile, country, or industry. We aim to look beyond primary KPIs to fully understand what’s driving the outcome.” That level of nuance is hard to find in a busy marketer, so it’s best to have dedicated optimizers around who can take the time to know and understand audiences.

A prioritization model to drive velocity

With the A/B testing program back up and running, Kalah and her team had their plates full finding efficiencies and improvements across Autodesk’s marketing efforts.

Not only were there opportunities identified in their research, but teams across the organization were submitting requests and ideas for their consideration.

The list was long. The optimization team wasn’t sure what the “most important first thing” to work on was, and marketing stakeholders didn’t understand why their projects weren’t top of the list for testing. There was an opportunity to clarify and get more done quickly.

The solution? A prioritization model aimed at:

• Increase testing volume
• Aligning teams
• Saving time

While lots of testing folks would hear “prioritization model” and go straight to the mathematical elements, Kalah needed a model that was simple, easy to calculate, and transparent for all parties.

Kalah and her team built out an auto-calculated prioritization model as part of their optimization requests intake process. It involves three elements:

• Business impact: Measured based on whether the request aligns with the marketing plan, which is agreed upon by everyone from CMO to entry-level marketing team member.
• Level of effort: Internal criteria that identify a higher or lower level of effort.
• Urgency: Assess the request with questions like: Does it need to be executed immediately? Does it impact a larger project immediately? Does this effort have backing from a senior leader in marketing?

The intake process asks questions related to the criteria mentioned, and then logic set up in Asana auto-calculates the prioritization of the experiment or optimization. “This is what saves us time and energy,” she says. It eliminates looping conversations and time to manually prioritize things amongst the team.

Kalah emphasizes the power of this setup. “We don't do mathematical calculations to assess the level of business impact or length of time to reach statistical significance. That's too resource-intensive, and we'd be spending all our time assessing and prioritizing. With our automated prioritization model, we can spend our time on launching and analyzing tests and making business impact.”

And it worked.

“We were able to double the amount of tests our team took on within one year. So from this compared to last year we doubled the volume of testing with a new operating and prioritization model.”

Measuring marketing optimization success

The volume of tests is just one of the key metrics Kalah identified for measuring her team’s success.

It can be tough to find just one KPI to prove the value of optimization, given the nature of working across teams, products, and audiences. So, instead of focusing on 1:1 measurement, they look at a variety of metrics, including:

• Volume of tests
• Volume of analyses
• Customer satisfaction score
• How many marketers are seeing/learning from the findings

In the end, her team’s goal is to look at how marketing campaigns are performing and then give advice on how to make them better. So, while each test or optimization has its own KPI related to growth, as a team they are measured more holistically.

With prioritization and test volume locked down, she is ready to move the needle on insights shared.

“I'd really love to put more energy towards amplifying the impact of each test and getting the findings out to as many marketing teams as possible. We've already seen this working through a newsletter that's sharing our testing results and analysis work. We've also been hosting quarterly brown bag style meetings with the most universally applicable test results that marketers could implement themselves.”

This year, Kalah is also hoping to find new ways to turn insights into action. “I am also hoping to dive into data visualizations and figuring out how to make our findings more snackable and basically getting to a place where people want to read them and it's easy and enjoyable.”

These goals directly align with her team’s measurements for success. Other optimization leaders can take a page from Kalah’s playbook here by letting individual tests focus on the marketing metrics and determine departmental success based on insights, experiments, or other relevant measurements.

How can you replicate some of Kalah’s success?

Kalah’s advice to those new to optimization is simple yet impactful: start small, and stay curious. “Get to know your data, experiment with tools, and don’t be afraid to make tweaks,” she says. “You might be surprised at the impact even small changes can have.”

Her overarching message is one of optimism and opportunity. “Optimization is about evolving and improving—for your customers, your organization, and yourself,” she concludes.

Yet, good optimization leaders know that you can’t do it all alone. Internally, Kalah’s team employs a mix of full-time employees, contractors, and agency partners to meet the demands of scaling optimization efforts. “Contractors and agencies can help manage peaks in the workload,” she notes.

“I come from an agency background. I've always been a fan of working with full-time employees, but I realized as we're trying to scale and grow the amount of impact we're making as a team, it's really important to have contractors or agency partners to support higher demand and the peaks and valleys of work.”

By embracing a data-driven mindset, prioritizing strategically, and fostering cross-team collaboration, Kalah exemplifies what it means to lead impactful optimization efforts. If you need an expert partner to help manage a robust roadmap, get to know our Digital Experience Optimization Program.

The post How Kalah Arsenault’s Team Stood Up An A/B Testing Program & Doubled Volume With A New Prioritization Model appeared first on The Good.

You may have a gut-instinct answer to the question. You might even have ideas for how to tweak design, rewrite headlines, or add new features in an attempt to get users to stick around. But guesswork isn’t a strategy.

Expert researchers don’t guess. They use data, and one of their most powerful tools is the heatmap.

When used correctly, heatmaps reveal where users hesitate, what grabs their attention, and where they drop off—all critical insights for optimizing conversions. But the real magic isn’t simply generating a heatmap; it’s knowing how to read it.

In this guide, we’ll break down how to read a heatmap like an expert so you can stop guessing and start making informed, high-impact changes to your website.

Intro to heatmap analysis

Heatmap analysis shows real data points that represent actual human behavior. And when those behaviors form visibly discernable patterns, we use these patterns to form hypotheses about user wants and needs.

Heatmaps can help answer questions about user behavior and uncover sticking points in the customer journey.

Like footprints in the sand, heatmaps show us where users have been. And we use that information to infer and imply intent.

Types of heatmaps

At The Good, we primarily use three types of heatmaps: Click maps, movement maps, and scroll maps.

These types of heatmaps provide insights that answer critical UX and conversion questions, such as:

• Are users seeing my key content?
• What elements are they engaging with?
• Where are they paying the most attention?

By analyzing these patterns, we can pinpoint where users get stuck, what’s drawing their attention, and where they drop off—and take action to improve the experience.

Scroll Maps

Scroll maps visually depict typical scroll depth on any web page. Key insights you can glean from scroll maps:

• Where users drop off (high exit points may signal a false bottom)
• Whether important content is being seen
• If users are scanning or engaged

Tools typically use scales to show you the portion of users who scroll to different parts of your page. Red or “Hot” areas of your Heatmap indicate that all or almost all your users have seen this part of the page. As you move down the page, the colors will get “colder” according to the percentage of users who scroll down to that point.

The lines on the page below indicate where 25%, 50%, and 75% of users dropped off, meaning they left the page or clicked on something, therefore not scrolling further.

While shallow scrolling is not inherently negative, it may indicate lost user attention or that a page does not look scrollable.

The same goes for deeper scroll depths. It is not inherently positive or negative to see a deeper scroll depth. Depending on the surrounding context, deeper scroll depth may indicate that users are failing to find meaningful content higher on the page, and therefore go looking by scrolling down.

Movement Maps

Movement maps show where users have hovered their mouse on a page. They are valuable because they show us where the majority of user attention is focused. Movement maps can show:

• What content users are reading or skimming
• Where their attention is most concentrated
• Whether key information is being overlooked

Movement maps help us infer what content is most valuable to users during the decision-making process.

Reading movement maps is similar to reading eye-tracking heat maps. For many users, their mouse movement follows their gaze, so knowing where mouse movement occurs tells us what content users are reading or paying attention to.

Based on our experience, concentrated left-to-right movement over text generally indicates intentional reading, since many mouse movements tend to follow the user’s eyes.

In this example, we see side-to-side movement over FAQs, indicating users are reading each question to determine which one may reveal helpful information about the services being offered. We looked at movement clusters in the FAQs, which when paired with data about the most highly clicked FAQ items helped us determine what questions users needed answered to have the confidence to purchase services.

In contrast, up-and-down movement may indicate areas that users are simply skimming rather than intently reading. Take this example: seeing vertical movement patterns indicated to us that users may be scanning the resources available (rather than reading). User testers told us that the content did not look worthwhile, so those two bits of data together told us this area needed some fresh content and a redesign.

Click Maps

Click maps show us what elements users click on most commonly. Click maps can uncover insights including:

• What elements drive engagement (or get ignored)
• If users are clicking on non-clickable elements (indicating confusion)
• Which navigation links or CTAs attract the most interest

Hot spots, shown in red, have the highest concentration of clicks. Transparent blue spots represent a low density of clicks.

In the click map below, we see a list of “All Products” with one notable hot spot in the middle of the menu. What, you may wonder, is in the middle of the list that is drawing so many clicks?

The answer is in the name: Paints. Here we see an example of a company with a clear specialty and a large portion of their sales going to one category. Yet, when we saw this heatmap we realized they were making the user work hard to find these most popular products by burying them in the middle of the list.

18 Heatmap patterns to look out for

To get the most value out of heatmaps, researchers have to analyze how different heatmap elements interact, compare trends across pages, and validate findings with other data sources like session recordings or analytics.

In this section, we’ll walk through the most common heatmap patterns, what they look like, and what they reveal about user behavior so you can start making smarter, data-backed decisions.

The Spot Specific Pattern

Where it appears: Click map

What it looks like: Highly concentrated heat activity on an individual spot in a sea of text.

What it means: Users might have a specific interest related to a need. They could also be clicking on a non-clickable element within a paragraph or looking for information that is slightly buried within other text. It may be an indicator that you need to rearrange a menu or better highlight certain features of a product.

Gapped Patterns

Where it appears: Click map

What it looks like: In a list of items, there is one that gets no heat activity.

What it means: It usually means that a user doesn’t know what to expect if they were to click here, or they are simply disinterested.

Primacy vs Recency Pattern

Where it appears: Click map

What it looks like: Concentrated click activity on the first and last items in a list.

What it means: Typical of menus, users often engage most with the first and last item in any list. Named after the psychological phenomenon where users are best at recalling the first and last words in any list.

Filter Hot Spots

Where it appears: Click map

What it looks like: Concentrated clicks on certain areas of a filter, and a lack of clicks on other areas of a filter.

What it means: Users generally rely heavily on certain filters and less on others. Knowing what filters are helpful to users might tell us how we should rearrange filters or give us context for what users care about in their products.

Consistent Browsing Pattern

Where it appears: Click map

What it looks like: Strong click patterns across products on category pages.

What it means: This tells us that users are interested in a variety of products on the category page and are clicking on various product pages.

Spotted Browsing Pattern

Where it appears: Click map

What it looks like: Strong amount of clicks on only a few product images on category pages.

What it means: This tells us that users are most interested in specific products. These might be flagship products (as in this example).

Strong Pagination Pattern

Where it appears: Click map

What it looks like: Concentrated activity on the pagination with little activity on filters or product tiles.

What it means: Users might not have very intentional browsing behavior, and instead of engaging with product tiles and narrowing down their search, they are simply going from page to page to see all products.

Click Indecision

Where it appears: Movement map

What it looks like: Horizontal heat patterns found in the middle of two clickable elements, usually between 2 or more different elements positioned next to each other. Can be found on a menu navigation or even dual CTAs.

What it means: Users are hovering between clickable elements. They might be experiencing a bit of uncertainty in their browsing experience. They’re not sure where to click because both options are similar in nature or unclear.

F-Shaped Reading

Where it appears: Movement map

What it looks like: Concentrations of heat in the shape of an F on the page. The direction begins with the user tracing the page from top to bottom and then from left to right.

What it means: Users are assessing the content on the page but they are not necessarily reading it.

Source.

Commitment Reading

Where it appears: Movement map

What it looks like: Blocks of heat activity usually on content pages or chunks of text.

What it means: Users are high-intent and they’re learners. These patterns show strong interest in the information displayed and intentional reading.

Source.

Layer Cake Pattern

Where it appears: Movement map

What it looks like: Users read headlines but overlook the associated subtext.

What it means: They are interested in the content but are reviewing the page at a high level.

The downside of this pattern is that users could be missing content related to their needs or diminish the influence of the content’s intended purpose to promote a desired course of action.

Scrolling Pattern

Where it appears: Movement map

What it looks like: A vertical heat pattern that travels down the page. On low-traffic pages, this might be represented by dots that align in a vertical fashion, as with the example here.

What it means: This signifies that users are scrolling down the page, without necessarily reading the content. They might be looking for something that they are not finding, or the content might be arranged in a fashion that is best for scanning. If this is paired with truly little click engagement, we might assume that the content is not very valuable.

Truncated Scanning

Where it appears: Movement map

What it looks like: Users skip a consistently repeated word in a text.

What it means: Users are reading content faster, likely because the content is repetitive and it’s easy to recall the skipped word.

Dropdown Residue

Where it appears: Movement map

What it looks like: A spotted heat residue in a rectangular fashion positioned below the top navigation.

What it means: This is residual activity of users strongly considering items in the drop-down menu or some drop-down element on the page. Residue will be concentrated in the areas where users are actually scanning and considering the content.

Image Hover

Where it appears: Movement map

What it looks like: Heat activity around images on a page. Could be on a category page or rows of photos.

What it means: Imagery is dynamic–a secondary image shows when the users hover over the primary image. The user is hovering around the image to see the second photo.

Content Avoidance

Where it appears: Movement map

What it looks like: The inverse of the image-specific pattern, content avoidance happens when people explicitly avoid an area with their mouse, almost creating a frame.

What it means: This might mean that users perceive this as an ad and are intentionally avoiding it, or have “banner blindness” and simply don’t see the content as relevant to their visit.

False Bottom

Where it appears: Scroll map

What it looks like: On scroll maps, there is a high drop-off on the page (drop-off is above the halfway mark on the page).

What it means: Users might perceive that they’ve reached the end of the page. This is extremely common when email signups are in the middle of a page (see example right) and when there is a strong color contrast, full-bleed section early in the page. These things signal the footer is coming, so they often make users think they’ve seen everything they need to see.

Halted Pattern

Where it appears: Scroll map

What it looks like: Drop-off is right above the fold, and nearly no users scroll below it.

What it means: Either most users are finding something to click on above the fold, there is a high bounce/abandon rate, or there is a false bottom. It could also be some combination of the three.

What is the best tool for heat mapping?

Not all heatmaps are created equal. The best heat mapping tool is the one that provides clear, actionable insights without adding unnecessary complexity.

For most teams, Hotjar will be a great go-to solution. It’s lightweight, easy to set up, and provides a suite of heatmaps—including click maps, scroll maps, and movement maps—that help you understand user behavior at a glance.

Why Hotjar?

• Comprehensive Behavior Tracking: Hotjar captures how users interact with your site—where they click, how far they scroll, and what elements they hover over.
• Fast Insights, No Heavy Lifting: Unlike enterprise tools that require complex setup, Hotjar makes it easy to get started and see results quickly.
• Paired with Session Recordings: Heatmaps alone tell part of the story; Hotjar lets you connect heatmap insights to real visitor session recordings for deeper analysis.

While it’s our top pick, if Hotjar isn’t the right fit, another good option is Microsoft Clarity.

Turning heatmap data into actionable strategies

Reading a heatmap like an expert researcher isn’t just about spotting red and blue zones—it’s about understanding the “why” behind user behavior and knowing what to do next.

But if you don’t have the time or resources to build a research team, you don’t have to go it alone. At The Good, we specialize in turning heatmap data into clear, actionable strategies that drive real results.

Want to skip the learning curve and get expert insights now? Let’s talk.

The post How To Read A Heatmap Like An Expert Researcher: Patterns To Look Out For appeared first on The Good.

Drawing from those years of experience improving SaaS platforms, we’ve identified and addressed form fatigue across various products. In this article, we’ll show you how to uncover and fix it effectively.

Keep reading to learn:

• Research methods for uncovering form fatigue
• User behavior patterns that indicate your users suffer from form fatigue
• Actionable strategies to improve form fatigue and increase conversions

What is form fatigue?

Form fatigue occurs when a user gets frustrated and/or exhausted by the complexity or length of a digital form. The poor design of the form directly contributes to this sense of fatigue and causes them to abandon.

Psychologically, users are conditioned to prefer experiences that require minimal cognitive effort. We want experiences that accomplish our goals simply and quickly. When a user experience does not meet those instincts, conversion rates drop.

Form fatigue is typically caused by things like:

• Content fatigue: When excessive textual/visual content on a page overwhelms users, hindering their ability to find relevant content for successful task completion.
• Heavy cognitive load: When undue mental effort is required to accomplish a task, causing analysis paralysis or frustration, leading to abandonment.
• High interaction cost: When a task or interaction requires significant time and/or effort to accomplish, possibly creating frustration and resulting in abandonment.

How to identify form fatigue

When working on a product day in and day out, you might be too close to the forms to know if fatigue is happening. That is where research can help.

Getting an external, real user perspective can expose things like content fatigue, heavy cognitive load, or high interaction cost in your forms.

So, the best way to identify form fatigue is through user research. While there are plenty of methods, the best for this particular scenario include:

• Session recordings
• Heatmaps
• Scroll maps
• Click maps
• User tests

With your raw data in hand, look out for some specific patterns that might indicate form fatigue:

• Scanning: A user scrolls over content (text or images) at a higher scroll rate on mobile, while on desktop they might hover over some words or phrases, or completely skip over content altogether.
• Halted Scrolling: The user pauses on the site to possibly engage with content/reorient themselves or this pause may indicate that the user perceives a false bottom.
• U-turns: When a user back navigates to the previous page they were just on, using either breadcrumbs or the back button.

These research patterns can point to moments when users are experiencing form fatigue and the digital experience can be optimized.

7 ways to prevent form fatigue

If you suspect form fatigue or uncover evidence of it in your research, don’t fret. There is plenty you can do to fix it. For companies building new forms, these tips can also be used to prevent form fatigue in the first place.

1. Execute the 10 principles of good form design

The first, and arguably the most important, way to limit form fatigue is to understand and act on the principles of good form design. Website forms are one of your most important onsite elements. They are the crux of a user’s path to conversion.

Bad form design can cause users to drop off during critical conversion opportunities, leaving them frustrated or confused, while great form design creates a seamless user experience that can increase conversion rates and leave users feeling excited about a product or company.

These are the ten established form design principles to help you create better experiences:

1. Priming: Prepare users by setting clear expectations about the form’s purpose, length, and benefits before they begin.
2. Error Prevention: Design forms to minimize user mistakes by using constraints, clear labels, and smart defaults.
3. Error Recovery: Make it easy for users to identify, understand, and fix errors with real-time validation and clear messaging.
4. Feedback: Provide immediate, actionable responses to user inputs to build confidence and guide progression.
5. Proximity: Group related fields together logically to make forms easier to navigate and process mentally.
6. Convention: Follow familiar design patterns to ensure users can complete the form intuitively without unnecessary friction.
7. Momentum: Encourage users to keep going by visually or textually reinforcing their progress through the form.
8. Proof: Build trust and reduce hesitation with evidence like security assurances, testimonials, or recognizable logos.
9. Demonstrated Value: Highlight the benefits of completing the form so users feel their effort is worthwhile.
10. Perceived Effort Level: Design forms to appear simple and manageable by minimizing visible fields and breaking longer forms into steps.

To learn more, we explore these principles and include 32 good form design examples in this companion article.

2. Ask for minimal information upfront

In research and testing for clients, we have found that asking for less information upfront may help to prevent form fatigue and in turn, increase initial registrations. The highest converting forms ask for only the necessary information in order to register, saving additional information for post-registration. That could be as little as just the email or include name and other essential information.

Once the user is registered, they can be guided through additional steps to help personalize the account to their needs, for example, more personal information, settings, shipping preferences, choosing a plan, adding orders, etc.

3. Reduce form length perception

For forms that can’t reduce the information required, research shows users’ perception of form length can be as important as the actual length.

You can reduce perceived effort with strategies like:

• Chunking forms into steps: Break longer forms into smaller, manageable sections and use clear step titles (e.g., “Step 1: Account Details”).
• Collapsible sections: Use collapsible form fields to make the interface less overwhelming while still providing access to all necessary fields.
• Auto-advance fields: Automatically move users to the next field when input is complete (e.g., credit card information split into boxes).

4. Make clear suggestions

Simplify decision-making by limiting options and highlighting recommended choices. You can use autofill and predictive text to reduce manual input and create an intuitive, logical flow that guides users naturally through the form.

5. Optimize for mobile or desktop

At this point, we shouldn’t even have to say it, but you’d be surprised how often teams forget to tailor the experience for the correct device. Form fatigue is exasperated when the design doesn’t function on the user interface being navigated. The design should adapt for mobile or desktop users, regardless of whether you are an app-first or desktop-first product.

One essential way to do this is by adjusting keyboard inputs. For example, when a field is asking for a zip code or phone number, default to the numeric keyboard on mobile to make it as simple as possible to fill out the form.

6. Use gamification to entertain

Gamifying the form-filling experience can motivate users to complete it. So, when you have an extensive form that needs filling and can’t be simplified, add elements like milestones, progress rewards, and personal messages to keep users entertained and motivated. Celebrate small wins when users complete sections and consider unlocking discounts, offers, or badges as users complete each step. It’s hard to be fatigued when you’re having fun.

7. Leverage post-signup emails

Preventing form fatigue can also happen by supplementing information in other ways. Use post-signup emails to collect information that isn’t imperative to registration. For example, a user’s birthday could come in handy for rewards later on, but it is better to collect it post-signup to prevent form fatigue.

Additionally, the email body can link the user to connect new apps to their account, access more discounts, watch tutorials, download resources, or contact their team.

Many SaaS companies also send emails from a real person to encourage users to respond if they have questions or need help. These personal follow-ups can also help recapture users who abandon the form initially.

To prevent form fatigue in UX design, focus on strategies that simplify and streamline the user’s form-filling experience. Remember, the goal is to make form completion feel easy and painless for the user.

Ready to eliminate form fatigue and boost conversions?

Form fatigue can quietly undermine your UX efforts, leading to missed conversions and frustrated users. However, with thoughtful research, clear design principles, and actionable strategies, you can create forms that not only engage users but also encourage them to complete the journey.

At The Good, we specialize in helping businesses like yours eliminate friction and create digital experiences that drive results. See this form improvement example from our work with Helium 10.

If you’re ready to optimize your forms and increase conversions, reach out to our team today. Let’s work together to turn your users into loyal customers.

The post A Guide For Preventing Form Fatigue To Increase Conversions & Improve UX 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.

Well, you shouldn’t give away your entire product. It’s a strategic balance between unlocking features to engage new users and gating high-value features that warrant a paid subscription (we’ll get into how to decide what to keep in each tier later on).

This strategy is called freemium pricing, and it’s the source of growth for countless digital brands across the software industry. These brands attract millions of users with some free access and then charge for advanced features or uncapped limits.

Is the freemium pricing strategy right for your digital product? Let’s explore this technique to help you decide.

What is Freemium Pricing?

Freemium – a mix of the words “free” and “premium” – is a business model that offers basic features of a product or service for free but places richer or supplemental features behind a paywall. The fee is typically a subscription.

The free tier is usually a stripped-down version of the product, limited to only the basic functionality that users need to get a taste of the product without making a financial commitment. In some cases, upgrading from the base product to a premium version removes an unpleasant obstruction (e.g., paid Spotify accounts are ad-free).

Dropbox is a traditional example of a successful freemium model. Users can store up to 2GB of files for free, but if you need more space, you have to upgrade to a paid tier.

The goal of the freemium approach is to attract a large number of users who are happy to use a free product but unwilling to pay for something unfamiliar. Over time, some of those users decide to pay for the additional features.

The term “freemium” was coined in the early 2000s, but the concept originates with the freeware and shareware distribution models of the 1980s and 1990s that only charged users after they received some value from the product.

Examples of Freemium Pricing

The best way to understand freemium pricing is to look at some notable examples. These familiar companies are leveraging the freemium model well.

1. LinkedIn: Freemium + Free Trial

Most of us are familiar with LinkedIn’s free social networking platform with basic features, but you can also upgrade to a premium tier to get useful additional features, such as more direct messages, better searching, and insights about people and companies. The premium tier also offers a one-month free trial.

2. Google Workspace

Like most people, you probably use one or several of Google’s free products. But you can get advanced features – especially for businesses – by upgrading to one of their paid tiers. Premium plans offer higher usage limits, enhanced features, and additional services.

3. Zoom

Zoom exploded during the pandemic, largely due to its free tier that lets anyone try the basic product for free for an unlimited period of time. However, once you start using it regularly, the paid features will start to look very attractive.

4. Zapier

Zapier users are limited on the type and number of “zaps” they can run each month. Once you have a workflow setup, it’s easy to decide to pay to keep things working smoothly.

Which Features Should Be Free?

Now that you understand how the freemium pricing model works, let’s talk about your product.

Which features should be free, and which should require payment?

Before deciding which features to gate or keep free, it can be helpful to conduct a verb scoring exercise.

Verb scoring is the act of evaluating actions that users can take in your and your competitor’s products and then scoring them based on the level user of entitlements (or the amount of friction) required to perform the action.

Verbs are the core features of your product broken down into discrete actions, such as creating a ticket, editing a transcript, or sharing a document with a friend. For instance, if users can create and resize a document, create and resize are verbs.

Once you understand all your product’s verbs and how they affect the user experience, you can tweak your product strategy to optimize for user acquisition and conversion to paid accounts.

Learn more here: 9 Use Cases For Verb Scoring To Support A Successful Product Strategy

Once you understand the current state of both your and your competitors’ verbs, you can move on with adjusting to a freemium strategy.

Free Features

The free version of your product should include the core value features that a majority of your users care about the most. These are the features that solve their basic problems and help them realize the purpose of your product.

How do you determine which features users care about the most?

In some cases it will be obvious, but in most, It’s a strategic process that will depend on your product. Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Dropbox, has a decision tree to help leaders answer what should be free vs paid.

Paid Features

Once you know which features are part of your product’s core value and should be free, everything else should go into the premium tiers.

There are three ways to add gates to your product for upgrading:

• Functional limitations: Limits on the specific features users can access. Example: YouTube Music offers offline watching to paid users, but not free users.
• Quota limitations: Limits on how much users can use features. Example: DropBox offers 2GB of storage to free users but much more to paid users.
• Support limitations: Limits on the customer service users get from the company. This is usually only associated with enterprise-level products that require deep customization.

What’s important, however, is that your users clearly understand the benefits of upgrading to a paid account. In most cases, this means making your offer simple. It should be something people understand intuitively and something they can share easily with their friends.

Dropbox is the quintessential example: “Upgrade from 2GB to 2TB of storage” is as simple as it gets. (There are other benefits, but storage is the main driver.) Once a satisfied user hits the cap, they are likely to upgrade.

Finding the Balance

Admittedly, the right balance of free and paid features is tricky to find. You’ll have to start with your best guess (based on data and research, of course, not a shot in the dark) and optimize as you learn more.

Keep in mind that the main goal of the freemium pricing model is to attract new users to your product. If that isn’t happening, it could mean your free offering isn’t compelling enough. In this case, you’ll need to provide more free features or better features.

But what if you have many users but no one upgrades to a paid tier? In this case, it probably means you’re giving away too much. You’ll have to reduce your free offering so users have a reason to pay for the product.

What are the Advantages of Freemium Pricing?

So, what makes the freemium strategy so great? Why do so many digital brands use it? Let’s look at the benefits of freemium pricing.

1. Attracts a Large User Base

Freemium pricing lowers the entry barrier for many customers. They can try your product without making a commitment. Naturally, this leads to more users. Think of every free user as a “warm lead” that you can convert into a customer.

Furthermore, a large user base creates more brand visibility. You end up with more people talking about and sharing your product.

2. Provides Valuable User Feedback

With more users trying your product, you can access a broader range of feedback. This information helps your team identify ways to improve the product. It also helps you understand your product because you can distinguish between who would use it and who would pay for it.

3. Creates Opportunities for Upselling

Over time, freemium users become hooked on the core features and start to desire the rest. With the right incentives at the right time, converting them into customers is straightforward.

This is especially true for businesses that use your product as part of their workflow. Eventually, it becomes painful to switch to a new product.

4. Builds Brand Loyalty

Many people appreciate companies that allow them to try before they buy, and that positive experience can translate into long-term loyalty. Even if some users never convert, they might recommend your product to others.

What are the Disadvantages of Freemium Pricing?

Those benefits of freemium pricing sound great, right? Like all pricing models, there are some downsides. Understanding the challenges of freemium pricing will help you minimize their impact.

1. High Operational Costs with Free Users

Supporting a large base of non-paying users can get expensive. You’ll need to maintain servers, customer support, and other resources for users who may never convert to a paid plan. This is unsustainable if the cost of maintaining those users outweighs the revenue of paying customers.

2. Difficult to Monetize

In some cases, it can be challenging to find the sweet spot for monetization. Offering too few features in the free version can discourage sign-ups, while offering too many can hurt freemium conversion rates. Finding the right pricing structure requires constant testing and adjustment.

3. Potential Devaluation of Your Product

When users get something for free, they may not always perceive the product as valuable. This can make it harder to justify the price of your premium offerings. The perceived value of your product needs to be clear, or users might never consider upgrading.

Alternative Pricing Strategies

While the freemium business model is right for some organizations, it’s not the only option. Depending on your business model and goals, you may want to explore other pricing strategies.

In fact, it’s perfectly fine to use multiple pricing strategies at the same time. For instance, you might offer a free trial and then switch to usage-based pricing. Or you might go with a freemium model with premium features charged on a per-user basis.

The point here is that you have a lot of options, so it’s important to conduct thorough research to learn about your customer base and experiment with different models.

Let’s take a look at a few more of the popular pricing options.

1. Free Trial

Instead of offering a permanent free version, a free trial gives users access to all the product’s features for a limited time. The free trial period usually lasts seven to 30 days. Users feel a sense of urgency to decide whether to buy before the trial ends. Like freemium pricing, free trials let users experience the product before buying.

2. Tiered Pricing

Tiered pricing offers several plans at different price points, each with its own set of features. These additional tiers allow you to offer plans that meet the needs of different customer segments. If a user is willing to pay more, they get more value.

3. Usage-Based Pricing (Pay-as-You-Go)

In usage-based pricing, users only pay for what they use. It’s a great model to attract users who may be hesitant to commit to a flat subscription fee. For instance, a cloud services customer can’t pay much until they have users, but they also won’t use your product much.

4. Flat-Rate Pricing

Flat-rate pricing is the most basic model: users pay a single price for all features, typically on a monthly or annual basis. This pricing is easy to understand and appeals to users who want simplicity and predictability.

5. Per-User Pricing

Common in SaaS, per-user pricing charges customers based on the number of users who will access the product on the same team. It’s scalable and easy to understand, especially for businesses that want to manage costs as they grow.

Freemium Product FAQs

We dived deep into freemium pricing, but you may still have questions. These FAQs will help!

Is a Free Trial the Same as a Freemium?

No, a free trial provides temporary access to all features, while a freemium approach offers a limited feature set indefinitely. That said, free trials and premium models are often used together.

Does Freemium Pricing Increase the Number of Potential Customers?

Yes, it often attracts more users since there’s no upfront cost, which helps build a larger user base. But it only works if your free features are truly valuable for your potential customers.

Can Freemium Lead to a Loss of Income?

It can if too many users stay on the free plan without upgrading or if the cost to support them on the basic version exceeds revenue. To avoid this, it’s important to carefully select which features are free and which are paid and Implement a smart conversion strategy.

What Should You Consider Before Using Freemium Pricing?

Consider your core offering, customer acquisition costs, conversion strategies, support costs, and how to balance free versus paid features. All of these concepts work together as part of the freemium model.

How Do You Convert Free Users to a Premium Plan?

Convert users to premium plans by showing the value of premium features, using targeted messaging, and creating usage limits that encourage upgrades. Like all strategies, this requires careful research into your customer and experimentation to find the optimal balance.

What Percentage of Users Typically Convert From Free to Paid?

Conversion rates for freemium customers vary but are often between 2-5%, depending on the product and market. But that doesn’t mean that 5% is your ceiling. Some well-optimized product strategies have achieved greater conversion rates.

How Long Should You Expect Users to Stay on the Free Plan?

Many users will stay indefinitely, but successful conversion often occurs within the first few months. If you don’t see a reasonable number of conversions within the first three months, consider adjusting your conversion strategy.

Is Freemium Pricing Suitable for All SaaS Products?

Not always. It works best when there’s a clear upgrade path (basic services vs. premium services), and the free features provide value without giving away too much. Free features should also be relatively inexpensive for the SaaS to provide.

How Do You Avoid Cannibalizing Paid Sales With a Freemium Plan?

By offering enough value to free users without giving away advanced features that drive upgrades. If a majority of your users are sufficiently served by the free features, consider adding more limitations.

What Metrics Should You Track in a Freemium Model?

Track user acquisition, activation, average conversion rate, churn rate, and customer lifetime value.

Can Freemium Impact Brand Perception?

Yes, positively or negatively. A well-executed freemium can build goodwill, but a poor free offering can harm brand value. It’s a good idea to conduct some brand monitoring when you launch your freemium pricing product.

What are Some Common Mistakes SaaS Companies Make With Freemium?

Offering too many features for free, lacking a clear upgrade path, or failing to effectively monetize the user base. Alternatively, some companies leave too many features behind the premium tiers, which fails to attract enough users.

Is Freemium Pricing Right for You?

The freemium pricing strategy is a powerful technique, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for every digital product. And even if it makes sense for your product, it has to be handled carefully.

For many brands, the solution is to bring in an outside optimization team who will help you explore options and find the right path.

Our Digital Experience Optimization Program can help you unlock the full potential of your website, app, or digital product by optimizing the user experience according to your pricing strategy.

The post How To Use Freemium Pricing To Drive User Acquisition and Adoption appeared first on The Good.

As the creator of a tech product, potential users expect an intuitive and polished digital experience on your marketing site. If they get lost or confused, run into friction, or fail to find what they need, they’ll assume your product has the same problems.

So, it’s imperative that you build a seamless experience that connects with your customers, answers their questions, and shows them how to take the next step.

Before you embark on a SaaS website design journey of your own, it helps to explore the web for inspiration. We don’t recommend copying any of the best SaaS websites, but we encourage you to study them to get ideas, learn what’s possible, and see what works.

15 Examples of Great SaaS Website Design

Before we look at some SaaS website examples, let’s be clear about one thing.

The SaaS digital journey doesn’t always begin or end with your website. For instance, your users’ journey might start when they read a recommendation on another site and end when they have a conversation with a salesperson.

But for the sake of this article, we’re sharing examples of SaaS websites from the perspective of anonymous users who arrived on the site with the mindset of signing up for a free trial.

1. Petal: Clear and Simple

Websites in the banking and payments industries are notoriously complex. They usually offer complex products and have to use specific language to comply with regulations. But Petal is a breath of fresh air!

Petal’s site architecture is super simple. There are only a few pages to explore. The details for each credit card are laid out visually in easy-to-understand tables. It’s clear that you’re expected to use the application form to use the service. And the application form itself is simple and unintimidating.

Petal uses great language, as well. They speak directly to people who need to build their credit with phrases like “Welcome to credit, no experience necessary” and “Cards for every type of credit builder.”

2. Gemnote: Unique Aesthetics

Gemnote uses a clean, intuitive design that walks you right down the path of starting a project. We love how the pages “unfold” as you scroll through them. You always know what to look at next.

The aesthetics are especially unique. The site uses a memorable style that’s still functional. They don’t sacrifice usability for design, but it’s not a style you’ll see anywhere else.

The project creator is also simple. Creating merchandise for your brand only takes a minute. You know what your products will look like because they’re plastered all over the site. The scrolling bar of customers is excellent social proof.

3. Draftbit: Action Imagery

Draftbit uses a sleek SaaS website design with lots of open space and tight copy. Phrases like “Create any app, 10x faster,” “simple interface,” and “templates” are designed to reach people who want their own app without the hassle of coding it themselves.

The page smartly opens with a GIF of the tool in action. This is a great way to show non-technical people that they don’t have to write their own code.

The same technique is used on the features page. Each feature includes a GIF that shows how it actually happens in the app.

Their pricing is complex because they offer a variety of ways to build apps, all with different features and team sizes, but everything is laid out nicely, so it’s easy to understand. The feature table is particularly helpful. You can identify the features you need and pick the corresponding plan.

4. Basecamp: Refreshingly Simple

Basecamp is a project management tool that uses a refreshingly simple SaaS website design. It’s simple, bold, and uncluttered. It doesn’t bother with unnecessary design elements that take up space. Instead, it focuses on great copywriting, product imagery, and social proof.

Their pricing page also has a clean design. They offer only two pricing plans: one for freelancers and small teams and another for larger businesses.

The pricing page also has a unique feature that we don’t see often: an explanation of how much Basecamp will save you by replacing other commonly used apps. Brilliant!

Finally, we love the content on the features page. Instead of using abstract images for each feature, they give a screenshot from the app. This is a great way to help users decide if the feature will meet their needs.

5. Mailchimp: Pricing Calculator

Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms, so it’s no surprise they have one of the best SaaS websites.

In terms of design, the site is amazing. The imagery and clean typography are simple but elegant. The top of the page smartly offers the platform’s main tools with good product verb language. If you came for a specific tool, you know you’re in the right place right away.

The copywriting is excellent as well. “Turn emails into revenue,” “up to 25X ROI,” and “$1.7K per campaign” are evidence that they know exactly what their users want: to generate money from their email marketing program.

We also love their pricing calculator. You can input the size of your email list, and the calculator will tell you how much Mailchimp will cost. This is a great way to be clear about your pricing structure. More pricing details (including the specific features you get access to) can be found on the pricing page.

6. Webflow: Focused on Their Audience

As a website design product, the bar is pretty high for a site like Webflow. This sleek, interactive site with bold typography knows exactly who it’s talking to: no-code designers who want to build sites visually.

Throughout the site, you’ll see plenty of images, GIFs, videos, and interactive elements that show how the app builds websites. Users know what they’re getting. Every section pushes you in a clear direction: start a project.

The nav bar is one of our favorite elements. It’s a robust but intuitive map of the entire site. There’s a lot of information here, but it’s presented in a way that’s not overwhelming.

The pricing page is another superb element. It’s simple and clear, and all of the key features are laid out nicely. The frequently asked questions are a nice touch as well. This is a great way to overcome objections and convince people to buy.

7. ClickUp: Quick Product Exploration

ClickUp’s site combines bold and vibrant colors with an open layout. It feels friendlier than other project management apps, but it clearly has all the right features to make work easy.

We particularly like the tab-based product tour on the homepage hero row. You can explore the product quickly by selecting the corresponding icon. This is a great way to pack a lot of information in a small space.

The row of customer testimonials is genius. By using large, high-quality images of real people, the site helps visitors make a real human connection with the product. The vertical layout makes it seem like we’re chatting with a friend on our phone.

Pricing is clearly laid out on the pricing page, and the table format is easy to understand quickly. We like how they pepper the page with social proof phrasing like “Join over 10 million users” and “25,000+ reviews.” The cost savings row is super smart as well!

8. Homerun: Strong Directional Guidance

This is a great example of a well-designed SaaS website design for sites with simple product offerings.

Homerun uses a simple and easily scannable website to drive home the point that hiring can be simple. They don’t clutter their site with unnecessary pages or unnecessary design elements.

Everything on the site drives you toward starting a free trial. The sign-up button is always available, stuck to the top. It’s also at the bottom of every page.

We like that the navigation menu offers feature-specific pages as well as pages for different use cases. This helps users understand how the product fits their needs.

The pricing page is about as simple as you can get. We like how features that don’t come with the plan are grayed out as if to say, “This is what you’re missing.” The FAQs at the bottom are great tools to overcome objections.

9. Lattice: Superb Copywriting

Lattice uses great copy and direct language throughout its site. Their sections start with a simple and clear benefit for HR professionals, then follow up with corresponding key features and a relevant piece of data or social proof. This is a great 1-2-3 copywriting punch!

The navigation menu has a lot of information, but it’s laid out well, so it’s easy to understand. Using unique landing pages for different industries and company sizes is a great idea.

The pricing page is unique. Not only does it lay out the pricing scheme well, but you can also click different elements to tally the actual cost to your organization.

Finally, we like how all of the calls to action push visitors to request a demo. Since Lattice serves larger organizations, they know the buying cycle is longer than most SaaS businesses deal with, so a signup button wouldn’t be appropriate.

10. Kajabi: Personal Touch

Kajabi is a bold and powerful website that offers a variety of tools for creators. There are a lot of products offered here, but Kajabi uses smart organization to keep it ordered.

Kajabi obviously knows who they’re talking to. The copy and high-quality images are laser-focused on new creators who are just starting to build their brands.

The scrolling images of creators who use the platform are a great way to make a human connection with their audience of creators. Notice how each panel offers some compelling evidence of success, like “1 million followers” or “built an eight-figure business.”

You would think all of these products would make pricing a nightmare, but Kajabi organizes everything into four product tiers. They boost conversions by showing customer testimonials from real people and some FAQs.

11. Welcome: Transparent Pricing

Welcome is an award-winning virtual event platform. It’s an elegant site that uses powerful imagery to put the product right in front of your face.

We love that the site branches into three categories: create, engage, and repurpose. These are powerful verbs in the creator space. It allows users to explore the features that are most important to them.

Welcome is a premium product, so its pricing isn’t publicly available. You have to schedule a demo and speak with someone on their sales team. Nevertheless, they give you a starting figure of $625/month, so no one’s time is wasted if the visitor can’t afford a high price. This is a great example of being as transparent as possible, even when you can’t give an exact figure.

Like many of the best SaaS websites on this list, there’s plenty of social proof in the form of customer logos and testimonials.

12. Butter: Simple and Bold

Butter is a remarkably simple SaaS website that uses bold elements and bright colors to make its app seem friendly and fun.

The content of this site is simply remarkable. The masonry-style boxes lay out the features in an organized way. The Bold imagery gives you a good look at the product. And the FAQs on the home page help you overcome objections.

The navigation bar is particularly good for several reasons:

• All product features are broken out so you can explore what matters to you.
• Use cases help you decide if the product can meet your needs.
• Comparison pages help you make an informed purchasing decision.

The site also uses great directional guidance. Everything leads you to signing up for a free trial.

13. Spline: Community Focused

Spline is a 3D design and animation tool that knows its audience well. The entire site, from the copy to the imagery, is geared toward designers. The product videos and playful illustrations are powerful examples of what the app can do.

In fact, clicking many of the links takes you directly into the app, so you can try it yourself. That’s a brilliant way to make potential customers feel the app’s value. At this point, exploring other apps feels like going backward!

We like that they also promote the community aspect. Designers love to connect, share ideas, and even pass each other templates. If users feel like they are part of a community, they are less likely to leave the app for a new one.

14. Linktree: Strong Social Proof

Linktree is a simple app, so it deserves a simple website with generous white space. The bold colors and striking visual elements are exactly what social media users are looking for.

This well-designed website also offers great directional guidance. The calls to action are always visible (including one in the sticky header) and drive users to the signup page.

Social proof is used well on Linktree’s site. Phrases like “Join 50M+ people using Linktree” and the slideshow of celebrities who use the app are powerful motivators for users.

15. BILL: Smart Organization

BILL is a complex site with countless features, so keeping all of the content organized is a challenge. They manage this by dividing the site into two categories: 1) AR and PR and 2) Spend & Expense. This is a clever solution that marries marketing and product design, as otherwise, the site would be overwhelming.

The “Solutions” drop-down in the navigation bar is also well-optimized. A user can view pages by company size and industry to learn if the product fits their needs.

BILL’s white color scheme and simple design aren’t unique, but that’s actually a benefit for a business like this. We don’t need a financial app to be flashy, but it must be intuitive and reliable. What it lacks in aesthetic appeal, it makes up for in functionality.

For all the site’s complexity, the pricing is refreshingly simple. There are three simple out-of-the-box plans and a custom enterprise option.

The Fundamentals of SaaS Website Design

Creating a well-designed SaaS website requires a strategic approach. It’s important to focus on several key fundamentals that enhance user engagement and customer satisfaction. These fundamentals will help you create a SaaS website that not only attracts and engages users but also converts them into customers.

1. Start by Understanding Your User

Begin by identifying your target audience’s needs, behaviors, and pain points. These are key to good product design. This understanding will guide the design and content strategy, so your website serves your users well.

2. Keep Your Content Compelling

Engaging content is crucial for capturing and retaining user interest. Use clear, concise, and persuasive language that speaks directly to your audience’s needs and highlights the benefits of your SaaS product. Use imagery and videos that help visitors learn about the product.

3. Use Directional Guidance to Help Users Find What They Need

Directional guidance is an umbrella term that encompasses anything put on a user’s path to help them find what they want. It includes intuitive navigation menus, clear call-to-action buttons, and strategic use of ample whitespace. The goal is to help users find the necessary information and tools.

4. Deliver a Seamless Customer Experience

Ensure an enjoyable and smooth user experience by optimizing the website’s performance, responsiveness, and usability across all devices. Fix anything that’s broken or introduces friction into their experience. Consider every step of the user journey, from initial visit to conversion and beyond.

5. Design with Your Product Verbs in Mind

Focus on action-oriented language that emphasizes the core functionalities of your product. Use verbs that convey the actions users can take, such as “create,” “manage,” “track,” and “analyze,” to make the benefits of your product clear.

6. Be Clear About Pricing and Plans

Transparency in pricing and subscription plans builds trust and aids in the decision-making process. Clearly present all available options, including features and costs, to help users choose the plan that best suits their needs.

7. Test and Validate With Your Audience

Regularly test your website with real users to gather feedback and identify areas for improvement. Use A/B testing, user surveys, and analytics to validate your design choices, ensure they meet user expectations, and produce a user-friendly design. You may need the help of a design agency to manage this.

8. Keep Iterating on Your SaaS Website Design

A SaaS website should evolve based on user feedback, technological advancements, and changing market trends. Continuously update and refine your design to enhance user experience and stay ahead of your competitors.

9. Ensure Mobile Optimization

With an increasing number of users accessing websites via mobile devices, it’s crucial to ensure your SaaS website is fully optimized for mobile. This includes responsive design, fast loading times, and intuitive navigation on smaller screens for a smooth experience across devices.

10. Focus on Accessibility

Design your website to be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Implement features like alt text for images, keyboard navigation, and color contrast to make your site inclusive and compliant with accessibility standards.

11. Leverage Social Proof

Incorporate customer testimonials, case studies, and reviews to build credibility and trust. Social proof can significantly influence potential customers’ decisions by showcasing real-world success stories and positive feedback from existing users.

Looking for a SaaS Website Design Firm?

Designing a SaaS website is more than just making it look pretty. Visual appeal is important, but it’s important to remember that websites are made to be used.

SaaS website design is about creating a user experience that clicks with your target audience. That’s why every wireframe and design should be validated with real feedback and tests from your ideal audience before you start building.

At The Good, we specialize in making sure your SaaS website is aligned with your users and provides an engaging experience. We do this through rapid testing—a powerful tool for SaaS companies looking to improve their website design or navigate a redesign.

Rapid testing involves quick, iterative cycles where we test different design elements with real users. This gives us invaluable insights into what works and what doesn’t so we can make data-driven decisions backed by user feedback. For SaaS companies, this means faster improvements, less guesswork, and a website that resonates with their audience.

Ready to take your SaaS website to the next level? Let The Good help you create a user-friendly, conversion-boosting design that stands out.

Contact us to get started on transforming your website into a powerful tool for growth.

Hundreds of millions in revenue generated with our strategic optimization programs.

But don’t take our word for it. Hear about the amazing results from 15+ years in business, straight from the source.

SEE HOW

The post SaaS Website Design: 15 Examples to Inspire Your Redesign appeared first on The Good.

Standing up a product with a proper mix of free and paid features is no small feat.

Free features are great for acquisition, but give away too much free value and you risk carrying a bunch of free users who never convert to paid.

Paid features are an important part of monetization, but some products have value that’s hard to realize without users at least trying the full feature suite.

I’ve often felt that there’s a lot of nuance to feature-gating that goes unspoken. This is in part because we don’t have a great taxonomy to discuss it.

That’s where verb scoring comes in.

Verb scoring is the first step

If you read last week’s article, you’re already familiar with verb scoring, a method we developed to evaluate actions that users can take in your product and then score them based on the limitations and entitlements required to perform the action.

Here’s a refresher on the six verb scores.

Before undertaking a verb-scoring exercise, you’ll have to build your verb-scoring vocabulary. Then, you can move on to scoring your and your competitors’ verbs. Once you have a verb scoring matrix, the artifact that comes from your exercise, you can use it to address your product strategy.

Considerations for feature-gating as a product strategy

But, with a verb scoring matrix in hand, there is still an important unanswered question on how to use feature-gating as a way to encourage user conversions.

How to gate features has never been a simple equation, and there are several factors to consider when deciding what to offer users.

• Feature Complexity: While some features will only matter to users with a niche use case, others are built to acquire novices. As such, product people can use information like a feature’s target audience to make thoughtful choices about what verbs to give away for “free” and which to guard more tightly.
• Maturity: The maturity of your product and your brand’s reputation plays a role as well. Newcomers in an established product space might be looking to increase brand awareness, while a legacy brand with near-market saturation might care more about improving retention and reducing churn. It’s easy to imagine how a company’s status as either a newcomer or a market leader might impact their feature-gating strategy.
• Up-time and integration complexity: The complexity of your product’s setup can also impact your strategy. Significant up-time or complicated technical integrations might factor into whether you give away any or all of your product’s features in a grace period during the setup window.
• Novel technology: Many industries are shy of truly differentiated competitors. But for companies that have truly novel tech, restricting access to paying customers is a much easier decision than for companies with clearer competition.

Feature complexity, maturity, up-time, and novelty are just a few examples of what we might consider when standing up a paywall strategy. The list goes on.

It can be overwhelming to consider the seemingly endless number of factors that may contribute to a strategy. While it is crucial to keep these considerations in mind, it can also help to review specific scenarios of how verb scoring turns a company’s priorities into a product strategy.

How can I use verb scoring to craft a meaningful product strategy? It starts by understanding your goals.

Let’s take a look at nine use cases for verb scoring guided by common digital team goals.

1. If you’re looking to increase your share of voice

If you’re struggling to get in front of relevant audiences, you might want to consider if there are Anonymous verbs you can offer.

Especially for web-based products, search engine results pages (SERPs) are a frequent gateway for those looking for a feature.

Take, for example, online PDF conversion. One Google search yields big players like Adobe Acrobat, but it also shows leaner companies like SmallPDF and e-signature tools like PandaDoc.

Example: PandaDoc uses an anonymous conversion tool to get their document signature products in front of those with PDF use cases.

• From a Google search, PDFConvert promises Free Online PDF Conversion.
• On the website, users can take the action for free as many times as they like.
• Each time they complete the action, they see an offer to try PandaDoc for free.

By giving away a bit of value to users in their target audience (PDF users), PandaDoc is able to compete with big players in the PDF space and increase its visibility among people who have demonstrated a need for PDFs.

2. If you want to acquire new free users

While Anonymous verbs are good at building share-of-voice and awareness, limited Limited Anonymous Use (LAU) verbs can also transition top-of-funnel website visitors into registered users.

Example: Language learning app Duolingo allows users to complete their first few lessons without creating an account. Once users have completed one or two lessons, the app then asks them to create a profile to save their progress. These pages, which they refer to as “soft walls,” prompt users to sign up but still allow them to hit “Later.”

While the ask may start out soft, the requirement to Create a Profile eventually firms up. Users eventually hit a “hard wall” that requires sign-up to continue, which is why the approach is called “delayed signup.”

This delayed signup approach worked for Duolingo. The team found that soft paywalls not only increased DAU (daily average use) by 20% but also improved the performance of the hard paywall.

By offering lessons to anonymous users, they reduced the friction early on. But by limiting anonymous use to only a few lessons, Duolingo carves a path to growing its free user base. It’s a great example of how delaying friction and allowing some Limited Anonymous Use use can be an avenue to acquiring new free users.

3. If you’re hoping to increase monthly or daily average use (MAU, DAU)

It’s one thing to acquire a free user. It’s another thing to keep them engaged with your product on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis.

One strategy for increasing monthly active use (MAU) or daily active use (DAU) is to give away free features to registered users via Free with Registration verbs.

Companies often choose a select few core features to give away for free. In Adobe Acrobat’s case, users can read a PDF, highlight, markup, and share with others for comments without any restriction on the number of PDFs or the amount of highlighting.

These Free with Registration features are a great way to provide dependable, friction-free value to registered users with limited needs.

4. If you just need to turn free users into paying customers

If you already have a stable of free engaged users, you’re likely looking for ways to turn them into paying customers.

Limited Registered Use features are a great way to do this. While users generally need some free value to build a habit of using a product, most “free” products have features available to free users, but only in a limited capacity.

Spotify, for instance, allows free users to listen to entire records, but only on shuffle. Paying customers can hear the album in the order intended by the artist. Try to deselect the shuffle icon, and you’ll see a paywall asking you to upgrade to premium.

Productivity tools often do this with storage, reserving a certain number of videos, documents, or files for paying customers.

Example: See this example from Loom. Once a user has created 25 videos, they either need to delete or upgrade to record more.

We also see this with export functionality.

Example: Canva allows users to export designs in PNG, JPG, or PDF. However, Canva reserves the use of SVG, which has more professional use cases, for paying customers.

These Limited Registered Use features are a way to put paywalls in front of engaged users, while still offering a baseline of value. They keep free users happy with some functionality while using strategically placed friction to encourage engaged users to buy up.

5. If you want to introduce prospects to novel features that really “sell”

When you have a complex product with a novel feature set, it may not make the most sense to follow a typical “freemium” model. If the limitations of “free” are not enough to sell the paid product, you may want to consider using a Limited Registered Use approach to most, if not all, features–for a limited time. This time-based approach is what Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Dropbox, calls a Reverse Trial.

The Reverse Trial […] starts every new signup on a trial—usually without needing an opt-in or a credit card—and gives customers access to all or a select set of paid features.

– Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Dropbox

Reverse Trials give the users the full or near-full feature suite simply by registering. Often there’s no upsell pitched, and no credit card required to get started. Users can experience the free trial immediately upon registration.

Example: Airtable does this with their project management tool. Users who register are given a team account where they can play with advanced features like automation and advanced account management for a 14-day trial. Once the trial period is over, the user is downgraded to a Free plan and they lose access to advanced features.

6. If you’re hoping to acquire customers despite significant perceived “investment cost”

A key aspect of the Reverse Trial is that it’s time-based. Offering users the ability to try out the full feature suite gives them the ability to have that “aha” moment, while the ticking clock (often displayed prominently in the product’s navigation) imparts urgency on the user to make a buy/no-buy decision before the trial period ends.

But that time-based approach may not work for products where up-time is considerably long.

If you have an extremely complex product, one that many stakeholders will use, or that requires significant integrations and up-time in order for users to take full advantage of. In that case, it may make more sense to lean on an Open Trial strategy.

Open Trials are when products offer just about everything for free to registered users but gate the most important features with a hard paywall.

Example: Take for example Stripe. Simply by giving their name and a few details, Stripe users have access to nearly unlimited features. Users can set up integrations, add branding to invoices, and even create product inventory to streamline the invoicing process. However, a hard paywall blocks the user when it comes time to actually send an invoice or accept payment.

7. If you want to mitigate “trial abuse”

Open Trials and Reverse Trials are useful when we want to shorten the time-to-value by removing barriers like credit card signups. But for some products, the up-time isn’t a concern and time-to-value is relatively quick.

For products with a quick time-to-value, it might not make sense to offer a low-barrier Reverse Trial or Open Trial. If there’s no need for users to go through a lengthy discovery period, and they can understand the value through engaging for days or even minutes, it might make sense to leverage Trial with Payment (TwP) verbs.

TwP verbs are reserved for users who have provided payment information. Users must provide some form of payment (collected at a later date) to access the feature.

This gives the user an opportunity to use the feature, but by adding a credit card step, we create slightly more friction than in Free w/ Registration verbs mentioned earlier.

This has the added benefit of all but ensuring that users don’t engage in “Trial Abuse” – creating multiple accounts to access unlimited features.

8. If your tech keeps evolving

While some products have a highly complex feature matrix that can justify a complicated tier system, others might be more suited to a simple line in the sand for truly gated features.

Gated features are especially useful for truly differentiated technology.

Example: Take for example ChatGPT. While they built an audience with their free version (currently 3.5), OpenAI continues to advance their Language Learning Model and reserves the latest releases for paying customers.

Because each new version of the LLM is purported to be miles ahead of the last, gating the latest release is a great way to monetize an already popular product that’s getting significant publicity, word of mouth, or buzz.

9. If your product is best sold by a sales representative

Gating entire products (or releases of a product) is also an established way to generate leads for sales-led companies.

While some products simply explain themselves, complicated software vetting processes are still common at large enterprises with complex needs.

If your product needs excessive buy-in and compliance before you land the deal, your product might benefit from gating all features. Use calls to action like “Talk to Sales” or “Get a Demo” in this prouct strategy.

Sometimes a sales conversation is the only way to ascertain and assuage the prospective customer’s needs, so feature-gating across the board is an appropriate solution in some instances.

Align on verb scores and your goals to formulate a meaningful product strategy

Hopefully, by now, you can see why verb scoring can help you build a meaningful and effective product strategy.

Let’s review what we’ve learned so far:

• Giving prospective customers some features they can use while remaining anonymous (Anonymous) is a great way to build share of voice and gain visibility in the marketplace
• Offering limited utility to anonymous users (Limited Anonymous Use) is a great way to speed up time-to-value while working to acquire a free registered user
• Giving away features for free to registered users (Free with Registration) is a powerful way to build a stable of potential paying customers
• Giving users limited access to deeper functionality (Limited Registered Use) is a good way to showcase your product’s capabilities but create a sense of urgency to purchase
• Reserving some features for users who have shared payment information (Trial with Payment) is a great way to filter unserious lookie-loos and prevent trial abuse
• Keeping your most coveted features behind a hard paywall (Gated) is appropriate in B2B enterprise sales or for technologies that are complex or innovative

Whether your goal is to gain share of voice, build a stable of free users, monetize existing ones, or connect with leads, defining your goals is the first step to formulating a meaningful product strategy.

Verb scoring can then help you see where your tactics fall short and provide a foundation from which to build an intentional acquisition and monetization strategy.

The post 9 Use Cases For Verb Scoring To Support A Successful Product Strategy appeared first on The Good.

A pricing page is where you onboard potential customers to learn about your different plans and pricing options and decide what fits their needs best.

However, you need a fully optimized page that effectively communicates your SaaS product’s value, or else they may leave it to a competitor with a clearer value prop.

Whether you’re a SaaS startup or a mature business looking to improve your pricing page conversion rates, we’ll provide you with valuable insights to help you maximize revenue.

What You Need to Include On Your SaaS Pricing Page

Your pricing page should encourage users to go from indecision to certainty. The best pricing pages have clear, customer-friendly language, simple layouts, and are free from any misleading marketing tactics.

At a minimum, pricing pages should include:

1. A value-driven headline: Highlights your SaaS’s unique value proposition, enticing potential customers to learn more.
2. Brand-consistent pricing tier names: Clearly labeled pricing tiers that align with your brand and reflect each plan’s different features and capabilities.
3. Transparent pricing ranges: Outlines each plan’s features, limitations, and pricing.
4. FAQs: Addresses common questions about your SaaS product and pricing, such as billing, cancellation policies, and refunds.

Additional options include:

5. Upselling the annual plan: Encouraging customers to sign up for an annual plan by offering a discount or additional benefits as well as making this the pricing tier default.
6. Freemium models: Offering a free plan with limited features to attract potential customers and provide a low-risk way to try out your product.
7. Testimonials: Showcasing client reviews helps establish trust and social proof.
8. Currency conversion: Providing pricing in multiple currencies for customers in different regions to improve accessibility and reduce confusion.

Clear pricing pages also save your Customer Success team time by addressing common inquiries and allowing them to focus on more complex issues.

Now that you understand the key elements of a conversion-focused SaaS pricing page, let’s examine examples of successful SaaS pricing pages.

13 Best SaaS Pricing Page Examples

#1 Clearscope: Clean and Simple

Clearscope, a content optimization tool, keeps it simple on its pricing page (in fact, they boast about this on the pricing page).

From the start, Clearscope simplifies the purchase process even with its basic pricing plan names (Essentials, Business, Enterprise), with a brief description of each so customers know which to choose for their use case.

The plan pricing is bold, with vibrant CTAs encouraging customers to click, and highlights key features of each plan so customers can easily compare them.

Below the plans, Clearscope offers a “Meet Our Customers” section for social proof and a comprehensive FAQs section to provide additional information for potential customers.

How This Page Increases Conversions

• Clearscope’s pricing page provides clear information on plan features and benefits
• Easy for customers to choose the right fit and reduce decision paralysis
• No minimum contracts or penalties add to the flexibility of Clearscope’s plans
• Ability to upgrade or downgrade plans
• Emphasis on customer success, including free training and priority support

#2 UserInput.io: Tailored to Use Cases

UserInput.io provides user research and feedback services to help businesses and individuals improve their products and user experiences.

UserInput takes a non-traditional approach to its pricing page. Instead of a typical pricing page, UserInput tailors each pricing page to the services it offers (Customer Feedback, User Testing, and Audits) so customers can easily find the service they want, read about it, and feel compelled to purchase the service.

This works because each use case offers different pricing and services, and if UserInput combined all the plans on a single pricing page, customers might need clarification and leave frustrated with too many options.

Within each page, UserInput bolds the price, includes subheadings with a brief service description, and outlines every included plan feature.

How This Page Increases Conversions

• A clear headline calling out the pain point
• A list of benefits for each feature
• Clear pricing information
• Customer testimonials
• Money-back guarantee to build trust with potential customers

#3 PandaDoc: Plan Transparent

PandaDoc, a document signing competitor to DocuSign, leads with the transparency model. This page isn’t just clear; it’s aesthetic with its forest green glow.

PandaDoc goes above and beyond, not only by offering extremely transparent pricing, features, and use cases for each plan but by adding a section comparing each plan’s more advanced features so customers know everything that’s included in any plan.

The layout is simple and clean, quickly guiding the user down the page.

How This Page Increases Conversions

• Clear and detailed information about the features and benefits of each pricing plan
• Toggler for annual plan and monthly plan so users can choose between the two
• Pricing plans with different levels of features and pricing, providing customers with options
• Customer testimonials
• Option to try PandaDoc for free to encourage potential customers to test the product and see its value before purchasing

#4 FreshBooks: Comprehensive Plan Options

FreshBooks, an accounting software, offers a features-rich pricing page. After reading its page, customers should know exactly what plan suits their needs.

First, it provides the essentials: plan name, use case, price per plan, how many billable clients per plan, and a large green CTA with an option underneath to try the plan for free.

FreshBooks presents each plan in its own column, clearly highlighting its features, pricing, and savings.

If users want more information, FreshBooks goes the extra mile by providing everything included in every plan, with a plan comparison chart below, helping customers understand the differences between the plans and choose the one that best fits their needs.

 How This Page Increases Conversions

• Clear and easy-to-understand pricing structure, with four basic plans that are designed for different customer types
• Offers a 50% discount for the first three months, which is a great incentive for customers to sign up
• The plan comparison chart helps customers easily compare the features of each plan side-by-side
• Offers add-ons that customers can choose to add to their plan for an additional fee
• Includes trust signals such as the 30-day money-back guarantee, SSL encryption, and customer support

#5 MailChimp: Organized and Efficient

Mailchimp, an email marketing platform, follows UserInput’s method of separating each pricing table by use case. However, MailChimp doesn’t use separate landing pages, but rather uses toggle options so users can select what they want.

Cleverly, Mailchimp includes an option where users can select how many contacts they have per month in a dropdown. This calculator provides correct price estimates for how much users will pay monthly for any plan.

Then, it lists comprehensive features available in each plan, including email sends, users, audiences, customer support, pre-built templates, and more. So if customers need or want a specific feature, it’s easy to find without inquiring with the customer service team.

 How This Page Increases Conversions

• A dropdown menu allows customers to select how many emails they need, which gives them the pricing immediately
• Mailchimp offers a 15% discount to nonprofits and charities, showing that the company is committed to supporting social causes
• Offers a free trial for its paid plans, allowing users to test out the features before committing to a plan
• No hidden fees or complicated pricing structures
• Social proof through its various award icons at the bottom of the page

#6 Frase.io: Clear and Flexible

Frase.io, another content optimization tool, and direct competitor to Clearscope, presents a straightforward pricing breakdown.

It’s a clean page, free of extra fluff that gets in the way of the user experience. For example, each plan’s name corresponds to its use case, Solo, Basic, and Team. So, if customers want Frase for their team, they know to select Team. Or, a freelancer can select the Solo plan.

Frase also outlines what’s included in every plan using brand-consistent icons and briefly defines each feature.

 How This Page Increases Conversions

• Offers multiple pricing plans that cater to different types of users
• Offers a free 5-day trial for only $1, which allows visitors to test out the product without committing to a long-term subscription
• Presents clear and concise information about each pricing plan and the pricing options available, including annual options
• Includes a “Pro Add-On” section, which offers additional premium plan features for an additional $35/month and is presented as an easy way for users to upgrade to a more comprehensive plan with additional benefits
• Includes a section outlining the benefits of using Frase, including the AI writer and automated content briefs, which are included in every plan
• Offers a “Got a Question?” section, which allows visitors to ask questions about the product and clarify any doubts they may have before committing to a plan

#7 Semrush: Feature-Focused

Semrush, a search engine optimization tool, has a pretty straightforward pricing page.

One intriguing feature is the “Pay annually” toggle on the top left, encouraging users to save 17% by highlighting it in orange.

Customers who want a more thorough breakdown of each plan’s key features can scroll to see what is included in each.

Semrush adds social proof by providing a carousel of testimonials at the bottom from industry leaders at top-rate companies like Wix.

How This Page Increases Conversions

• Clearly outlines the different plans available, the key features included in each plan, and the pricing for each plan
• Includes testimonials from satisfied customers, which can help build trust and credibility with potential customers
• Offers a 7-day money-back guarantee, which can help alleviate concerns and encourage potential customers to try the service
• Offers a range of plans to suit different needs and budgets, including the ability to add additional users or create a custom plan.

#8 Slack: Benefit-Packed Features

Slack, a communication and collaboration platform, leads with a strong value prop “make teamwork more productive.”

Instead of a list of technical features, each plan offers a benefit. For example, “Timely info and actions in one place with unlimited integrations,” “Compliance requirements met with data exports for all messages,” tie features into how they help customers solve common problems.

Further down on the page, Slack has a detailed comparison chart, followed by an option for government officials called GovSlack that complies the U.S. government.

Right below that, Slack has a small callout highlighting their enterprise security efforts, showcasing their commitment to ensuring customer security.

How This Page Increases Conversions

• Clearly lists the different pricing tiers and what features are included in each tier
• Feature comparison chart that allows users to compare the different pricing tiers side by side
• Prominent call to action buttons for each pricing tier, making it easy for users to sign up for the plan they want
• Highlights Slack’s enterprise-grade security and compliance features, which can help reassure potential customers concerned about security and data privacy
• Includes information about GovSlack, a version of Slack explicitly designed for government agencies and their external partners

#9 Airtable: Intuitive Design

Airtable, a low-code platform for creating and sharing relational databases, offers a hierarchical design that encourages users to upgrade to the “Most popular” pro plan found in the blue color.

Assigning different colors to the different plan tiers also helps draw the eye to the brighter colors. It tricks a prospect’s brain into ignoring the free plan as the white background blends in with the site’s background.

It also shows logos of big-name clients that use its services: Expedia, Medium, Levis, Time, and Buzzfeed. How’s that for social proof?

Then, it follows the traditional pricing page format with a detailed comparison chart and frequently asked questions.

How This Page Increases Conversions

• Clear and organized list of features and pricing plans for different types of users
• Highlights most popular plan and offers a free trial
• Provides detailed information about features, benefits, and support for each plan
• Comparison table and list of frequently asked questions to help customers make an informed decision
• Includes customer testimonials and mentions the number of companies that use Airtable to build trust and credibility
• Designed to make it easy for customers to understand the product and pricing plans
• Visually appealing and easy to navigate, with brightly colored CTAs draw the eye to the most expensive plan
• Encourages customers to sign up for paid subscription plans

#10 Figma: Use Case Toggler

Figma, a prototyping tool for designers and developers, organizes its pricing page by using a use case toggles: Figma for design + prototyping and FigJam for whiteboarding.

Otherwise, it’s a classic example of a successful pricing page with simple plan names, different billing cycles, clear call-to-action buttons, and an upgrade to Enterprise below.

Similar to the Airtable pricing page, the CTAs for the paid plans are brightly colored compared to the plain white free plan, encouraging the eye to go for the most expensive plan.

How This Page Increases Conversions

• Highlights the most popular plan and offers a free trial for customers to test the product before committing to a paid plan
• Provides detailed information about the features and benefits of each plan, including the number of users, files, collaborators, and integrations, as well as the level of support and services provided
• Offers a comparison table of the different plans and a breakdown of associated costs, making it easy for customers to compare and choose the best plan for their team
• Includes a list of frequently asked questions to help customers make an informed decision and provides dedicated onboarding planning and support for Enterprise-level service customers
• Mentions discounts for schools, classrooms, and non-profit organizations, which may incentivize these groups to try Figma

#11 Miro: Leading with Social Proof

Miro, a visual collaboration platform, starts its detailed pricing page off with social proof by saying it’s trusted by 99% of Fortune 100 companies, further backing it up with the logos.

Once again, it draws the eye to the more expensive Business plan by outlining it in bright blue and changing the CTA button color to blue.

Each plan’s features are clearly called out in the pricing plan boxes, but those who want more detailed information can scroll down to compare plans.

Similar to the Slack example, for security-conscious individuals (who isn’t these days?) Miro highlights its security and compliance by displaying security certifications like SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC Security.

How This Page Increases Conversions

• Highlighting that Miro is trusted by 99% of the Fortune 100
• Offering a free plan that allows users to try Miro before committing to a paid plan
• Showing the benefits of upgrading to a paid plan, such as unlocking more features and increased security
• Offering different payment options, including monthly and annual subscriptions, to provide flexibility for users
• Providing education support for staff and students of educational institutions
• Displaying security certifications
• Including an FAQ section

#12 Coda.io: Customizable Billing Calculator

Coda.io, a collaborative productivity tool, offers a billing calculator to prospects when they first land on the pricing page.

They can choose between team size, number of Doc Makers on the team, and the plan they’re most interested in. This gives people an idea of the plan’s cost before scrolling down to the actual pricing plan chart below.

The calculator feature also may save their sales team from answering pricing questions so they can spend their energy on more important tasks like winning customers back.

After the calculator, this page follows the standard plan layout with pricing boxes, then a comparison chart, and an FAQs section below.

How This Page Increases Conversions

• The tiered pricing model allows customers to only pay for the features they need
• Coda uses the concept of “Doc Makers” to differentiate between users who create documents and those who collaborate and edit them
• Coda offers a “Free” pricing plan to encourage users to try out the product
• Coda provides detailed information on Packs included in each pricing tier, which are pre-built integrations with third-party tools

#13 ChargeBee: Currency Toggler

ChargeBee, a recurring billing software, presents pricing options in an elegant and uniform design through toggle switches.

Visitors can choose their billing cycle (annual, monthly) and their country’s currency. This is especially important for SaaS companies with many global clients because they can see plan pricing without using a currency calculator.

Below the pricing chart, ChargeBee specifically tailors a section to its target audience (early-stage startups) and encourages them to explore the additional benefits they offer by placing a callout below the pricing chart.

Then, they continue to target common customer pain points like churn reduction, failed payments, and time management, further convincing users why they should use ChargeBee.

How This Page Increases Conversions

• Offers a variety of pricing plans that cater to different business needs and sizes
• The pricing page provides clear and transparent pricing information
• Visitors can toggle between different billing cycles and currencies, which enhances their user experience
• Calls out to early-stage startups, encouraging them to learn more about what they offer specifically for this audience.

Create Your Conversion-Focused SaaS Pricing Page

Hopefully, these 13 SaaS pricing pages inspire you to plan out your own creative page to package your product.

Your pricing page should provide clear, customer-friendly language and a simple pricing layout free of misleading marketing tactics.

The essential pricing page design components:

• a value-driven headline
• brand-consistent pricing tier names
• transparent price tiers
• an FAQs section

Additional options include upselling annual plans, offering freemium plan options, showcasing testimonials, product demonstration videos, and providing pricing in multiple currencies.

Take inspiration from these examples, but always consider your own unique value proposition, target market, and business model.

Want to stop guessing how your customers view your brand?

ASK THEM

The post 13 Examples of Effective SaaS Pricing Pages That Drive Conversions appeared first on The Good.

• What makes a winning form design for ecommerce and SaaS brands
• How to build a form that converts for your website
• Understand the principles and common practices of over 32 form design examples

Form design seems like a website element that doesn’t require much thought, but there are actually many ways the form experience can go wrong. When it happens, you can lose a sale or  lose a lead, and in turn give those users a bad impression of your brand.

Website forms are one of your most important onsite elements. They are the crux of a user’s path to conversion. 

Bad form design can cause users to drop off during critical conversion opportunities, leaving them frustrated or confused, while great form design creates a seamless user experience that can increase conversion rates and leave users feeling excited about a product or company.

In this article, I’ll cover: 

• The basics of form design
• 10 UX form design principles 
• Form design examples that convert

What is form design? 

Form design is the process of putting together text fields and other form elements to collect user information while keeping usability, customer experience, and appearance in mind. 

For ecommerce specifically, form design is used when putting together website pages for: 

• Registration forms (a sign up or login form)
• Contact forms 
• Checkout forms
• Questionnaires

Improving the web form design on any of these pages of your ecommerce site can see incredible ROI – increasing conversions and building a better customer experience. 

So how do you do it? 

Here are a few of the form design principles that you should consider as well as corresponding desktop and mobile form examples from winning ecommerce brands.

10 UX form design principles with form design examples from winning brands

1. Priming 

The first principle to consider when designing your form is priming. We consider “priming” anything that sets user expectations for what is to come, so they aren’t deterred by any surprises.

That might mean:

• Telling users how many steps they can expect and what is in them
• Setting expectations for what will be required of users (for example, whether or not they might need to get their credit card out, vs indicating “no credit card required”)
• Sharing what happens after the form is complete (for example, “we’ll ship within 1 business day”)

This principle is when elements in the interface guide user behavior and inform them of what to expect from their interaction.

Priming often takes the form of progress bars. Adding this element tells the user what they can expect from the process during or before completion of the form, setting the expectation so that users come prepared to fully fill out the form.

See this example from Hungryroot.com. The brand features a progress bar with clear labels to prime users about what to expect during the experience. 

Etsy uses a similar progress bar on mobile to prime users on the checkout process. 

This example from Robinhood tells users exactly what information will be required from them to register.

Another example of priming is sharing the end result or value they’ll receive upon completing the form. This helps them anticipate what to expect once the form is complete and generate excitement for the product, motivating them to complete the form.

The “Try Demo” button, shown below, primes users to know what they can expect after they fill out the form, in this case, they get to demo the product once the form is complete. For additional priming, the brand has a bulleted list of what the user can expect after the form is complete. 

2. Error prevention 

Great form design should always include error prevention. Provide clear and adequate instructions that help users fill out forms correctly on the first try and prevent errors before they are committed.

Here are a few examples of error prevention in action. 

Providing an example of how the text input field should be completed. Both Canva and Petco use hint text in the email field to remind users of proper formatting.

Mailchimp and Lululemon provide a password requirement checklist to assist users in creating a password that meets the requirements.

Ritual and Etsy use an inactive CTA that turns colorful when the user has properly filled out the form, giving them feedback and validation that they are ready to move on to the next step.

Highlighting required fields, like Prose and Headspace do here, assures users won’t skip the necessary fields.

When you’re clear about the expectations and requirements of your form, you avoid user error and in turn avoid user frustration.

3. Error recovery

Even with the best error prevention methods, mistakes still happen and are always frustrating. That’s why we have error recovery! 

When errors happen, it’s important to notify users immediately, in a friendly tone, and provide clear and specific instructions to help them fix the issue on their own.

For example, highlight text form fields with incorrect information in order to catch the user’s attention. Then provide clear instructions to fix the error.

Sephora and Lululemon do this well on desktop and mobile respectively.

4. Feedback

The same way humans need feedback in our day to day life, we also need it in our digital interactions. Feedback is a combination of error prevention, error recovery and priming to let users know they are on the right track to achieving their goals.

Feedback refers to visibly and simply communicating the results of any user interaction, providing positive reinforcement if a user succeeds at performing a task.

Inline validation that confirms a user is entering the correct (or incorrect) information, is an example of form feedback. 

Mailchimp and Home Depot share real time feedback to let the user know whether they are successfully inputting a password or not.

Another example of feedback is confirmation or error messaging during a user experience. For example, Hum Nutrition sends a success message as feedback letting users know they successfully completed their task. 

5. Proximity 

In your form design, take advantage of gestalt principles like proximity to indicate to users what is needed from them. Psychology shows that through the Law of Proximity, items closer together will be perceived as more related than items further apart. 

By closely grouping related fields, users can quickly make sense of your form at a glance, which can reduce form completion time and create a much more seamless and enjoyable experience for the user. For example, you can group together related form text fields such as shipping information in order to help users easily make the distinction between form content. 

Shopify separates the email field from the shipping info, so users don’t have to think too hard about what is being asked of them. 

And don’t forget to use the principle of proximity in your labeling. Keep your form labels close to their corresponding input fields to minimize confusion and prevent errors. 

6. Convention

There are some elements of web design that remain consistent, even across different industries, which users depend on to navigate the digital world much more quickly. For example, an account icon in the top right corner of an ecommerce website or a checkout button in the cart. 

Using platform and industry standards that align with users’ expectations and mental models of the digital world helps minimize confusion or frustrations, and increases the usability of the interface

Form design also has conventions that need to be followed in order to create a positive user experience and promote conversions.

Here’s an example from Oscar, a Medicare Advantage company, uses radio buttons for language selection that universally indicate the ability to select only one option.

Here, the SaaS company Scale uses checkboxes for interest selection that universally means that users can select multiple options. 

Additionally, checkout how Headspace (and most forms) have some type of “Submit” CTA that are always placed at the end of the form. 

These are just a few examples of industry and platform standards in form design that are in line with user expectations. When industries deviate from basic standards, usability breaks down.

7. Momentum

How do we encourage users to convert and avoid abandonment? We can accomplish this by making users feel a sense of accomplishment, like they are progress toward their goal during the form filling process. 

Leverage the product’s value in order to inspire users to complete your form. For example, like monday.com, put a scrim behind a sign up form to give a sneak peek of what’s coming upon completion. It illustrates to users that they’re almost to their goal of trying out your product and only need to complete the form to see the dashboard.

Momentum is a well tested and verified form design principle that keeps users motivated through completion. 

8. Proof 

Humans have the tendency to “reference the behaviors of others to guide their own behavior” (NNG, 2014). In forms, we can stimulate this tendency to increase conversion rates by using different types of proof, such as  social proof, testimonials, and proof in numbers. When we build these elements into our design, we foster a sense of trust between the user and the brand, making it more likely that users will convert. 

Here’s how that might look in action, with various forms of social proof: 

• Ratings and accreditation: 5 star ratings on a customer review site
• Expert endorsement: Including logos on the homepage of your site 
• Customer testimonial: A satisfied customer quote
• Expert testimonial: Known brands and experts lend their names to the review a product or service
• Proof in numbers: Show your success using a phrase like “trusted by 2 million moms” or something that builds confidence and connects with your target audience. 

Keep in mind, the numbers, testimonials, and social proof you’re using should be the primary, or at least secondary, text on the form screen in order to catch the user’s attention. 

Here’s an example from Yousign, using a testimonial. 

Uscreen uses proof in numbers to build trust with users on desktop.

And Thrive Market does the same on mobile.

Scale uses logos on their form to build trust.

9. Demonstrated Value

How are you telling the user what they will get in return for their effort?

Are you making it clear that it’s worth their time? 

If not, you need to demonstrate the value users will get by taking the time to fill out your form. Highlight the main benefits of your product in a way that’s visible and concise. 

Adidas and Dominos offer lists of the benefits they offer upon signup or login. 

Shippo, shown below, uses icons to demonstrate value on their signup form, in a skimmable and impactful format. 

10. Perceived Effort Level 

Users are busy and their attention is fleeting. To increase the likelihood of completion and conversion, make sure your form appears – and really is – low effort for the customer.

In practice, this looks like honest and specific references to the timing (7 minutes to complete or only three steps, shown with an accurate progress bar) and only asking for necessary information. Gather the information you need, and then you can follow up for more, less crucial details later if necessary. 

On mobile, Daily Harvest shows that users only need to enter two pieces of information to see plans and pricing. Once they fill out the initial information, they are one step closer to subscribing. Additionally, users can see to complete the whole process there are only 4 steps. 

On desktop, Kickoff labs uses the word “instantly” and lets users know that they won’t need to input any payment info to signal a fast and free sign up process. 

Apply these principles to desktop and mobile form design

While desktop and mobile users have different needs, and there are certainly ways that forms should differ, each principle listed above still applies. That’s the beauty of this list and these examples, you can implement them no matter where you’re designing your form. 

Some principles are even more relevant when applied to mobile devices. If a user on their smartphone clicks through to an ecommerce site’s sale from a social media ad, the form on the landing page should minimize the number of text fields even more than a desktop form, automate answers when possible, and use a single column layout. 

For an easy to follow checklist on mobile form design checkout the NNG’s checklist of usability requirements for mobile, and implement the form design principles we covered today on top of that. 

Forms are just one part of your user experience

Implementing the principles we covered today can help you improve your site’s user experience and conversion rates, but form design isn’t the only thing that needs to be considered in order to see a larger, iterative improvement. 

Forms are just one element of your ecommerce website. Each step in the customer journey is an opportunity to test and optimize the experience you deliver. If you’re interested in partnering with experts in digital experience optimization to understand your users and improve their experience, contact us.

The post 10 Principles of Good UX Form Design (+ Winning Form Design Examples) appeared first on The Good.