Sales & Conversion
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, I proposed something to a B2B SaaS client that made them physically uncomfortable. Instead of following the industry playbook of hero sections, feature grids, and testimonials, I suggested treating their SaaS landing page like a product on Amazon.
"This goes against everything we know about SaaS marketing," they said. They were right—and that was exactly the point.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most SaaS landing pages are optimized for conversion, not awareness. They assume visitors already know what you do and why they should care. But in reality, awareness comes before conversion, and most SaaS companies are skipping this critical step.
After running a 30-day A/B test that proved conventional wisdom wrong, I learned that sometimes the best SaaS strategy comes from completely different industries. Here's what you'll discover:
Why traditional SaaS landing page "best practices" create noise instead of awareness
The e-commerce psychology trick that doubled our conversion rate
How to test contrarian approaches without risking your current performance
When to break industry conventions (and when to follow them)
A framework for creating landing pages that actually drive awareness
This isn't about following another template. It's about understanding why your landing page might be invisible in a sea of identical SaaS sites.
Industry Reality
What every SaaS founder thinks they know about landing pages
Walk through any SaaS website today and you'll see the same template repeated endlessly. The industry has convinced itself that there's a "proven" formula for SaaS landing pages, and everyone follows it religiously.
The Standard SaaS Landing Page Recipe:
Hero section with value proposition and CTA
Social proof section with company logos
Feature grid with icons and benefits
Testimonials from happy customers
Pricing table or "Get Started" section
This formula exists because it works—for companies that already have awareness. When someone searches for "project management software" and lands on Asana, they know what they're looking for. The landing page just needs to convince them that Asana is the right choice.
But here's where most SaaS founders get it wrong: they apply conversion-optimized templates to awareness problems. When visitors don't understand your category, don't recognize your problem, or have never heard of your solution, traditional SaaS landing pages become walls of corporate speak.
The conventional wisdom assumes your visitors are already in-market and ready to evaluate. It optimizes for the final decision, not the initial discovery. This is why so many SaaS companies struggle with user acquisition—their landing pages are designed for people who already know they need them.
Most growth advisors will tell you to A/B test different headlines or button colors. But when everyone in your industry uses the same template, you're just optimizing noise. The real opportunity is in breaking the pattern entirely.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started working with this B2B SaaS client, they had a textbook landing page. Clean design, clear value proposition, social proof from recognizable brands. It looked like it belonged in a "best SaaS landing pages" gallery.
But the metrics told a different story. High bounce rate, low time on page, and visitors who signed up for trials but never activated. The landing page was converting visitors into trial users, but those users weren't becoming customers.
During our discovery session, I noticed something interesting. When the founder explained their product in person, he didn't lead with features or benefits. He showed screenshots. He walked through the interface. He demonstrated the experience, not the value proposition.
That's when I realized we were treating a SaaS product like a service when we should have been treating it like a product. People don't buy software because of bullet points—they buy it because they can envision themselves using it.
I proposed an experiment that made my client uncomfortable: What if we treated our SaaS landing page like a product page on an e-commerce site?
Instead of hero sections and feature lists, I suggested:
A slideshow of product screenshots (like product photos)
Minimal explanatory text
One prominent action button
No feature grids, testimonials, or pricing tables above the fold
"This goes against everything we know about SaaS marketing," they said. "Where's the value proposition? Where's the social proof?"
But I'd seen this problem before with e-commerce clients. When you have a complex product that people need to understand before they can evaluate, sometimes showing is more powerful than telling. The question was: would this translate to B2B SaaS?
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
We implemented what I called the "Product Gallery Approach" for SaaS landing pages. Instead of following the traditional template, we treated the software like a physical product that visitors needed to examine before purchase.
Here's exactly what we built:
The Visual-First Layout: The hero section became a large screenshot carousel showing the product in action. Each slide highlighted a different use case—not through bullet points, but through actual interface screenshots with real data. Visitors could click through like they were examining product photos.
Minimal Copy Strategy: We reduced text by 70%. Instead of explaining what the software did, we showed what it looked like when you used it. The only copy was contextual—brief captions under each screenshot explaining what the user was seeing.
Single Action Focus: One prominent "Try It Now" button, positioned like an "Add to Cart" button on an e-commerce site. No competing CTAs, no multiple signup options, no "Learn More" links to distract from the primary action.
Progressive Disclosure: Additional information existed below the fold, but only for visitors who wanted to dig deeper. Features, testimonials, and detailed explanations were available but not forced on every visitor.
The psychology behind this approach: awareness comes through recognition, not explanation. When people see your software in action, they immediately understand whether it's relevant to their situation. Traditional SaaS landing pages make people work to understand the value. Product-gallery pages make the value immediately visual.
We A/B tested this against their original landing page for 30 days. Traffic was split 50/50, and we tracked everything: bounce rate, time on page, trial signups, and trial-to-paid conversion.
The results challenged everything we thought we knew about SaaS landing page optimization. The visual-first approach didn't just perform better—it performed dramatically better across metrics that actually mattered for awareness and conversion.
This experiment taught me that SaaS trial optimization isn't just about the signup form—it's about whether people can envision themselves using your product before they even start a trial.
Visual Storytelling
Screenshots and interface demos build understanding faster than any value proposition copy could.
Single Focus
One clear action eliminates decision paralysis and guides visitors naturally toward trial signup.
E-commerce Psychology
People buy products they can visualize using. SaaS isn't different—it just requires different visuals.
Progressive Disclosure
Put detailed information below the fold for interested visitors while keeping the main message simple and clear.
The visual-first landing page outperformed the traditional SaaS template across every meaningful metric:
Engagement Improvements: Time on page increased by 40%, and bounce rate dropped by 25%. Visitors were actually spending time examining the product instead of scanning and leaving.
Conversion Impact: Trial signups increased, but more importantly, trial-to-paid conversion improved significantly. People who signed up after seeing the product in action were more likely to activate and convert.
Unexpected Discovery: The biggest surprise was how the new approach affected sales calls. Prospects who came through the visual-first landing page arrived with better context about the product, making sales conversations more productive.
Within 30 days, we had enough data to declare the experiment a success. The client decided to keep the new approach and has since applied similar principles to other marketing materials.
This experience proved that industry best practices become industry noise when everyone follows them. Sometimes the most effective strategy is looking outside your industry for inspiration.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experiment taught me several lessons that apply beyond landing page design:
1. Show, Don't Sell: When people can't visualize your product, they can't evaluate it. Screenshots and interface demos communicate value faster than any amount of copy.
2. Industry Templates Create Industry Noise: When everyone follows the same playbook, following a different playbook becomes a competitive advantage.
3. Awareness ≠ Conversion: Traditional SaaS landing pages optimize for visitors who already understand the problem. Awareness-focused pages help visitors discover whether they have the problem.
4. Cross-Industry Learning: Some of the best solutions come from completely different industries. E-commerce has been perfecting product presentation for decades—SaaS can learn from this.
5. Test Contrarian Approaches: The biggest breakthroughs come from testing ideas that feel wrong. If everyone thinks it's a bad idea, that's often a signal it's worth testing.
6. Context Improves Conversion: Visitors who understand your product before starting a trial are more likely to become customers. Better awareness leads to better conversion.
7. Visual Beats Verbal: Complex products require visual explanation. People need to see your interface before they can imagine using it.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies looking to implement this approach:
Replace hero copy with product screenshots showing real use cases
Create screenshot carousels that tell a visual story of your product
Test single-action layouts against traditional multi-CTA designs
Move detailed features and testimonials below the fold
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores optimizing product awareness:
Use the same progressive disclosure principles for complex products
Test visual-heavy layouts against text-heavy product descriptions
Consider how SaaS onboarding flows could improve product education
Apply single-focus design to key conversion pages