Three things your SaaS landing pages need to get right
Jan 7, 2025
Toni Hopponen
Planning and creating SaaS landing pages is difficult.
Despite the AI tools, you need skills in content writing, design, and website development.
It’s often teamwork where the most challenging bits are making sure the page sounds like a customer talking about your service to another, the page structure feels intuitive, and prospects take action.
In the past 15 years of building websites and landing pages, I’ve learned a ton. In this blog post, I’ll share my three tips on planning SaaS landing pages that convert.
Three tips on how to plan high-performing SaaS landing pages
I’m a content-first marketer. Some marketers like to start with design, but in my opinion, design’s role is to make sure the content is presented in the best possible way for a page visitor to adopt. Content leads, design follows.
Therefore, my three tips lean towards content writing (and page structure planning).
Tip 1: Invest in the hero section and first impression
We hear people say that the first impression counts and this is true even more so when it comes to landing pages.
When you imagine yourself browsing the web at work, you are often distracted. There may be more pressing things that cloud your concentration. Slack notifications, emails, and ad hoc meetings are the culprits I’ve battled with.
A hero section on a landing page builds momentum. Unlike face-to-face meetings between sales teams and customers, it’s easy to stop the visit and check a competitor instead if the hero doesn’t sound right.
The best SaaS landing page hero sections have three key ingredients:
They tell who the solution is for, what it does, and why it matters.
They show social proof, making the promise feel much more real.
The actionable CTA button and objection handling seal the deal.
One of my favourite SaaS landing page hero sections is on Buy Me a Coffee’s homepage.
The main title, ‘Fund your creative work’, is actionable, talks to you, and tells who the service is for.
The description lists the “what” and handles objections (e.g., 'It’s easier than you think').
Because Buy Me a Coffee has taken a calculated risk and moved the product image below the hero texts and CTA button, there’s a lot of space for social proof.
By default, I recommend that product images/videos be visible above the fold, but here, the choice to prioritize social proof feels just right.
For more inspiration, check out these fantastic SaaS website hero text examples.
Tip 2: The content structure is much more important than the design details
The design makes a huge difference on SaaS landing pages. Your text content looks so much more powerful in Google Docs than on a landing page, where each word competes for attention against the visual look and feel.
But more than the design and individual words, it’s the page structure that matters the most.
The page structure defines how your landing page tells the story and which parts get the most attention.
For example, your SaaS landing page might discuss the visitor's pain points right from the start. A content writing formula like Problem-Agitation-Solution (PAS) guides the structure of such a page.
It’s intuitively clear that not every page can follow the PAS formula – sometimes the page visitor doesn’t have an acute pain to fix. How do you decide the right structure for each landing page?
I recommend you to look at these three aspects when planning the page structure:
Traffic source. Where’s the traffic coming from, and what did visitors see previously? For example, they might land on the page via Google Ads.
Page visitor’s expectations. Is the page visitor just exploring the topic or ready to buy? You can make an educated guess based on the traffic source and what you know about the user’s journey (e.g., a search query).
Page visitor’s role in the buyer organisation. Your landing page might be dedicated to a certain industry and shared with the buyer’s team instead of the actual user. This information should change your page structure and move, for example, benefits and case studies towards the top.
Analysing those three aspects carefully helps you make decisions on the structure that serves the page visitor the best and drives action.
Are you planning SaaS landing pages but unsure what the best structure looks like? With LandingRabbit, SaaS teams plan high-performing pages without the back-and-forth and guesswork. Request early access today!
Tip 3: Coming up with a plan and headlines is 90% of the page writing work
When I plan my content, I like to create a canvas with notes that discuss all the key ingredients, such as who the customer is, what problem they are looking to solve, what the solution is, etc.
I use LandingRabbit for the task, but you can use Miro or any other visual planning tool to do the job. Here’s an example of one of my recent landing page plans:
After I’ve prepared my plan, it’s time to write the content and find the right images to support the story.
Before I write the longer texts and descriptions, I start with the headlines. They are the most important ones, and the page visitor is very likely to skim them, pay attention to product images, and skip longer pieces of content.
When finishing writing headlines, make sure you read them through and compare the story with your page plan.
Does a page visitor get the idea just by reading the headlines? If the answer is yes, you are on the right track, and you can write the descriptions next.
You can use any text editor and wireframing tool, but I like to use LandingRabbit for the task because I can constantly view my page in my website’s branding. Also, I can quickly change between versions and test different ideas (see the top left corner of the image).
When I’m happy with the content, I’ll share the version with my team for review. My sincere hope is that our designer will help me with finding the right images before we implement the page on our website.
Creating SaaS landing pages is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be a task that knocks you down. With a solid plan and the right tools, your page visitors get to enjoy pages that make them say aha.
Are you looking to create landing pages but struggling to get started? With LandingRabbit, SaaS teams can plan better-performing landing pages without the back-and-forth and guesswork. Request early access today!