SaaS Product Homepage Study
Client A serves over 2 million companies. Many of the world’s leading companies choose Client A to help them innovate faster, make smarter decisions, and collaborate from anywhere. Client A wants to deliver customer satisfaction while solving their customer’s toughest challenges. Implementing technology has a ripple effect and Client A wants to be a positive force behind the change in solving problems from storewide designs to logistical solutions without compromising internal or external experiences.
Research Objectives:
Identify the target user and their needs.
Gather feedback about the organization,
layout, and the messaging of the homepage.
Duration: 1/2022 - 5/2022
The Challenge
Improve the homepage to communicate the various services offered and provide enough information to make a purchasing decision.
Role: UX Researcher
Deliverable: Presentation of research methodologies, key findings, analysis of data, and recommendations.
The Solution
Include messaging on the homepage that caters to all target users and reorganize the layout to increase comprehension and flow of the content displayed.
THE PROBLEM
How can we create a homepage that clearly communicates the technical services offered while ensuring the content provides enough information for the target users?
THE OPPORTUNITY
Users are searching for SaaS products to solve their problems and the homepage is a crucial opportunity to quickly highlight potential solutions that will meet user’s needs.
Key Insights
The SaaS product homepage included detailed technical language that was difficult to digest for business leaders (CEO, CFO, Executives, Director of IT, Director of IT Security, etc., ) but easier to comprehend for the technical team members (software developer, engineer, engineer architect, etc.,).
However, the purchasing decision was made by business leaders who often considered the technical team members evaluation of a SaaS product. The homepage needed to serve both target users, business leaders and technical team members. Within this core problem, I identified three essential user needs:
1. Brevity - Researching key differences among varying SaaS products can take a long time.
Business leaders did not want to spend time sourcing potential solutions and heavily relied on their teams to research SaaS products. The business leaders often received a few options from their team and wanted to quickly browse the homepage to learn about the potential solutions offered. The primarily wanted to understand the key differences among competitors and obtain a clear breakdown of costs.
2. Depth - Some technical content was appreciated with the opportunity to research further if needed.
Most business leaders felt overwhelmed when there was detailed technical content. They felt the messaging was unclear and too technical. They often relied on their team members (software engineers, developers) to review the technical language presented on the SaaS product page. Many of the business leaders had a background in the technical roles and was familiar with the terminology used. They understood the importance of having some technical detail included, but preferred a brief summary with an opportunity to research further.
3. The layout of the homepage needed reorganization.
Searching for potential solutions and browsing SaaS products can be time consuming. The organization of the content and the overall layout of the page needed improvement. The messaging in what services were being offered, case studies, and price breakdown needed to be quickly accessible and organized in a logical order for the reader to feel a natural flow of information.
Determining The Target Users
Methodology:
1:1 hour long remote user interviews via Zoom
8 participants + 2 alternate participants
2 segments of participants by role
Participant Segments:
Recruiting for the individual interviews had 2 main segments which represented the target user.
Business Leaders of Enterprise : This included leadership / decision makers (C suite executives and directors).
There was a minimum amount for annual revenue for the companies included in this study as part of the recruitment criteria.
70% of participants were business leaders (6 participants)
Technical Roles: This included software engineers, software developers, and IT engineers.
30% of participants had technical roles (2 participants)
Individual Interviews
During the interview I shared 3 prototypes of the SaaS product homepage and asked participants to share their screen with me. This allowed for the participant to have a natural observation in scrolling and navigating the prototype as I observed and gathered feedback. The 3 prototypes were presented to all participants in random order to minimize bias.
Photo 1A: Sample introduction of the moderator’s guide.
Photo 1B: Sample images of 3 prototypes evaluated during the interview by participants.
Analyzing The Data
After the interviews were completed, I compiled all the data and began organizing the feedback by compiling similar responses. I created categories and themes from the responses.
Quantitative adjectives were used to communicate key findings:
All: This finding applies to all study participants.
Most: This finding applies to more than half of the study participants.
Half: This finding applies to 50% of the study participants.
Few: This finding applies to 2 to 3 out of 8 the study participants.
Photo 2: Sample notes sheet used for analysis and reporting.
Key Findings
Overall most participants felt the prototypes were easy to navigate and felt it provided enough information about the services being offered.
Most participants appreciated Prototype A the most because they felt the layout of the page was organized and the messaging was clear. However, they wanted the pricing information from Prototype C to be included in Prototype A in the same format of a table because they felt it was easier to comprehend at a glance.
Participants with a technical role (software engineer, developer) preferred Prototype B because it included detailed technical information they felt was useful for them. They felt prototype A included some technical detail but wanted more information without having to click further to dig for it.
A few participants were confused about some of the terminology (partnership, membership, etc.,) used throughout the prototypes and felt they had to guess to understand what to expect.
Prototype A
Prototype B
Prototype C
Recommendations
The following were top 10 recommendations.
Include pricing information by organizing the price breakdown in a chart to increase comprehension.
Use clarifying language when using terminology to describe services to set expectations.
Consider using some technical language to provide additional detail but allow for further research by providing a link to learn more.
Use the introductory information displayed on Prototype A to quickly communicate intentions and services being offered.
List the companies when using quotes and sharing case studies to convey the various industries using the SaaS products.
Reduce ambiguity by clearly communicating the additional case studies included in the carousal since it caused confusion and users were unsure if there were more to browse.
Continue to offer free credits as it captures the attention of users as they were interested in using it.
Consider compiling key differences among competitor SaaS products to reduce the amount of time spent researching.
Replace exiting headline about the free credits because it felt misleading and indicated further action needed to move forward.
Continue to provide an option to set up a demonstration as users found it to be helpful.