Designing for conversion

And why most startups' websites suck

This is a newsletter about building a software company, written from the trenches of building one.

I write brief essays to reflect... and to counter all the startup myths and “hacks” peddled by influencers looking to make a quick buck.

This week, I’m taking on the entire SaaS startup branding & design world.

Startup branding is dumb

You’re an entrepreneur trying to get your SaaS startup off the ground. You want to build a landing page that converts,

You look at the “hot” startups’ websites, follow the loudest entrepreneur influencers on Twitter (👇 THREAD), and listen to the top VCs on Clubhouse.

You take diligent notes and wind up with a website - and a business - that spews generalities and draws the applause of the “best practices” crowd.

For my company, this would be having a website that says, “Welcome to the future of hourly work.” Cool. What the hell does that mean?

The people who matter - your ideal customers who are looking for a solution to their problem - read your marketing material or listen to you talk and walk away with no clue what you do.

Ugh.

What we all miss is that converting customers is hard. Even when they are your ideal target customer, searching for a solution that you can solve.

Welcome to the bottom of your sales funnel. It is where customers are converted or lost; where you get the most feedback on your positioning and value prop.

It’s also where you make money, right? :)

When you spend all your time higher up in the sales funnel, you get the fuzzy feeling that you’re doing high-leverage activities like brand-building, category creation, and thought leadership.

I call BS! At minimum, this is opportunity cost. Most likely, it is preventing you from thinking clearly about how to differentiate from competitors and find & convert customers.

I think of Nassim Taleb’s “barbell” investment strategy:

• Spend 90%+ of your time on low-risk, highly predictable “bottom of funnel” conversion activities. In other words, building the revenue engine.

• Spend <10% of your time on low-likelihood, high-potential-payoff “top of funnel” activities. In other words, playing the lottery.

Designing a business for conversion

I want to change my company’s website to be spartan, designed to convert our best customers. Here’s what it will say:

We give Quick-Service Restaurant franchisees a hiring boost when you need it most. Our software texts and emails your past applicants and former employees to hire them and get referrals. Click here to see how many hires we could get your stores.

Join leading franchisees from brands like McDonald’s, Dunkin’, Domino’s, and more.

This is designing for conversion. If you’re our target customer (QSR Franchisee) at the right stage (desperately needing hires), you understand what we do, why we’re different, and you click the damn button.

I’m thinking a lot about how to design an entire business around conversion. A business as a revenue engine. A hyper-efficient machine that’s built around:

• Knowing EXACTLY who to target & when they’re in their buying stage

• Finding an effective way to get in front of them when they’re in their buying stage

• Using a value proposition that is clear, differentiated, memorable, converts, and sets the right expectation for customers to be happy with the product

They sound like obvious, fundamental components. But in the bullshit tsunami that is “startup best practices”, these unsexy basics get postponed. To the world’s great loss.

What do you think?