Years ago, someone told me you needed a primary CTA on your website. If a prospect is interested and wants to learn more, your CTA should tell them exactly what they need to do next.
Well there’s a problem, Goldilocks… It looks like you only have two choices!
You can go “Free Demo!” and have sellers jump on the first call to handle inbound. Or you could offer a “Try now!” and let prospects install and test straight away.
Of course, the ‘get demo’ button is too cold. It’s going to annoy prospects that want instant gratification. And your ‘get started’ button is crazy hot! It’s going to annoy anyone that can’t navigate the install and set it up in under five minutes.
Where’s the “just right” approach?
I believe there is a new website must-have that you’ll be seeing on more SaaS sites in the near future. It’s the Website Product Tour, and it’s a perfect balance between the ‘free demo’ and ‘free trial’ buttons we currently see.
You can check an example out on the homepage for Pendo.io
- Prospects are invited into a sandbox live on the website
- They’re given a choice on which value prop or use case they’d like to experience
- They experience the power of Pendo without talking to a rep
Unlike asking prospects to book a demo, this offer gives them instant access. It lets your leads self-qualify. It builds trust with the market – no bait-and-switch here. It cuts wasted motions for sellers while providing an enjoyable experience for buyers that puts what they want front and center: instant and immediate access to the software.
Unlike asking prospects to start a real trial, this offer skips all the homework. It allows you to see what a fully deployed account would look like without connecting to your existing stack. It allows you to test the product without uploading your own (sensitive) data to a vendor you don’t know and trust yet. And it lets you realize the value without suffering through the typical time-to-value hold period.
In short – nobody actually wants to test your app on a website visit. They want to read your value prop to make sure they’re shopping the right industry, see the UX to confirm you’re legit as a vendor, and then click around a bit to make sure ease of use is there. That’s it.
So what better way to deliver this short, punchy teaser demo than through a staged sandbox demo? That’s exactly what the Website Product Tour is all about.
Photo by Ostap Senyuk on Unsplash
