I’m a solo dev bootstrapping a b2c SaaS in the travel space. I’ve been launched for about two months, but I’m not getting many paid conversions. I’m trying to understand where the problems are in my funnel. Here’s my numbers, and some of my ideas on what might be wrong.
Google PPC CTR: 6% (around industry average). High quality score on most keywords. “Maximize Clicks” campaign, since I don’t have enough conversion data to run anything else, I think.
Landing Page CTA: 50%. CTA asks visitors to try for free, no signup. There’s one form field, then directly to app. Possible issues: Copy not persuasive or clear enough? Ad expectations don’t match page?
Sign Up (free): 18%: Of the remainder, 50% bounce right away and 32% try for a minute or so but don’t sign up. Possible issues: UX/UI, PMF, insufficient onboarding, or maybe the ads are just targeting the wrong audience?
Subscribe: 9% (which is 0.9% of ad clicks): Payment scales the value metrics (similar to competitors) and unlocks a variety of extra features. Maybe I’ve giving away too much for free, or the subscription features have bad PMF? Possibly the price is too high/low, though that also matches competitors, roughly.
I’m sure there’s room to improve, but I’m facing the usual problem of being a dev who doesn’t know how to market. I'm particularly concerned about the bounce rate after users follow the initial CTA to "try for free" - my intuition suggests a UX/UI/PMF issue but I don't really know if 50% bounce at that point is good or bad.
Am I missing any other possibilities? Do any of these metrics seem off? Thanks!
@wretched Are you measuring activation of free trial users? How do you know whether they’re having an “aha” moment and that your free trial is sufficiently selling your product? Have you been able to talk to any of them?
@mitsuha I have ways to measure activation but I don't have a great definition yet. I can look at any individual profile and eyeball test their engagement but I need to automate that.
Once I have a good metric, where do I go with that? I'm thinking I could a) target ads at similar users, b) tailor landing pages to match the features those activated users use with the most? But this might be over-optimization at this stage?
I haven't had an opportunity to discuss the product with any "real" users (just people in my own network). I'm growing my opt-in email list on the backend and plan to use it to prompt communication.
@wretched I feel like your process is backwards. You have an assumption that people want your product, and you’re trying to work backwards from their behavior to figure out why they aren’t buying. If you’re trying to specifically improve conversion from free trial to paid, then you need to come up with your own idea that when people use it, they’ll see the value and convert to a paid user. You can work backwards from that customer realization and come up with an activation metric, but if you try to observe before coming up with a success metric you’re shooting in the dark.
If you’re trying to figure out qualitatively why people aren’t converting, then either you need to:
Go through your own funnel
Ask someone else to go through your funnel and ask what they’re thinking
Talk to a person who churned through your funnel why they didn’t convert
Other than that, your other option is to increase the number of people at the top of your funnel and see if your conversion percentage is really low. Work backwards algebraicly from an assumed conversion to paid and your existing ad to free trial conversion to figure out the number of people that need to go through your funnel to get 1 sale.
@wretched If competitor is there and has a traffic the concept should work. Just check where is the USP and are you giving to customers at on boarding as highlight.
@wretched Honestly, it's hard to say without being able to see your copy and how you have things positioned. I would imagine there is a multifactorial reason for this issue. Have you figured it out yet?
@wretched Too much analysis and not enough personal brand authentic connection in my opinion. Start a twitter and do some outbound DMs to your target audience and get to know them and move up sales funnel manually. If you’re looking for more advice hmu I’m happy to share what I’ve learned doing this
@matteus Ok, I could see this being a helpful process to improve PMF, is that what you mean? Personal outreach isn't a scalable channel for low-ticket b2c of course.
@wretched Look my advice is harsh and direct but it’s the truth. Many don’t like my approach but the few people who do it resonates highly. Right now you are struggling so you need to set the bar lower. In your head you’re probably at 1000 paid users (perhaps your infrastructure can handle many more!) but in reality, which is your sales, you are much lower, so act like that. Sales is everything in business. A simple Python script with the most savage sales team can make millions. Interact with potential users, do direct selling and you’ll build a real sense for your software and you’ll be surprised at what you find out beyond all the stats, metrics and figures. I’m a numbers guy myself but they can’t build that authentic human connection. Find what style works authentically for you. A personal brand is so valuable so you can attach your company to it. It is absolutely scalable even in b2c as I am myself. You first start doing all the sales interactions yourself, you then get consistent feedback from this, then you improve, then you hire a sales guy to do the selling for you so you have more free time, and so on. Then you have a nice little bubble around you, of all the customers using your product and sharing feedback and growing your sales even more. An amazing example of this is Carlson from colddms.com - his Twitter is relatively small, yet he does over $60k MRR and interacts publicly with almost all his users on X, email, telegram/whatsapp. I’m not saying you need to copy, but instead find a similar authentic style that works for you, but you really should be leveraging a personal brand. If you want a more conversational approach hit me up in my dms as I feel this is going off on a tangent now lol, prefer the back and forth of texting to give better feedback.
