Over the past two years, Navattic and Chili Piper have gathered a lot of insights about SaaS buyer preferences from:
- Manually reviewing the websites of the 100 largest by company size B2B SaaS (twice)
- Talking to our combined 2k+ SaaS customers
- Speaking with B2B SaaS experts (source)
- Polling Natalie's and Brandon's LinkedIn audiences
After 2 years of collecting data, both qualitative and quantitative, we’ve noticed trends that separate the companies that prioritize the buyer’s experience.
The biggest takeaway was SaaS companies that prioritize being buyer-first focus on making it easy for buyers to connect with sales, try out their products, and find their pricing and packaging information.
- 61% of the top 100 SaaS companies make it easy for buyers to connect with their sales teams.
- 31% of the top 100 SaaS companies make it easy for buyers to try out their products.
- 68% of the top 100 SaaS companies make it easy for buyers to see their packaging.
We call these types of businesses buyer-first. Being buyer-first means aligning the sales process with how buyers want to buy, and putting the buyer's needs at the center of your sales process
Note: We realize it’s not always practical to put your buyers before your company. In this report, we show a variety of ways you can apply buyer-first best practices. It’s not about being 100% perfect - but figuring out small improvements that make a big impact for your buyer.
Is my company buyer-first?
How do you know if you’re currently aligned with the buyer-first approach? Below is a framework to determine how buyer-first your website and demo scheduling process is:
Accessible
Definition: How convenient and quick is it for buyers to book time with your sales team?
🌟 61% of the top 100 B2B SaaS companies were accessible.
They used a calendar scheduled on their website or responded via email within 24 business hours.
39% of the top 100 B2B SaaS companies were not accessible.
Non-accessible websites required us to book time with sales through a gated “Talk to sales” form and took multiple days or never followed up with us via email.
Usable
Definition: How easy is it for buyers to get hands-on and use your product from your website?
🌟 31% of the top 100 B2B SaaS companies were usable.
They included an interactive demo to let users play around with the product directly on the website.
69% of the top 100 B2B SaaS companies were not usable.
Non-usable websites did not have any way to try the product before committing to a sales call or a free trial or freemium offering.
Visible
Definition: How public is the pricing and packaging of your product from your website?
🌟 68% of the top 100 B2B SaaS companies were visible.
They included pricing pages with packages on the website.
32% of the top 100 B2B SaaS were not visible.
Non-visible websites did not show any pricing or packaging page on their website.
Did SaaS companies become more buyer-first in 2024?
The short answer is… yes!
For all three categories, the top 100 B2B SaaS companies improved compared to 2023. Read below for the specific changes to each category.
About the data
We reviewed the same top 100 SaaS companies as last year’s B2B Buyer Best Practices Report to look for new trends or improvements.
“Top” was determined by company size and the list was provided by Keyplay.
To collect this data we manually reviewed each of their websites and booked a sales call on the website. We then documented if they had:
- Direct calendar scheduling links on the website or in follow-up emails
- Interactive demos (clickable, self-guided overviews of their product) on their website
- Public pricing pages on the website
Note: When requesting the demo on their website, we used a Chili Piper (a SaaS company with 150 employees) alias for Brandon Redlinger (VP of Marketing) to make sure they did not disqualify it as a Gmail or fake email.
Companies represented
Below is an overview of the researched companies sub industries, size, and location:
Gold-star buyer-first website
Before fully diving into the data we wanted to show a gold-star example of a buyer-first website: RingCentral.
Out of all the websites we looked at, RingCentral was the only one to score 100% on all three buyer-first criteria.
RingCentral also improved its buyer-first score compared to last year.
Last year RingCentral had fully public pricing and an interactive demo. However this year they added a calendar scheduler under Contact Sales and a full interactive demo library. Last year their website only had one interactive demo on a product page.
According to their company's First Quarter Results, RingCentral's revenue grew by 9% in Q1 2024 vs Q1 2023. While we can’t directly correlate growth with their buyer-first website, RingCentral's yearly revenue increase after adopting these best practices is a positive sign.
Accessible: Do companies make it easy to book a demo in 2024?
How long does it take to book a demo?
A majority of companies got back to us either the same day or within 1 business day via email. This is a big improvement from last year’s average response time of 2 business days and 35% no response.
However 19% of companies still never responded to us, not even an automated email.
Even if we were disqualified, there were a handful of companies who disqualified us and emailed us to tell us we were not a good fit.
Note: When we booked time we used a Chili Piper (a SaaS company with 150 employees) alias for a VP of Marketing. We did not count phone calls as prospects often miss phone calls or may not accept calls from a random number.
The number of websites that included calendar schedulers like Chili Piper on their book a demo page was slightly down compared with last year (8% in 2024 vs 11% in 2023).
Of the companies who never responded, similar to last year, 0% used a calendar scheduler on their website.
Why did demo response time change?
Response Time: A lot more companies used a combination of automation and a human touchpoint (see below) to ensure human error or schedule did not delay the time to the first interaction.
Calendar Schedulers: More companies used them for follow-up vs directly on the website. Of the companies that did not include a calendar scheduler on the website this year, 43% used a calendar scheduler in follow-up emails.
Of all the email sequences, 33% of follow-up emails included an option to book time via a calendar scheduler (see below).
Bonus insight: discovery vs demo
This year we looked at when requesting a demo if the first call would be a demo or discovery call.
25% of the companies scheduling a discovery call asked the discovery questions directly in the email. On average companies asked 3.8 discovery questions in emails.
Note: We determined demo vs discovery by the language used in the email, such as “learn a bit more about your company and business needs” or directly asking discovery questions.
How do companies follow up on demo requests?
After booking a demo, 80% of companies followed up via email to either confirm the call (if booked via a calendar scheduler) or to schedule a discovery call or demo.
Another indication that companies were pushing for discovery over a demo was the title of the sender of the email. 57% of the time the email came from an SDR or a combination of an SDR and an automated email.
Emails from SDRs or AEs also often included an option to book time directly with them via a calendar scheduler instead of manually scheduling a time to meet.
The email follow-ups often had multiple emails in the cadences. For email cadences, we included emails up to 3 weeks after the initial demo scheduling.
How can I use this data?
Automation: If you’re not able to let prospects book time directly from your website, use automated email plus human outreach with a calendar scheduler to let prospects book as quickly as possible. 43% of email sequences included automation.
Optionality: The multi-touch email cadences including automated emails often had varied CTAs (respond back with questions, book time directly, or learn more via a case study or webinar). Use multiple emails to give prospects a variety of options to learn more.
Usable: Do companies make it easy to try their product from the website?
What % of companies show their product on their website
About double the number of companies (17% vs 31%) included interactive demo software on their website this year vs last year.
Note: We defined an interactive demo as a self-guided clickable version of your product. A video or gifs did not count towards interactive demos.
The most common industries with interactive demos were:
- Cybersecurity
- Customer Engagement
- Cloud Software
- Work Management / HR
- Finance
The industries were similar to last year with Cybersecurity and Customer Engagement as first and second.
We also looked at how many of the interactive demos included a form gate at the beginning of the demo. There was a slight increase in gating this year compared to last.
Why did interactive demo usage change?
Demo Popularity: As the interactive demo category has become more mature, it is not surprising to see higher adoption rates among enterprises. Adoption increase was not only seen in % of companies with demos but average number of demos (see below).
Gating: Last year 82% of interactive demos were featured on product pages. Product page demos tend to be shorter and high-level, and therefore less likely to be gated.
This year about 41% of demos were on product pages and replaced with more overview demos and demo centers (see below) which are more likely to be gated.
Bonus insight: number of demos
This year we looked at the number of interactive demos on each of the websites.
The increase in 5+ demos was due to the increase in websites including multiple demos as part of demo centers vs just one product demo (see below).
Where do companies show their product?
Along with an increase in the number of websites using interactive demos, this year there was a growing number of use cases for interactive demos. The three most popular types of interactive demos were:
Overview (31%): General overview of the entire platform accessible from the navbar or homepage
Product-specific (41%): Includes only one feature or product accessible from a product page
Demo center (28%): Multiple demos of various features or use cases on one landing page
While demo types varied, the way websites deploy demos by either linking out via a CTA button or embedding directly on the website stayed pretty consistent compared to last year.
This embed vs CTA breakdown is also similar to our analysis in our State of the Interactive Product Demo ‘24 with 87% of demos being full-screen embeds linked out via a CTA.
The most common language for the interactive demo CTAs was:
- View Demo
- Take a Tour
- Start Demo
As previously mentioned, the increase in demos was tied to the increase in demo centers. On average websites had 3.8 interactive demos, with demo centers having 9.3 interactive demos.
How can I use this data?
Use Cases: With enterprise products, it can be difficult to show all your platform's features or use cases in one demo. Consider using demos on product-specific pages or a demo center to show bit-sized functionality.
Number of demos: Once you’ve started experimenting with interactive demos as an overview or specific product pages, consider expanding to a demo center.
Demo centers often include filters like industry, use case, or product lines so prospects can quickly find the demo they are looking for.
Visible: Do companies show their pricing on their website?
What % of companies share their pricing?
68% of companies had a pricing page on their website in 2024. Having a pricing page on the website did not always mean the page showed the actual price (see below). The % websites with a pricing page was higher compared to last year with 57% in 2023.
Note: Pricing counted if they had pricing for one of the product lines on their website, it was not required for all product lines.
The most common industries with pricing on their website were:
- Cybersecurity
- Finance
- Customer Engagement
- Cloud Software
- Marketing
Cybersecurity increased to first after being third on last year's list, while most of the other industries stayed consistent.
Why did pricing change?
Pricing placement: With the increase in website enrichment, companies often use the pricing page as a high-intent signal to see companies in market.
It is possible the increase in pricing pages is companies using that intent signal, especially since more companies made pricing more visible via the main navbar (see below).
How are companies presenting their pricing plans?
79% of companies with a pricing page included the actual costs of the software on that page, instead of just showing packages and a CTA to reach out for exact pricing.
For websites with a pricing page, 66% included a link to their pricing page from the main navbar visible from anywhere on the website.
The second most common use case was to show pricing on individual product pages, to break down the specific pricing and packaging for that product.
How can I use this data?
Public Pricing: If you do include a pricing page on your website, consider showing the actual price and package breakdown to not frustrate the buyer.
Location: Make sure your pricing is highly visible from either the navbar or on specific product pages. If you use enrichment data, prominent pricing makes sure you can see what high intent accounts are visiting your pricing page.
Scorecard: Grade yourself on buyer-first best practices
As we mentioned upfront, we realize these buyer best practices may vary depending on your specific business practices and business goals.
While we don’t expect companies to hit 100% of the best practices, most companies can take small steps to improve their buyer experience. This report aims to help you identify where to get started for optimizations to your website or book a demo flow.
As a first step, we recommend you grade your website and demo follow-up sequence with our Buyer First Scorecard.
Email us with your scorecard at buyer-first@navattic.com if you score an 80% or higher. We’ll review your score and if validated we’ll send you a gift and feature your website in our upcoming buyer-first email newsletter.
More buyer-first resources
Want reminders of buyer-first best practices? Explore our monthly newsletters for B2B Marketers:
And if we piqued your interest in either calendar schedulers or interactive demos, feel free to explore either (completely on your own) via these interactive demos: