This article will dive into the customer onboarding process. Plus, we’ll explore why onboarding is vital for customer retention and customer education. Then, we’ll provide tips to help you craft the perfect customer onboarding plan. Integrate it into your customer success plan, and you’ll soon make a great impression.

What is customer onboarding?

The customer onboarding process helps to familiarize a new customer with your product. It involves guiding and nurturing users.

The user onboarding experience should cover the entire customer journey, especially if you want to excel in customer success management. The best experiences will include:

• Answers to FAQs
• Step-by-step guides
• Tutorials
• Customer support

Client onboarding should make it as easy as possible for new users to get to know your product. 

Why is customer onboarding important?

Customers might have viewed your ads. Or maybe they browsed your product page or read a glowing testimonial. Either way, they’re going to have certain expectations. It’s your job to meet these expectations. You must also ensure customers realize the advertised benefits as quickly as possible.

This proves to users that your product can do everything you’ve promised. That reduces the chances of getting a negative review because a user can’t figure out your product. 

User onboarding also helps to speed up product adoption and boosts customer satisfaction. A new customer who can make full use of a product is more likely to recommend it to others. Plus, those who like a product from the start are more likely to become repeat customers. 

A customer onboarding experience sets the tone for your relationship with a new user. 

Onboard them onto your product and keep lines of communication open. This shows that you care about their experience. It also lays the foundations for a positive relationship brimming with customer satisfaction. 

Consider the example below. Coda expresses authentic warmth towards a new customer. They start by welcoming them into the community. From there, they provide resources to improve customer education. They also ask questions to personalize the customer onboarding process.

Successful customer onboarding can reduce customer churn. Positive onboarding can reduce customer churn. And it can also increase customer lifetime value. Customers tend to trust companies who care about them. 

Every business should try to foster a positive relationship with their customers. This encourages customer retention and leads to long-term loyalty. Effective user onboarding is a vital step to securing customer loyalty. It should form a key part of your customer success strategy. But how do you develop an effective customer onboarding process? But how do you develop a customer onboarding process that works?

Developing a customer onboarding process

An onboarding strategy provides a clear goal to work towards. It will guide your efforts as you build your customer onboarding experience.

The process will differ depending on your business and product. But, there are a few key touch points. Building your strategy around these is a great place to start.

You can find a customer onboarding template online. These templates make it easier to craft emails for each stage of the onboarding process. 

• Sign-up. The customer onboarding process starts at the first sign of interest. Getting a head start at this stage can even help convert leads into paying customers.

• Welcome email. Once your customer has signed up, you can begin in earnest. A welcome email is a great first step. You can use it to thank them for their business and show them where to get support. Add value right away by mentioning unique features. You can also offer discounts and provide helpful resources that encourage them to start using your product right away. 

• Product demo/tour. This is a great way to show off the main features of your product before your customers get hands-on with it. Does the app have an intuitive UI? Can you integrate with other apps? Show it off here.

• Initial use. This will be the first ‘in-person’ impression that a customer has of your product. You should make the initial setup or login to your product as simple as possible.

• Follow-up emails. Onboarding shouldn’t stop once the customer is up and running with your product. Send emails from time to time to share tips and resources. You can also use these emails to highlight new features and gather customer feedback.

• Text messages. Don’t underestimate the power of well-placed and timely text messages. These give you more ways to build awareness, drive engagement, and foster adoption. Send texts to incentivize or celebrate reaching key milestones in the onboarding process. You can also use them throughout the customer journey. Don’t overdo it though. SMS can become annoying and intrusive for customers. 

6 customer onboarding strategies

Now you know the cornerstones of a strategy, let’s go into more depth. Here are six tactics to get you started.

1. Welcome your customer

As we’ve mentioned, a welcome email is a great start. They have the added benefit of boasting high open and click-through rates. According to GetResponse’s report, welcome emails have average open rates of 63% and click-through rates of 14%. It might not sound like much. But that’s 3x more open and click-through engagement than email newsletters. 

An introductory survey is another helpful tool when onboarding customers. You can use this to capture key information about your customer. This helps to personalize their onboarding experience.

For example, you can ask them about:

• How you can contact them in the future
• How often they want to receive emails
• What type of emails would they like to get 

Query them about the product too:

• Which features are they most interested in?
• What are they going to be using your product for?

The answers can help you create a positive experience that aligns with individual customers’ preferences, wants, and needs. 

The answers can help you create experiences that align with individual customers’ preferences, wants, and needs. 

Once again, don’t overwhelm your users with too many questions. Be strategic about what you’re asking.

2. Put in place user segmentation

User segmentation is the practice of dividing your customer base into smaller sections. It can be based on demographics, location, behavior, and many other factors. 

Let’s take geographical segmentation as an example. In your segmented emails, you can adjust your email copy. This might include local spellings, words, and phrases for that specific place. 

Plus, you can offer location-based content and discounts to encourage engagement. Don’t forget to link to your local domains, too. This could be your .uk domain for UK customers and your .sg domain for Singapore customers for example.

Segmenting your users allows you to provide a more personalized onboarding experience. This way you can create content relevant to specific audiences and share it accordingly. 

Many customers today love staying up to date with the latest tech. These users will receive all news-related content. Meanwhile, those who don’t aren’t subjected to these emails. This increases the chances of them sticking around long-term. 

Doing this ensures every customer receives a high-value onboarding experience. They’ll be able to move through the process at a speed that’s right for them. Plus, they’ll be following instructions and prompts that let them get the most out of your product.

3. Create an onboarding checklist

Break your onboarding process into smaller chunks. This makes it more digestible for your customers. Forget about long-term, time-consuming to-dos. Instead, send customers a series of small tasks that can be easily completed.

Additionally, it’s a great way to keep things organized. You can both see the progress they’ve made and what they’ve got left to tackle.

The ability to check off tasks on a checklist adds a gamification element to onboarding. This helps to keep the process fun and lighthearted, keeping your customers engaged. 

Here’s an example of Canny’s onboarding checklist (custom-built by the Canny team).

Stripo boosted seasonal open and click-through rates using email gamification. They created a gamified newsletter with a word search that, once successfully completed, led to a promotional code. This boosted engagement as well as increased registrations and ebook downloads. So look into it to improve your email marketing and customer onboarding strategies. 

4. Provide interactive customer walkthroughs

You might have provided a product tour or demo as part of your sales process. Now that your lead is a paying customer, it’s time to go into more depth.

An interactive walkthrough is a great way to achieve this, because it educates customers on how to use product’s features and make the most out of them. By the end, customers should understand how they can use your product successfully.

Walkthroughs are an engaging way to get your customers started with your product. Plus, they can refer to them again and again. That means they don’t have to call your live support team. This can be frustrating and inconvenient for customers. Instead, they can refer to your interactive walkthrough and get the answers they need. 

As we mentioned before, make sure you’re not being intrusive. The last thing a user wants is to have their workflow interrupted. So be careful and strategic with your walkthroughs. Test them and be ready to turn them off if you see little to no engagement.

5. Provide support

Interactive walkthroughs may help reduce call volumes. But they won’t eliminate them. After all, nothing works how we want it to 100% of the time!

It’s a good idea to have product support available to your customers when these issues crop up. The faster you can resolve their issues, the faster they can get back to using your product. And the happier they’ll be.

You need to think about the different types of questions and support customers will need. For example, maintaining call center efficiency can be vital when it comes to the onboarding experience. This is because new customers are likely to have numerous questions. They want to have access to robust support with a human touch. 

On the other hand, another great resource is a knowledge base, as they help customers carry out self-serve support. This allows them to solve simple issues in their own time, at their own pace.

Chatbots that use conversational AI are another great resource for providing customer support. They can use knowledge bases and FAQs to provide customer support on simple queries. This gives agents more time to focus on complex problems. Overall, this creates a better customer experience.

Take Canny’s AI chatbot. It can resolve simple queries and offer quick solutions for customers. It can also direct customers to live agents if their questions are too complex. It might also do this if they’d simply prefer to talk to a human.

6. Collect feedback

So, you’ve implemented the above strategies. Chances are you’re providing each new customer with a stellar onboarding experience. But there’s always room for improvement! And who better to tell you than your customers?

Collecting feedback will help you improve your system for future customers. You can do this with simple surveys. You can present these to customers at the end of the onboarding experience. Or you can do this at key points throughout.

Surveys aren’t your only option for collecting feedback, though. Using powerful integrations, you can collect feedback from a variety of sources, including:

• Customer interviews
• Live chat
• Social media
• Sales calls
• Customer service calls

You can then centralize this feedback into one system for easy access. Canny is a great option.

This should provide you with plenty of useful data. These insights will show which aspects of your onboarding experience customers found useful. It also highlights which they feel could use some improvement.

Identifying and addressing pain points in the process is crucial. It will help you reduce churn in your next batch of customers further down the line.

Drive customer loyalty and retention with customer onboarding

Customer onboarding helps engage a new customer and build a long-lasting, valuable relationship.

You can show off key product features and educate users on how to get the most from them. This drives customer satisfaction. And it helps reduce the workload for your support teams.

Remember to get off on the right foot. Welcome customers and personalize the user experience to make it relevant and engaging.

Use a checklist to guide customers through the process. And use interactive tools to show off your features and how to use them.

Provide support where needed, and collect feedback once the process is complete. Before long, you’ll have the perfect onboarding experience.

Jenna Bunnell

Jenna Bunnell is the director for field and strategic events at Dialpad. It's an AI-incorporated cloud-hosted unified communications system. It provides valuable call details for business owners and sales representatives. Jenna is driven and passionate about communicating a brand’s design sensibility. She enjoys visualizing content and presenting it in creative and comprehensive ways. Jenna has also written for other domains such as PingPlotter and TRACX.

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The post 6 customer onboarding strategies to make a good impression first appeared on Canny Blog.

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Either way, you know the struggles of keeping the culture alive when working remotely. Even the most introverted team members feel isolated. Don’t get us wrong, we prefer and love remote work. However, we know it comes with its challenges.

How do we overcome them? Team retreats.

When your whole team travels together, very special connections form.

Let’s go behind the scenes of our latest team retreat near Toronto. We’ll tell you all about the planning, execution, and lessons we learned from this experience.

After every retreat, we send out a quick survey to see what the team enjoyed and how we can improve. We’ll share quotes from our team members throughout the article.

Follow along!

Why retreats?

Especially if you’re a remote-first company, we highly recommend team retreats. They’re a big investment (of time and money), but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

We’ve been doing team retreats since we hired our first person in 2018. From a 3-person to 16-person company, we’ve always prioritized retreats (except for a break during the pandemic).

Everyone always bonds so much during our retreats. People who typically don’t work together start collaborating. Team members who might otherwise stay quiet come out of their shells. Everyone has a chance to share ideas, speak up, and get involved.

Having fun together outside work helps to form special connections between people. Those connections then boost work relationships. We always feel extra energized and motivated after retreats.

“Remote work is like a long-distance relationship. You don’t see your coworkers for 4-6 months and start missing them. When you finally see each other, you have an awesome time together. That’s what makes these retreats so incredible.”

Andrew Rasmussen, co-founder of Canny

This retreat near Toronto was our 8th retreat. We plan each of these retreats ourselves, with no external help. It’s a lot of work, but we enjoy the process and feel very accomplished at the end.

How we pulled it off

As the team grows, planning needs to become more and more detailed and strategic.

Canny started with just two people—me and Andrew. As the team grew, we planned retreats for up to five people, and it was pretty manageable. Finding affordable accommodations was much easier, and everyone could stay in the same place.

Now that we’re a team of 16, a lot more planning is involved.

We’re lucky to have a very passionate and dedicated team that helps organize. For Canny Cottage, six of us volunteered to help with retreat planning.

Note: we created a Slack channel to get this going. Anyone can join, but everyone who does has to contribute. That’s our only rule: no lurkers! 

We typically start planning the next retreat as soon as the last one is over. Here’s how it goes.

Choosing dates

Personal trips and other commitments often get planned 3-4 months in advance. We lock in the retreat dates early so everyone can block their calendars.

First, we send out a survey to see which dates work for everyone. Usually, we do a spring and a fall retreat. Summer and winter tend to be busier for people, and we try to avoid intruding on anyone’s personal lives. We also want to make sure most people can attend—this maximizes the value we get out of the retreat.

We always plan our retreats to include a weekend so we have full days away from work. From there, we keep things flexible.

During our previous retreat in Japan, the weekend was rainy. Instead of trying to enjoy Japan in the rain, we shifted our schedule. We spent Friday outside and worked on Sunday.

We used the same strategy this time. It works really well! It’s also easier to book most things on weekdays.

Tip: Choose dates early—3-4 months in advance. Ask for everyone’s availability using a survey and optimize for the majority.

Picking a location

Once we find the dates that work, we start brainstorming destinations. Here’s what we consider each time:

• Visa requirements
• Flights and layovers (we have team members in the US, Canada, Spain, and Turkey)
• Accommodations
• Activities and meals
• Safety and security
• Costs for all of the above

In the past, we’d been to Portugal, the Czech Republic, Croatia, the USA, Spain, Mexico, and Japan. Right now, more than half of our team lives in Canada, with six in Toronto. That made picking Ontario an easy choice, especially after a Japan retreat. 

This time, we wanted to focus on accommodations over the destination. We wanted a place where 14 people could comfortably work—both together and independently. Some of us need focused uninterrupted time. Others have to take calls and attend meetings. Our accommodations had to serve both purposes.

We found a luxury lakefront cottage one hour away from Toronto. On top of being a large and beautiful space, it offered lots of cool amenities. We had access to the lake and kayaks, a sauna, multiple hot tubs, and a cold plunge. Indoors, we had a game room, a gym, a movie theater, and lots more.

While the Ontario cottage country isn’t as exotic as Tokyo, we made up for it with an amazing Airbnb.

“The location emphasized to me that the destination isn’t what made it fun. It was the people.”

Adam Laycock, engineer at Canny

All 14 of us couldn’t comfortably fit into one Airbnb, so we rented another smaller one two doors down. This meant everyone could have their own bedroom—almost all had an en suite!

“Accommodations were super baller. They had all the activities to keep us engaged. It was such a comfy stay.”

Alice Wong, sales at Canny

Everyone had enough space to rest, work, and play.

“I loved the accommodations. Something about staying in such a nice space really makes the event.

Some attributes I loved about our place:

• Huge living room and kitchen that can easily fit our whole group
• Great amenities like games room, movie theater, sauna, gym
• Luxurious level of quality”

Andrew Rasmussen, co-founder of Canny

Tip: If you want to encourage brainstorming and collaboration, make sure your accommodations can serve that. Find a place that offers enough room and a variety of spaces. Large shared spaces, some secluded and quiet areas, and, ideally, “fun” spaces as well.

Arranging transportation

We booked flights for out-of-town guests well in advance to get the best prices.

For transit on land, we rented two Chrysler minivans. We coordinated flights and pick-ups in advance to make logistics go smoothly. 

Tips:

1. For best cost-savings, think through transportation logistics ahead of time
2. Don’t plan any group activities for the first day of the retreat
3. Give people time to settle in for the week ahead

Feeding the whole team

This required more planning than usual. Since we didn’t stay in a densely populated city, food options weren’t as readily available.

We started by researching restaurants in the area. Most of the good ones were in a larger town nearby. We wrote down some restaurants and contacted each to see if they needed advance notice for a large order. We also researched delivery options for each. Then, we looked at our activities itinerary and decided which restaurants were on the way to or from those activities. 

We briefly considered getting a private chef, but that turned out to be extremely expensive. Catering options were very limited.

When we weren’t going out, we had to make sure we had enough food at home. Since we were staying in a smaller town (35K population), we decided to cook most of the meals ourselves. After all, we had a fully-equipped kitchen in our Airbnb! This worked out well and gave us more opportunities to bond and collaborate.

We planned for all breakfasts and several lunches to be self-serve. We made a food list and a separate food itinerary in Notion. Here’s what it looked like:

Getting organized in advance simplified shopping. We knew exactly what and how much we needed for each meal. In stores, we picked a category (breakfast, lunch, snacks, drinks, etc) and split up. This made shopping more efficient.

A few team members highlighted the home-cooked meals as one of their favorite parts.

Tip: Get super-organized about food. During the retreat, you’ll be too busy to think about it.

Planning activities

Great activities are a big part of making a retreat memorable, so we put a lot of thought into what we want to do.

Before committing to anything, we asked the team what they were interested in. We actually set up a separate Canny board where team members submitted ideas and voted on existing ones 

You can do the same in Canny, and it’s completely free.

We also purposefully made some of them optional. Our past experience showed that some people like to always be on the go, and others prefer more downtime. We wanted everyone to get what they wanted out of this trip.

We researched, planned, and booked the following in advance:

• Local hockey game
• Curling
• Pumpkin patch visit (pumpkin picking, corn maze, hayride)
• Escape room
• Murder mystery game at home

We reserved plenty of downtime to enjoy our Airbnb and everything it had to offer. That included:

• Jam sessions (we rented musical instruments)
• Halloween decorating and party
• Board games
• Movie nights
• Pumpkin carving
• Numerous sauna, hot tub, and cold plunge sessions

Tip: Some things to consider for activities are:

1. What’s unique to where we’re staying?
2. What festive events might be happening?
3. What kind of energy levels can we expect each day?

The itinerary doesn’t need to be jam-packed—allow for sufficient downtime. This leaves room for spontaneity and space to recharge.

“It was nice to have the emphasis on bonding with the team versus exploring the country (like we did in Japan).”

Niall Dickin, engineer at Canny

Getting work done

Retreats are actually some of our most productive work times. It’s a great chance to collaborate in person. We typically do more high-level strategy meetings.

At the beginning of the retreat, we recommend that leadership does a kickoff. It’s a great way to get everyone aligned and in the same mindset for what’s to come during the week. It’s also a good time to share big plans.

These trips give us a great opportunity to brainstorm together in person. After we go home, we keep that momentum and collaboration going.

To ensure these retreats are productive work-wise, we specify what we want to get done beforehand. This can include:

• Which meetings do we want to hold?
• What specific things do we want to achieve? (complete a project, ship an MVP feature, record a video, etc).
• What ideas do we want to collect? (product features, blog ideas, onboarding initiatives, etc).

Everyone can run a meeting, see how others work, and get involved. We plan meetings in advance and set clear goals and agendas.

“The collaboration was great. It was easy to take action on things quickly.”

Adam Laycock, engineer at Canny

One of our team members, Julia, joined Canny only a week prior to the retreat. This was a great opportunity for her to get to know everyone, shadow others, and bond with the team.

“The collaboration during onboarding was amazing. It provided a great opportunity for us to come together, share insights, and really get to know each other. It was especially helpful in absorbing all the new information.”

Julia Valade, customer success at Canny

On an everyday basis, we sometimes miss a chance to walk up to someone’s desk and pick their brain. This is exactly what retreats like these accomplish.

“Compared to other retreats, this one felt the most productive. I also enjoyed being included in all activities, and I returned home not as tired as from previous retreats.”

Maria Vasserman, content marketing at Canny

The marketing team was able to create lots of content during this retreat. You’ll see some photos and videos pop up on our social media soon. Give us a follow to see them  

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Youtube
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Tiktok

Tip: Make sure your team’s leadership thinks about how best to use your time together in person. They should be prepared to run meetings by having goals and an agenda. We always have action items noted down at the end of each meeting.

Hackathon

This activity deserves a special mention. After the kickoff, we brainstormed some ideas that aligned with where we want Canny to go. Then, our developers split into pairs, picked an idea, and got to work. They only had a few days to work on their idea, so the goal was to build scrappy but functional MVPs.

Design and marketing teams assisted engineers—they mocked up designs and planned promotions.

On our last day, each team presented their ideas. This day fell on Halloween, so we presented in costumes.

Our Smart Replies feature was born out of this hackathon.

“The highlight was the hackathon. Not just because we built some cool stuff, but also because it let me work 1:1 with a colleague that I haven’t directly worked with before.”

Ramiro Olivera, engineer at Canny

What we learned

Our biggest goal for these retreats has always been bonding. We prioritize culture, and retreats are a huge part of it.

We believe that we achieved that—many people on the team mentioned bonding as one of their highlights.

Spending a whole week with anybody can be overwhelming, not to mention coworkers. We made a point to strike a balance between work, activities, and relaxing. We feel like this retreat in particular accomplished that.

Throughout the retreat, I ask everyone to take videos in landscape mode. At the end of every retreat, I put together a little video. It’s a great way for us to relive every retreat and the good times we had. The video also gives future teammates a glimpse into what working at Canny is like.

We took note of some things to improve for next time:

• Apply for visas even earlier than we think
• Ask for more help with planning when we need it
• Delegate shopping/cooking responsibilities even more
• Make more activities optional

How you can make your corporate retreat awesome

If you’re sold on team retreat now, that’s great. You’ll get a lot out of it, and your team will definitely thank you. Here are a few pointers to help you make it a success:

1. Survey the team as much as possible in advance. Ask about dates, locations, preferences, dietary restrictions, activity ideas, etc.
2. Plan as early in advance as possible—at least 3-6 months. Think of dates, locations, travel, transportation, visas, schedules, food, activities, and work. We know, it’s a lot.
3. Ask for help from the team when you need it. Don’t try to do everything yourself.
4. Encourage each team member to set a goal for the retreat. This will help keep this productive and worthwhile.
5. Encourage collaboration and participation. Schedule meetings and brainstorms, but also leave time for people to split into groups and do their own thing.
6. Remember: it’s impossible to please everyone. Just do your best!

We hope that you’re now excited to plan your team retreat. We’ll share more about our retreats and team activities, so stay in touch.

Sarah Hum

Hey there, I'm one of the co-founders of Canny. As a founder, I dabble in pretty much everything but my expertise is in product design. Outside work, I enjoy digital illustration, a cappella, and hanging out with our dog, Emmy.

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But sometimes what starts as a bug report can turn into a great new feature.

Identifying these feature opportunities can help product development and lead to smarter use of resources.

Not to mention they make your customers feel heard!

In this post, we will:

• Explain the difference between a bug report and a feature request (it’s not as obvious as you might think!)
• Show how to sort bugs to identify feature requests
• Share how we at Marker.io use Canny to organize and prioritize these requests

Let’s dive in!

Bug vs feature: what’s the difference?

A bug is an unintended software error. A feature is an intended functionality.

Bugs disrupt the user experience and appear under specific conditions. Features should enhance the user experience.

And at first glance, it’s that simple.

But in real-world scenarios, the lines start to blur:

1. Design decisions. What your users consider a bug (“Why can’t I do X?”) might actually be a conscious design decision from the product team.
2. Undocumented features. Developers sometimes add minor product features that new users might perceive as bugs or glitches. This highlights the need for a solid changelog.
3. User expectation ambiguity. Different users might interpret features differently. This leads to a gap between expectation and actual functionality.
4. Unintended benefits. What starts as a bug can become a feature if users find value in the unintended behavior.

People who aren’t tech-savvy often label any undesired behavior as a “bug” – even if it’s just a feature they don’t understand. Testing the product with users first can help avoid this confusion.

So, while the terms “bug” and “feature” may sound simple, they can get confusing in practice.

Now, let’s look at how you can clear up these confusions.

How to turn a bug report into a feature request

Let’s look at a real-world example.

Marker.io, our tool, helps development teams collect website feedback from clients and colleagues. This includes bug reports with screenshots, annotations, technical metadata, and more.

A few months back, a customer contacted support. They said: “Hey, my client can’t see bugs that were already logged by our internal QA team. This leads to duplicate reports. What’s going on?”

But our tool is made this way on purpose. We wanted to keep it simple for guest reporters who aren’t tech experts, so they don’t get overwhelmed by lots of complicated bug reports.

Again — a conscious design decision, perceived as a bug!

So, we turned that bug report into a new feature request, in Canny, on behalf of the client.

This turned out to be something other customers wanted, and it gave us:

• Insight into our customers’ pain points, which we can use when designing the new feature
• Ideas for other use cases, explanations, and expectations from our end users

This kind of information is invaluable to us.

But there are a few challenges:

1. Figuring out the problem and rephrasing it as a feature request. “My client can’t see feedback from internal QA” – presented as a bug – really means “Allow guest reporters to see feedback from members”. In some cases, we need to discuss this further with the customer.

2. Grouping similar feature requests. Users describe your platform in various ways. This means customer support has to work hard to figure out what features are being asked for. They have to avoid duplicate requests and combine them into existing ones.

Case study: transforming bugs into features

Sometimes, features and enhancements can be perceived as bugs.

They can:

• Create performance issues
• Cause unwanted behavior (e.g., autoplaying videos…)
• Introduce security flaws
• Make the product more complicated from a user experience perspective

But with smart product design, you can also flip the script, and turn limitations into advantages.

That’s exactly what happened with Gmail.

They had a built-in delay of about five seconds when processing an email message.

Some might have viewed this as a performance issue or minor bug. But the Gmail team turned it into the “undo send” feature.

Now you can even customize how long you have to cancel an email, from five to thirty seconds.

If your product makes users wait for a bit, consider implementing a similar hack. You can get an easy win that elevates your product’s user experience.

This proves once again that sometimes the line between a bug and a feature is more about perspective and creativity than anything else.

Bug vs feature: how to prioritize

Managing a backlog full of customer issues while juggling a feedback board loaded with feature requests can be tough.

Some teams choose to “fix all bugs before working on new features”.

However, developers often find working on new features more exciting.

For a novice project manager, deciding what to prioritize can be tricky.

But there’s a simple solution to this issue. Despite their differences, bugs and features share one thing: missing functionality.

Simply put, “bug” or “feature”, as shown above, is just a label.

Yes, understanding the nature of each issue aids in task prioritization, but:

• Can you confidently say that all your bug fixes are more crucial than new features?
• …and are these new features truly going to affect your bottom-line more than this app-breaking bug?

(Extreme examples, but the point stands)

What brings the biggest value for the customer?

Whether it’s a bug or feature request — rearrange your bug tracker’s labels. For instance:

• Paying (this bug/lack of feature is impacting paying customers)
• Breaking/deal-breaker (we will lose customers due to this missing feature/bug)
• and so on

With proper organization, the item with the highest customer value tops the list, whether it’s a bug or a feature request.

Another good way to gauge feature request value is with Canny’s upvote feature (and you can even sort by MRR impact!).

Remember these two points during this process:

• Don’t assume that creating a new feature is quick. It often ends up introducing more bugs.
• Your developers are likely to advocate for new features over bug fixes. Yes — working on a new feature is more fun than fixing bugs. No surprise there!

Maximizing product development: the bug vs. feature equation

Turns out that the difference between a “bug” and a “feature” is pretty nuanced.

Design choices and how customers see things can make a bug become a feature, or vice versa.

But the main principle stays the same: focus on customer value. Evaluate the impact of the bug or feature on the user experience, improve your product, and prioritize tasks effectively.

Nathan Vander Heyden

Nathan is Head of Content & SEO at Marker.io, a visual feedback tool to collect bug reports and feedback during website development.

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One powerful tool that can really help is Canny. And in this blog post, we’ll explain how.

We’ll also explore how Canny can help your business thrive, especially in the B2B context. Keep reading!

What is Canny?

Canny is a product management tool focused on user feedback. It’s designed specifically for businesses. It helps companies to collect, manage, and analyze customer feedback effectively.

When you harness the power of customer input through Canny, you can make informed decisions. That helps you improve your products and services.

Understanding the B2B environment

Before we dive into how Canny can assist in growing a B2B business, let’s take a moment to understand what B2B actually is.

In B2B (business-to-business) transactions, companies sell their products or services to other businesses. In contrast, B2C is business to consumer. These relationships are typically long-term and involve larger purchase volumes. Building strong and lasting relationships with clients is vital in this space.

Canny can help you keep, improve, and build more B2B relationships in the following ways.

1. Collecting customer feedback

Canny allows you to gather valuable feedback directly from your clients. Our feedback portal invites your customers to voice their opinions, suggestions, and concerns. This feedback is invaluable in understanding your customers’ needs and expectations.

2. Prioritizing feature requests

Canny enables you to categorize and prioritize feature requests. By analyzing the feedback and identifying patterns, you’ll know exactly what to build. You can focus on developing features that align with what your customers need. This helps to create a more customer-centric product and streamline your business.

3. Enhancing customer engagement

Canny can help improve your communication and engagement with your clients. How?

You can respond to customers’ feedback and update them on feature developments. This level of interaction fosters a sense of partnership and builds trust.

4. Driving product development

You can use the insights from customer feedback in Canny and decide where to take your product. You can also identify:

• Areas for improvement
• New features to incorporate
• Potential product enhancements

This process ensures that your offerings align with your customers’ evolving needs. 

5. Demonstrating transparency and trust

With Canny, you can become more transparent.

When you showcase the feedback you’re getting and how you action it, customers start trusting you more. They feel that their opinion matters and that you actually care.

This transparency can become your powerful differentiating factor in the competitive B2B landscape.

Listening to your customers and adapting to their needs is essential for growth and success. Canny offers a comprehensive solution to collect, manage, and analyze customer feedback. These insights you get from user feedback can drive your business forward.

By implementing Canny in your B2B operations, you can:

• Enhance customer engagement
• Prioritize feature development
• Build strong client relationships

So start embracing this customer-centric approach today. It’ll position your business at the forefront of your industry, fueling its growth and profitability.

Get started with Canny for free today!

Canny

Canny is a user feedback tool. We help software companies track user feedback to build better products.

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Now’s the time when everyone starts sharing their amazing accomplishments, their growing numbers, and their big wins. It’s easy to get sucked into this comparison game and feel not so great about yourself.

Turns out that the business world isn’t that much different from the everyday social media world. Someone’s always better, stronger, faster, younger, more agile, and overall more successful. Or, so it seems. This can take a significant toll on our mental health.

Startup founders are built to doubt themselves. No matter how far you’ve come, you’re always comparing yourself to that large and well-known competitor. And suddenly your achievements don’t seem so grand. So here are a few tips on how to break that unhealthy habit and regain your confidence.

Focus on cold hard facts

This will be different for everyone. But try your best not to compare yourself to others blindly. Analyze your numbers (whichever are the most important to you). And then compare them to your own numbers from last year, from the year prior, from year one of your business. Better yet, calculate that growth percentage. Yes, it’s easy to grow 500% at the beginning because you started with nothing. But still – pat yourself on the back for that.

Bottom line: try to outperform your old self.

Moreover, you could be comparing your fourth year to somebody else’s fourteenth year. And that’s clearly not a fair comparison. So, keep that context in mind.

It’s good to look to others for some aspirational routines, but don’t let that bring you anxiety.

Instead, analyze what went right and led to your success. Break down what could have been better and how you can use that as a learning opportunity. Try to document all of that too, and set reminders to refer back to those notes.

Better yet – try to analyze competitors’ wins and, more importantly, fails. You can probably learn a lot from them too and prevent similar mishaps in the future.

Inspire your team

It’s good to be competitive, always challenge the status quo, and reach for the moon. But…not everyone enjoys that. Some creative thinkers will get demotivated very quickly if they feel like they’re never good enough.

Has this ever happened to you?

• You come home from school with an A- only to hear your mum say: “Oh, I wonder why it’s not an A or an A+”?

• Or maybe you come across a social media profile of someone you knew in high school and conclude that they’re much more successful than you (psst: it’s probably not true).

That’s how your team might feel when you set moving targets for them.

It’s OK if you work best this way. Keep at it! But figure out what your team needs and encourage them in the way that works best for them.

One way to combat this feeling of “not good enough” is to set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) goals. You’ve probably heard this acronym before, and it really does work.

When your goals are SMART, your team can better align on the desired outcome. And then you’ll all know from the beginning what you’re working towards, what success looks like, and what the expectations are.

Improve everyday productivity

Sometimes we get too caught up in our quarterly or even yearly goals (OKRs, KRAs, etc) and lose sight of what’s happening daily. Chances are, you could increase your everyday productivity and see awesome benefits quickly.

Assess how you spend your time on any given day. Is there any wasted time? Once again, don’t beat yourself up. Just set a reasonable expectation for yourself and your team. A never-ending list of items leads to burnout and too many unfinished tasks. So look for balance.

Here are a few productivity tips from Sarah Hum, co-founder at Canny:

• Block off time in your calendar for calls/meetings so the rest of the time can be used for focus
• Prioritize your tasks
• If you’re on the fence about doing something, say no
• Fewer meetings, more async
• Learn how to be good at delegation

Little things like that can lead to very big changes in the long run. Time management is tricky, but it makes all the difference.

Strive for balance, not perfection

Balance is key. If you’re constantly juggling more projects and tasks than you can handle, you’ll eventually burn out. You need to take time to recharge your batteries and enjoy life. 

Remember: your team looks up to you and mimics your work style. If they see that you’re always working after hours and on weekends, they’ll feel obligated to do the same. And that hustle culture can be too much for some people and can lead to people leaving your team.

So encourage a healthy distraction!

At Canny, we have many Slack channels to just chat. We also have random coffee chats every week (a Slack bot pairs us up each Monday). Once every 2 months we have a 90-minute “Team Hangs” call (attendance is always optional!). And we always talk about our weekends and fun things during every call.

These breaks between tasks really help us all unwind and get inspired. Try them out!

Celebrate wins, big and small

You’ve come a long way. No matter where you are right now, you’ve worked hard to reach this level. So did your team. So take a moment to celebrate.

Remember – it’s only natural to feel guilty, “not good enough”, get that imposter syndrome, and everything that comes with it. So acknowledge it. And then put your head down and keep going.

Sarah Hum

Hey there, I'm one of the co-founders of Canny. As a founder, I dabble in pretty much everything but my expertise is in product design. Outside work, I enjoy digital illustration, a cappella, and hanging out with our dog, Emmy.

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But it’s not always so simple. SEO has been a major growth strategy in many industries. And especially in SaaS, the landscape is pretty competitive. To ensure your SEO strategy is set up for success, you need to tick a lot of boxes.

You need to make sure that the SaaS SEO metrics you’re measuring are relevant. We run a SaaS company at Whatagraph and SEO is one of our main growth channels. Today, we’re going to give you an overview of the most important metrics to follow.

Organic traffic

There are many vanity metrics in digital marketing, and organic traffic is not in that type of SEO metric. The more people that come to your website, the higher chances you have at converting some of them. You can define conversions however you’d like. For SaaS companies, it’s usually free trials and paying customers that matter.

Measuring organic traffic is pretty easy. You can see it all broken down in your Google Analytics report. Besides organic traffic, you can analyze your page performance. That way, you can see which pages get the most visits.

If you have a seasoned SaaS website, you’ll notice that some pages are getting a very small volume of traffic. Moreover, some don’t get any traffic at all. Before doing anything, determine the type of page that is getting low traffic.

For example, having 10 visits to a money page (landing page that drives conversions) per month and turning those 10 visits into $1,000 is an excellent result. On the other hand, 1,000 visits to a page that brings no revenue does not sound so impressive in the realm of SEO metrics.

Therefore, look at traffic in context instead of isolation as an SEO KPI. A simple look at Google Analytics will tell you which pages are getting traffic and conversions. However, if a page is getting no traffic at all, it’s a sign to intervene.

Keyword research and content audits

This is when you know it’s time for a content audit in your SEO efforts. You can choose to update, rewrite or remove these pages, depending on your goals.

The best way to grow your organic traffic is to perform keyword research. 

It lets you identify keywords your target audience uses, and prioritize which terms you want to target based on search volume, competition level, and search intent.

Find these keywords, and then write amazing content around them. You can find these keywords using a tool such as Ahrefs or SEMRush.

Keyword research deserves a topic on its own, but we can say a few words to guide you in the right direction. There are probably thousands of keywords you can pick from that are relevant to your business, so make sure to choose the ones that make an impact.

This is the key part: not all keywords have the same effect. Some are for bringing traffic to your website (high volume), some are for raising awareness about your product (middle of the funnel) and others are mainly for conversions (bottom of the funnel). 

For example, consider these 3 keywords:

1. “SEO” – this is a super broad keyword and likely indicates someone wants to learn about SEO. It’s top of the funnel, and the searcher is far from buying an SEO tool
2. “SEO tools” – this is a mid-funnel search term. The searcher has some interest in SEO tools but needs to evaluate their options
3. “Buy SEO tool” – this is a bottom-of-funnel search term. There’s a clear purchase intent, and the searcher is just picking which tool to buy 

You’d create different content for each of those terms. The first would likely be a long blog post or guide. The second would likely be a comparison post looking at different vendors. And the last would likely be a sales page promoting your software. 

You see, while getting more traffic is great, it’s not the end goal. Sometimes, a page that gets 10 visits per month has a high conversion rate. On the other hand, a page that gets 1,000 visits may not convert at all.

Organic traffic is a crucial metric, but make sure not to look at it in isolation.

Further reading — what is a marketing roadmap?

Backlinks

You get a backlink when another website adds a link to your site. There have been many conflicting statements from Google throughout the years on the importance of backlinks for search engine results. However, backlinks are still a major ranking factor.

In theory, this means that pages that have more links pointing to them often rank well. In practice, it’s usually like this, but we need to add some fine print here.

Not all links are created equal. Google looks at the quality of the sites linking to you. 1 link from a great site is more valuable that 10 links from low-quality sites. Most SEO tools have a metric called domain authority that helps you judge link quality. 

If your content is superb and satisfies the search intent of your keywords, backlinks can skyrocket you in search engine results. If your content is poorly written, no amount of backlinks will help you rank well.

What does this mean for a SaaS company?

Naturally, you want to earn as many backlinks as possible. So monitoring new and lost backlinks should be a regular activity. The more backlinks pointing to your website, the more of an authority you become in Google’s eyes.

The most important aspect of links is making sure you’re getting links to the right pages. Even though the premise of getting 100 new links per month sounds amazing, those links need to go to the pages you want to see ranking well.

Your new backlinks should be pointing to the pages you’re trying to rank high in search engine results (i.e. pages that drive conversions). One of the most important things about links is to strategically direct them to your most important pages.

Monitoring Your Backlinks

At the same time, make sure to stay on top of lost backlinks. Losing one or two per month is OK, but anything more than that could harm your SEO efforts. That’s especially true if they’re links from sites with high domain authority. 

Most good SEO tools offer the option of getting automatic updates for new and lost backlinks.

Losing backlinks may not be a huge deal if it’s a few per month. It actually happens naturally as content gets updated, curated and deleted. However, losing many of them over a short time period could tank your rankings.

It’s important to keep perspective on what percent of your links you’re losing too. If your site has thousands of backlinks, losing a couple isn’t likely to hurt you much (unless they’re from high domain authority sites). 

If you do lose backlinks, be sure to investigate what happened. You’ll want to try to get the link back, and sometimes all it takes is contacting the linking website and asking to have the link restored. 

Building Links

Last but not least, keep in mind that most backlinks are earned and built in some way. There are very few websites that will link out to you naturally without some sort of prompt or incentive. This is not to say that you should buy links. But be prepared to work hard for each link that comes your way, especially for high-quality links from relevant websites.

But what about buying links? If you’re in marketing, your inbox is probably swamped with offers for cheap backlinks on Fiverr. And you may be tempted to buy, but those links will do more harm than good. In fact, buying links (or giving anything in exchange for backlinks) is against Google’s guidelines.

In general, outright paying for links is a practice you should avoid. A good link ends up costing money in any case. 

So, how do you build links then?

A very common tactic is guest posting. You need to pay a writer, an SEO specialist, an editor or someone who does outreach. They’ll contact websites in your niche, offer to write a guest post for them, and then create the content in partnership with the site. When they do that, they can control what link to your site is created.

No backlink is really free. But, it’s better to invest in your own SEO team rather than paying website editors to add your link and risk Google penalties.

Besides link exchanges and guest posts, there are other ways that you can naturally build and earn links for your website.

Some of them include:

• Creating link magnets/linkable assets (such as guides, unique research, or infographics) that writers use as references in their content
• Submitting quotes to other people’s content (using platforms like Help a Reporter Out)
• Broken link building (reaching out to websites with broken links to your competitors)

Once again, you’re technically not paying for any of the links you’re earning and building, but creating these assets and reaching out to other websites will does require investment.

Keyword movements

We all want to rank #1 for our most desirable “money” keywords. However, any good marketer can tell you that the journey from hitting “Publish” in your CMS to ranking #1 is a long and bumpy road. It usually takes months to get anywhere close to high rankings in search engine results.

You write amazing content and optimize it for SEO using a variety of tools. You then build internal and external links to it, and cross your fingers hoping it ranks. And, when you start thinking that things are going well, Google comes out with another algorithm update, and you’re back to square one.

Your keyword rankings can vary wildly across weeks, let alone months. This is why it’s a good practice to keep tabs on your main keywords and their movements. Your favorite SEO tool will have this feature, so you can load up your keywords and get daily updates on movements.

Tracking rankings is important because many times it’s a easier to see progress compared to organic traffic. You could see your rankings shoot up quite quickly while increasing organic traffic can take weeks or months.

If you run a SaaS business (or any business, for that matter), your priority should be keywords that are on the top of page 2 (positions 10-20). Just a small push can mean that they’re moved to page 1, bringing a hefty increase in clicks, views, and ideally conversions.

Tracking movements is also a quick way to determine which pages need some more attention. If you see a page dropping off or just barely touching page 1, it means it could benefit from some optimization or a few new backlinks.

Branded vs. non-branded traffic

If your company is Canny, the branded search term will be “Canny”, and you should monitor it as one of your main keywords. Even if it doesn’t seem like a super relevant keyword for conversions, it’s a good representation of the strength of your brand.

Branded search makes up for a good chunk of our organic traffic at Whatagraph. This means that people who search for our brand name are highly likely to convert and become paying customers.

As your position in the market grows and you become a household name in your niche, your branded traffic will grow. While it’s not a measurement of your success with SEO, it is a sign that you’re building your brand the right way.

You should be ranking #1 for your branded search term. If you’re not, you need to understand why and prioritize ranking first.

If a competitor is able to outrank you for your own branded terms, they will capture large amounts of traffic that are looking for your company.

Over time, increasing the search volume for your brand name, which is the result of your overall marketing efforts (not just SEO), can also show your team’s success.

Besides your main term, make sure to monitor related braned keywords. Based on our Canny example, these could include:

• Canny pricing
• Canny features
• Canny alternatives
• Canny reviews
• And others including your brand name

MRR from organic traffic

Ranking well for your most desirable keywords and having a lot of organic traffic are admirable achievements. But in the end, organic traffic does not pay salaries, so let’s look at some tangible traffic.

At Whatagraph, we use a combination of Google Analytics, Salesforce and Dreamdata to attribute all of our revenue. This allows us to pinpoint almost every dollar that came to the company, down to the first and last touchpoint.

This is by no means a plug for any of these tools – we’re just trying to drive a point. With this combination, we can pinpoint how much of our monthly recurring revenue came from organic and SEO. We can see what the average deal size is, what the annual contract value is and more.

MRR from organic traffic is just an illustration of the metric that you can use. You can use some of the following:

• Conversions from organic traffic
• ACV from organic
• Average deal size from organic
• Pipeline created from organic

The point is tying organic traffic to specific business outcomes. Metrics such as views, sessions, and even bounce rate are important to marketers. While these are excellent ways to gauge if you’re doing good marketing work, these metrics won’t mean much to a CFO or a CEO.

For internal purposes, we also use metrics such as conversions from organic traffic. We use these metrics to track our campaign performance. We also use it to stay on top of movements down the sales funnel.

Start tracking your way to SEO success today

What gets measured gets improved. The problem is, in the marketing world, there are so many options to choose from. Many times, it can be hard to determine which metrics actually move the needle. Hopefully, we shed some light today on which metrics matter for a SaaS business.

Mile Zivkovic

Mile Zivkovic is the Head of Content at Whatagraph, a marketing reporting tool used by top agencies and in-house marketing teams.

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The post 5 SEO metrics that really matter for a SaaS business first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post 5 SEO metrics that really matter for a SaaS business appeared first on Canny Blog.

One way is SaaS SEO.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. When someone searches for something related to your product, you want your site to pop up first. You can achieve that and much more through SEO. It’s an incredibly important channel for B2B SaaS companies. 

In this article, we’ll focus on SaaS SEO specifically.

Why SEO?

The goal is to increase the organic traffic to your SaaS website. 53.3% of a website’s traffic comes from organic search. There’s a good chance that a part of this traffic will convert to paying customers.

Improving your SaaS SEO strategy will help put your product in front of your target audience. It will also help you build your brand.

Paid advertising can help get more traffic quickly. But that can get expensive fast. Also, imagine this: you’ve been running paid ads for a while. And now you decide to turn those ads off. If you don’t have a good SEO strategy in place, your total traffic will instantly decline.

So, even if you want to use other mediums to attract leads and gain traffic, it’s good to have a strong SaaS SEO game. Keep reading to learn how to boost organic search traffic to your SaaS business website.

1. Conduct a SaaS SEO audit

The first step in your SaaS SEO strategy is conducting an SEO audit of your website. An SEO audit is a thorough analysis that pinpoints site issues. These issues usually prevent your website from ranking well on search engines. Here’s how it will help:

– Show technical SEO issues that are costing you organic traffic

– Help optimize your existing content

– Reveal toxic backlinks that you need to fix

– Identify pages that are not crawled or indexed correctly

– Pinpoint on-page SEO issues like poor user experience

– Assess if the website is mobile-friendly *

* This is critical, considering Google switched to mobile-first indexing and ranking policy. 

You can use various online tools for auditing your SaaS website. For example, you can use paid tools like Semrush, Screaming Frog, or Ahrefs. These tools provide detailed reports on core web vitals, markup, and crawlability.

Google Search Console is a free tool you could also use. However, it’ll only give you a basic audit of your website. Here’s the Overview screen that shows the basic data, like the number of clicks or coverage.

A performance report shows the search query data and rankings for specific pages.

Focus on the performance dashboard if you want to improve your SaaS SEO.

Also include coverage, core web vitals, mobile usability, and links. Remember: an SEO audit is not a one-time thing. You’ll need to audit your site regularly to ensure everything is on track.

– Audit your backlinks every few weeks to ensure you avoid any suspicious backlinks

– Check that your pages load quickly

– Optimize your site for mobile

2. Conduct keyword research

An SEO audit will tell you where your site currently stands. Then it’s up to you to start improving based on the results. Keyword research, on the other hand, opens you to new opportunities.

Great keyword research will tell you the search terms your target audience uses. That tells you what type of content you’ll need to attract your target audience. It will also point you to some “lucrative” keywords you could target with your content. And then you can build a complete marketing funnel with it!

Top – informational & educational content (blogs, podcasts, guides)

Bottom – high-converting pieces (reviews and case studies)

SEO tools like Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush can help you with the keyword research process. There are two major ways to go about keyword research using these tools.

1. Start with a general keyword you want to target. Then, use the tools and explore all related keywords. Find the missing keywords and include them too. Pay attention to keyword difficulty and monthly search volume to find the very best ones.

Source

2. Research competitors. Let’s say you have a sprint planning software solution. ClickUp and Jira would be your top competitors. Instead of doing your keyword research from scratch, analyze these competitors. Find out which keywords they’re currently targeting and ranking for.

Source

Ahrefs also offers a content gap analysis tool. This tool will show you the keywords your competitors are ranking for and you’re not. It’s great for identifying extra keywords and topics that you may not have covered on your site.

This keyword research will eventually lead you to the search intent. Let’s talk about that next.

Determining the search intent of your keywords

Identifying your target keywords is only the first step. Next, you need to know what users look for when searching those keywords. That’s search intent.

Keywords can fall into one of four search intents:

• Informational intent. This is when a user wants to learn more about a particular topic. These search terms look like questions that start with  “What is…” and “How to…”. They also usually have words like “tips” and “ideas”. For example: “what is a sprint planning software” and “sprint planning tips”.

• Navigational intent. Searchers with this intent already have a destination website in mind. So, the search term typically includes a brand name or branded term. For example, “Jira sprint planning tool.”

• Commercial intent. Users with this intent are hoping to buy something. But they’re still weighing a few options. So they typically look for comparisons. For example, they may search for “best sprint planning tools” or “Asana vs Jira.”

• Transactional intent. Finally, these searchers are at the end of the buyer’s journey and are looking to buy a particular product. So they’re likely looking for discounts, promos, and coupon codes. Search terms with this intention may include “Jira discounts.” The search terms may also include the word “buy”.

Understanding the search intent behind your target keywords is really important. It determines the type of content you’ll create. For example, if a keyword has informational intent, you could write a detailed blog post or a guide. If the intent is commercial, you should be creating a product comparison.

SEO tools like SEMrush will tell you the search intent behind your target keyword. You can also tell the search intent of a particular keyword by simply looking at the ranking content. Just search for your target keyword and see what type of organic content is ranking. That should give you a good idea of what the users and search engines want from that keyword.

3. Optimize your blog

Blogging is crucial for SaaS SEO. 98% of the best-performing SaaS companies have a blog. Running a successful blog requires relevant, high-quality content. What you write should aim at a specific target group.

So, creating content, you should get an idea of who will most likely read your blog posts. Your target audience includes people that need the services. So, they’re likely to search for the relevant keyword you’re targeting.

You can use the data you already have to identify your target audience. Study the information you collected during lead generation or your customer personas. Speak to your sales team and review your website’s Google Analytics data.

Once you know who you’re trying to attract, creating relevant content gets easier. Use blogging tools like SurferSEO and Ahrefs to optimize your blog. And make sure to stick to your brand’s guidelines.

You can use the Content Editor from SurferSEO to:

– Analyze top-ranking content for your target keyword

– View suggestions for the types of keywords to use

– Find out the keyword density

– Get recommendations on the topics to cover

Doing all this increases your chances of ranking higher in search engines.

To take it further, include keywords in the following places:

• The title tag
• H1 and H2
• 3-5 times on your page
• Once in your meta description
• Once in your post intro and conclusion

Well-written page titles and meta descriptions will boost your page on the SERPs. It will also make an excellent first impression. Also, make sure you optimize your blog URLs too.

Here’s an example of a well-optimized title and meta tag. Moz also optimizes the articles’ URL for the keyword they’re targeting:

Remember: Google prioritizes the mobile version of the content over the desktop version. So you also need to optimize your SaaS’ blog page and the entire website for mobile devices. Use the Google mobile-friendly test tool to check that.

4. Create a content plan

Improving your SaaS SEO requires creating an effective content strategy. You should craft your content plan before you start producing content. Your plan should work as a guide for your marketing and growth team. It should be easy for your marketers to check the pieces of content they need to work on. This plan should specify all the content pieces you’ll create within a particular period.

Your SaaS content plan can take different forms. You can use a spreadsheet or a calendar page, for example. Or you can use tools like the Surfer SEO Content Planner. It will give you a more data-driven and streamlined workflow.

The image below shows a simple content plan.

Update your content plan and add the details as you decide on them.

Think about your business goals when you’re creating the content marketing strategy. For example, if you’ve introduced a new feature, your content should support it.

Let’s say your software used to offer email marketing services only. Then, your team develops a web form builder to expand the platform’s capabilities. In that case, you’d want to start producing helpful articles around web forms. Then, link those articles to your new product feature.

A robust SaaS content plan also goes beyond articles and blog posts. You must also create expert guides and case studies. You can even go as far as creating ebooks and online courses related to your niche. These are critical in establishing your SaaS brand as a thought leader in your niche. HubSpot is a great example of a SaaS brand doing this.

Source

Moreover, all that helps with link-building. Reputable websites prefer linking to credible studies compared to regular articles. They want their audience to learn!

Your content plan should work hand in hand with your keyword research process. As you build your list of target keywords, update your content plan. Include details like the type of content you’ll create for those keywords. Also include the type of each content and where you’ll publish it. For example, maybe want to prioritize content with commercial intent. That means you’ll need to work on more product or service descriptions.

Further reading — What is a marketing roadmap? How to plan for marketing success

5. Generate backlinks

Another step in improving your SaaS SEO is building backlinks to your SaaS website. Backlinks, or inbound links, are critical for SaaS SEO. Backlinks build your site’s authority. The more links your website has from other credible sites, the more domain authority it gains.

What does that mean? When you’re link building, ensure you get do-follow backlinks from relevant, high-authority websites. That boosts your website’s reputation. As a result, Google will rank your pages higher.

Here are some link-building strategies to help you generate backlinks:

• Seek guest posting opportunities with relevant and reputable sites

• Find broken links from reputable websites and ask them to replace those links with yours

• Publish unique data that internet users want to quote

• Look for unlinked mentions on your brand

• Create free helpful tools that people can link to, e.g., the free broken link checker tool by Ahrefs.

Reach out to high-authority websites in your industry to secure high-quality backlinks. Write an email to these websites explaining how a link to one of your web content can offer value to their readers. Here’s an example template of such an email:

With quality content, you’ll get a better chance of these authority websites linking to your site. Plus, quality content tends to naturally attract links over time. Content creators want to link to useful content. So make sure that you have the best content!

A consistent link-building strategy will boost your search engine rankings and organic traffic.

6. Track results and improve

The final step in boosting your SaaS SEO campaign is monitoring the SEO results. Spotting any areas that need improvement is critical.

Here you can use Google Analytics and Search Console. These are free tools that can help you monitor your content performance on SERPs. Watch these metrics: organic traffic, bounce rate, page session, and engagement time.

(Image from GA demo account) Source

Of course, you want to see a consistent increase in organic traffic. That would mean that your SEO efforts are paying off. Traffic is important, but so are other metrics. For instance, page session and bounce rate indicate whether users enjoy your content.

High bounce rates (anything above 70%) can be due to various issues. For example, it could be poor page loading speed or a misleading meta title and meta description. Or your content can simply be low quality. Either way, you’re losing traffic, which sends bad signals to search engine crawlers.

Investigate the pages recording high bounce rates to determine the underlying issue. If it’s a content quality issue, update the piece of content or create a fresh one. If the issue is your site speed, consider upgrading your hosting provider.

You don’t have to wait until your bounce rates go through the roof to check your content though. One of SEO’s best practices is regularly updating your content . Go through your content at least once per year to ensure every stat and concept is up to date.

The other thing you want to track is your search engine rankings. You can track this using a free tool like Google Search Console or paid ones like Ahrefs and Semrush.

Source

Tracking your search engine rankings is also critical. When you first publish a piece of content, it’ll likely start by ranking outside the top 10. Tracking that content piece will show how its ranking evolves over time.

Similarly, you may rank at the top for a particular keyword at some point. But, as your competitors create content targeting the same keyword, your rankings may drop. So, tracking your rankings will help you stay on top of all such changes. This should then help you adjust your content to continue ranking well.

Let’s say your competitor displaces you for a particular keyword. You can go back and update your content to increase its chances of regaining its position.

Besides tracking your content performance, you should also keep track your backlinks. Ensure you’re not attracting spammy backlinks – these could hurt your domain reputation.

To do that, you can use the Google Search Console to, Semrush, SE Ranking, and Monitor Backlinks. These tools will also give you an estimated domain authority. You’ll be able to track this metric to see your growth over time. They’ll also help you compare your site’s authority to your competitors’.

SEO for SaaS: getting started

SaaS SEO is critical for the success of any SaaS company. Whether you’re a B2C or B2B SaaS, you need to boost your SEO to capture valuable organic traffic.

In this guide, we discussed six critical steps for building a successful SEO strategy. You can start by conducting a SaaS SEO audit to determine where you stand. The audit will also show you what you need to improve.

Then, conduct comprehensive keyword research. Make sure to identify the search intent behind every target keyword. From there, optimize your blog content and generate backlinks. You also need a content plan to stay organized. Finally, track the results and improve your strategy.

We’re confident that you’re now set to boost the organic visibility of your SaaS product on the SERPs. Good luck!

If you’d like to power up your SaaS ever further, try Canny for free.

Tomasz Niezgoda

Tomasz is the Marketing Executive & Partner at Surfer, a platform that merges content strategy, creation, and optimization into one smooth process. With almost a decade of experience in the industry, he is responsible for incorporating and executing marketing strategies. Currently, he manages a team of 4 wonderful experts.

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The post Your complete guide to SaaS SEO first appeared on Canny Blog.

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But we didn’t just take what we have and decide to sell it to a whole new market. We’re making sure that Canny delivers what that market is looking for.

We know that enterprises are looking for an easy-to-use and secure feedback tool. That’s why we decided to get a System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type II audit.

It’s a rigorous auditing procedure from the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) that checks our security policies, procedures, and controls. It also specifies how organizations should manage customer data. This protects our interests and your privacy. 

We’ve been SOC 2 Type I compliant since 2019. This meant that our security procedures were SOC 2 compliant at a point when the audit was performed.

We’ve now decided to take it one step further. SOC 2 Type II, the next audit stage, shows that a company is compliant for 90 days.

Canny completed a thorough SOC 2 Type II compliance audit administered by our independent auditor Sensiba San Filippo. 

We documented all our processes and data management infrastructure. We also developed a progressive approach to data access permissions. Drata, our independent security and compliance partners, reviewed our security procedures and helped us through this process.

As a result, our SOC 2 Type II audit came back clean, showing our compliance with the SOC 2 security standard. 

And we’re not stopping there – we’re continually auditing and improving our security. We are committed to getting a new SOC 2 Type II report annually.

Why? 

• To give our clients peace of mind (including our Free plan users!)
• To make it easier for new companies to partner with us
• To better serve the enterprise market

Everyone’s heard of at least one major security breach from a well-known company. That’s why security is so crucial. The last thing we want is to compromise any data, especially our customers’ data (and their users’ data).

We strive to be the very best version of Canny possible! We’re now working on:

• Expanding our SOC 2 Type II security compliance to all five standards – security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy
• Getting ISO 27001 compliance

Stay tuned for our future updates – subscribe to our blog.

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

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The post Canny is now SOC 2 type II compliant first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Canny is now SOC 2 type II compliant appeared first on Canny Blog.

I’m always impressed by how knowledgeable and passionate they are. And, many of them share unique concepts with me that leave a lasting impression on me. The Lazy Product Manager, Tiny Products, and Product Soulmates come to mind.

At Canny, we’re built around listening. We’re also focused on helping product teams succeed in their work.

We realized we could give these product leaders a platform to share their knowledge. And letting others listen and learn could be very valuable. Plus, it could be a lot of fun.

That’s how Product Chats was born.

It’s our new audio / video podcast where I chat with product management leaders. We chat about what they’re passionate about in product management.

We’ve recorded the first season already. It features guests who have built products for:

• Sony
• GitLab
• Sephora
• Hello Alice
• HelpScout
• and many more

Product Chats is about sharing knowledge and having candid conversations. We cover a wide range of topics that product managers should find valuable including:

• product management frameworks
• listening to users
• prioritization
• work-life balance
• hiring and retaining talent
• and much more

We recently launched the first season of Product Chats. Episodes are available on our Product Chats page. They’re also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. 

New episodes launch every Wednesday, and the first five episodes are already available. 

Be sure to check out Product Chats and subscribe to get notified when new episodes release. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, we’d really appreciate it if you left us a review.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the show. And, if you have any suggestions for guests or topics we should cover, please let me know.  Just drop me an email at kayla@canny.io.

Happy listening!

Kayla Cytron-Thaler

Hey there, I’m Canny’s head of sales. I love sharing product management best practices and helping our customers. Outside work, I enjoy doing CrossFit, getting in rides on my Peloton, and cooking healthy meals.

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The post Introducing Product Chats, a new podcast from Canny first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Introducing Product Chats, a new podcast from Canny appeared first on Canny Blog.