Testimonials can be more than pretty placeholders and can help you improve your website or landing page conversions. 3 steps to get customer testimonials that go beyond “Great product!”

You shouldn’t copy your competitors, obviously. Ignoring them is also not the answer. Your prospects are making purchasing decisions within a specific context that includes looking at competitors’ solutions. Find out how to use it to your advantage.

In my B2B SaaS conversion copywriting world, “aspirational behavior” + “temporal landmarks” almost always equals “new website copy in Q1Q2.”

But is it the right thing to do, right now, for your startup?…

I’ve reviewed dozens of early-stage startup websites and worked with Series A and bootstrapped companies on their web copy and messaging, and in all cases, tweaking hero section headline was not the answer.

The answer was figuring out why the website was actually underperforming — and how to fix that.

The “how” will depend on your product and your audience. But the website sections that are neglected are almost always the same.

You can’t scale effectively without answering these questions:

1. “What do we say to our audience?”

2. “How can we position ourselves in a way that makes sense to our audience?”

3. “How do we differentiate ourselves from other solutions?”

4. “How can we stand out — and present our product in a way that makes our prospects want to find out more?”

5. “How can we persuade our prospects to reach out?”

And very often, as I start answering these questions for my clients, this is where we uncover those potential issues that would otherwise have stayed invisible.