Why more and more companies are killing their classical Homepage

Next level value escalation 2.0 in PLG with ungated Freemiums

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We are starting to kill the holy cow of classical homepages in all SaaS segments, and it’s a move you should not miss regardless of whether you are home in a pure PLG environment or from a heavy sales-led product:

It has everything to do with ungated experiences (freemiums & interactive demos without asking for anything, not even an email) and where to put them.

I will talk about ungated freemiums / interactive demos and an important component that changes right now: where they sit in the customers journey.

Let’s look at the definition of the two first:

Ungated Freemium

Freemium

A freemium is a forever free version of your product commonly limited by usage (and less by features). A great one is a representation of your differentiators and allows prospects to self-serve them to understand what you are really about in order to move them further in their buyer’s journey.

Ungated Freemium

An ungated freemium is one that does not require any email registration at the beginning. It’s the first part of a freemium and not applicable to every product experience, but it splits up our Freemium experience into two:

The most common integration of freemium / ungated freemium looks like this.

Ungated Freemium Example: Smallpdf

Note how I’m not logged in on the top right but still am able to use the product.

A good example of an ungated freemium is something we did at Smallpdf. We just let users use the product (within daily limits) without asking you for any email. If you did register you started to get a higher daily limit in the freemium and some basic storage across devices. We’ve been doing this for years at this point and it’s nothing terribly new especially in the PDF space.

Interactive Demo

An interactive demo is a more sales-assisted pendant to a freemium: It’s a representation of your product that comes pretty close, but it’s heavily guided and not usable for anything productive.

It’s similar to what a salesperson would show you in a call, but it includes tracking and some light friction, like asking you for an email. It’s completely separate from your existing product architecture and signup experience.

It’s often used in midmarket and enterprise segments where companies can’t offer freemiums due to their products being too complex.

However, they’re also used together with freemiums, especially in very horizontal products that you can use as a single user but also as a bigger company. In that case, they just serve as one possible onramp to get an idea of the product.

Ungated Interactive Demo

Similar to an ungated freemium, we change the timing of “when” we ask for an email or further information in an ungated interactive demo:

You don’t ask for an email to get started with the Demo or further information but let the prospect explore for a little bit even if that’s just one or two screens..

This little tweak can make a huge difference:

Whether you are looking at this as your first screen:

An email gated Interactive demo from North One

or this

The same demo without email question at least in the first steps

It might be just a setting for you in your tool, but for the prospect, it can make a big difference. You also make it easier to share it with others for them.

We’re building buy-in for them to explore further if we ask for the email in the demo rather than the start.

Will you lose some emails as a result of this?

Undoubtedly, yes, but people with high intent, who are good customers, will continue anyway, and the rest we’re not interested in: Those who realize that your product is not right for them will drop off here. This is uncomfortable for companies, but I highly recommend experimenting with it.

Its important to note here that it is absolutely okay and common to ask for some basic information of the person looking at your interactive demo. There’s nothing wrong with this friction but ungated demos change the timing slightly by moving it a bit back inside of the demo itself.

Interactive Demo’s are used as a pre step for a trial / sales process as you would expect. Similar to a freemium. Some companies use them alongside freemiums as well.

Ungating the ungated: next level PLG. The death of your classical homepage

With our ungated tools, we can now remove another point of friction: our homepage.

We commonly refer to our homepages as the business cards we give to others. It’s clear, though, that people care less and less about who you are as a company.

They might be interested in it once they know what you have to offer, especially in upper market segments. But when it comes to slapping prospects and users into the face with value, the homepage is just a hindrance:

• Users are searching less and less for specific solutions for their problems but get introduced by them through word of mouth, content pieces that link back to them, or channels.

If this is true for your product as well, in that users are coming with a specific Idea, then you can just slap them into the face with your ungated experience, treating the Website as an optional support tool rather than an introduction:

You don’t really need a classical homepage.

I can think of two examples right away of this:

Ungated Homepage example: Google

Google was always ahead of its time but was also helped by the fact that we just expect search engines to work this way. Imagine Google was telling you about itself first, and you have to click on a button: “Hey, let me search for something”. It would be beyond annoying and mostly hindering the experience.

In this case, what they ask from the user (a search term) can already produce high value (a good search result) without having to convince the user that this is worth their time.

Let’s look at an example from a SaaS company with a more complex product than just a search engine. Rows.com:

Ungated Homepage example: Rows.com

Henrique Cruz, the Head of Growth at Rows, puts it this way:

Rows - a modern spreadsheet alternative - is running the ultimate PLG experience. 

Unlike most other SaaS products, Rows competes with a product that is (perceived as) free and ubiquitous: a spreadsheet. That’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, everyone is familiar with the core product UX: a grid of rows and columns, formulas to crunch numbers, and an array of options to format, visualize, and share your data. On the other hand, at any given point, most of Rows potential customers have a browser tab opened with one of their two biggest alternatives (Google Sheets or Excel).

So last year, they decided to let people use Rows before signing-up. To turn the product into the homepage. They named it Instant Rows⚡and launched it as the fastest way for anyone to use a spreadsheet, anywhere.

Why did they do it? Believe it or not, it comes down to user activation. The Rows team knew that the best predictor of activation was having their users connect to any of their +50 integrations and do something with the data. This means that assuming that their audience is familiar with the basic spreadsheet experience, their job is to surface as fast as possible in the customer journey, providing the opportunity for their customers to connect their data to the spreadsheet and get value from the product.

That’s why, following a short welcome onboarding carousel, the users are invited to connect with an integration, or, if they’re not sure where to start, to book an onboarding call, watch a tutorial video or visit the homepage (which they host on rows.com/product).

The users are free to use the product indefinitely in this sandbox environment. This means uploading files, using integrations, installing one of the +100 templates and using all of its AI capabilities. Then, whenever the user wants to use one of the product’s multiplayer (sharing) functionalities, the product invites them to sign up.

Is Instant Rows⚡a success? One year in, undeniably, yes:

• The conversion rate to sign-up (on desktop) rose almost 3x, from 9% to 27%

• The activation rate of users who converted from a sandbox account is 30% higher than those who sign-up via other channels (e.g., from mobile)

• Around 10% of their power users - people using the product >3 days a week - are sandbox accounts.

“Ok, Leah, but how do I know if this is for me?”

The 2 x 2 of pre-knowledge necessary and amount of potential prospects (Source: Rows)

Rows explains that the decision to build a ‘login less’ experience comes down to 2 vectors:

1. Market size: The larger the potential audience of the product is, the more likely it is that a traditional homepage will struggle to communicate the right value to the right person. This was certainly the case for Rows, as people use spreadsheets in one thousand different ways.

2. Prior-knowledge: Some products are hard ‘to get’ or require a lot of handholding. Others, especially PLG products, can be self explanatory. If you’re building a new CRM, do you really need to tell people what a CRM is? There might be a way you can build an activation experience inside the product without needing to alienate 95% of your visitors with a homepage.

And hence they came up with a ‘loginless formula’. If:

1. you have a very large audience;

2. that can get value from the product on their own;

3. a business model (freemium) that does not require you to monetize everyone;

4. a product that can be experienced in ‘single-player mode’,

Summary

Why do you need a classical homepage? (Maybe), you don’t. Maybe it’s time that we change our business card into a landing page for specific people, and the rest gets the product as the 1st impression.

I see a lot of potential in the industry to perfect this approach, and I included Interactive Demos in this article to show you that this is probably not only an interesting approach for pure downmarket PLG companies but also for Sales-Led companies to wise up and think about it a little different.

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This article is brought to you by Baserow - Get your product roadmaps operations under control with Baserow’s no-code database platform. Try it for free today.

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