In our first blog about native integration in the US vs EU SaaS companies and integration strategies we discovered that:
- US SaaS companies are more likely to offer integrations than those in the EU
- US SaaS companies that offer integrations tend to have more integrations on offer than their EU counterparts
In short, the US SaaS co.s had a slight, but important, edge over their EU peers.
We also discovered that, somewhat surprisingly, 33.3% of SaaS companies researched promoted no integrations at all.
Drilling down into the 66.7% of SaaS companies who do feature native integrations on their website, we now want to find out how and where they are promoting them.
Integration can be a key value-add feature for SaaS apps, providing positive buying signals to prospective customers. Where and how these are featured varies from company to company; so let’s take a look at some of the approaches and their popularity.
Dedicated Integration Marketplace Pages
Having a dedicated page outlining SaaS connectivity options is a great way to provide more detail to prospective customers. As the number of integrations available in an app grows it makes more and more sense to have a logical centralised place to promote them, demonstrating breadth and depth of interoperability.
These can be single pages to show off a range of integrations (often in an integration marketplace fashion), or individual dedicated pages for each of their integrations. We’ve focused on pages within each company’s website, not including their blog or documentation.
90% of SaaS companies that provide native integrations have their own dedicated page publicly available on their website. 90%! There is little variation between the EU and USA companies. The key question is more ‘what is the 10% thinking?’.
| Total SaaS surveyed who promote native integrations | Dedicated Integration Page | % of companies offering dedicated pages | |
| US SaaS Companies | 180 | 163 | 91.06% |
| EU SaaS Companies | 122 | 107 | 88.43% |
| Total | 302 | 270 | 90.00% |
So next step was to analyse those that have a dedicated integrations page (the 270) and, in particular, how easy did they make it to find the integrations page in question.
Locations of Native Integration Promotion
With a website being the main shop front for potential customers, differentiated features, such as connectivity options, should be obvious to those who are quickly browsing.
This is why we focussed on whether integrations are featured by SaaS companies in their:
- Homepage content
- Navigation bar
- Footer links
Or…
- Hard to find
Integrations in Homepage Content
The homepage is where the majority of natural search traffic lands. It should give a good first impression of the brand and application features. Companies wanting to promote their platform’s connectivity options will feature integrations here.
We were looking for a dedicated content block, providing a sample of what’s available, or a call to the action taking the user to a more in-depth integration page.
Of those who offer native integrations…
53.3% of EU SaaS publicized their integrations on their home page
40.5% of US SaaS publicized their integrations on their home page
| Integrations featured on the homepage | % Integrations featured on the homepage | |
| EU SaaS Companies | 57/107 | 53.3% |
| US SaaS Companies | 66/163 | 40.5% |
| Overall | 123/270 | 45.6% |
Hands-down a win for EU SaaS companies, choosing to feature their interoperability more prominently by promoting their integrations front and centre.
This contrasts with our finding that US companies are more likely to have integrations and more likely to have more integrations than their EU peers.
So fewer EU companies have integrations but appear more likely to feature them front and centre when they do.
Native Integration in Navigation Bar
A website’s navigation bar is arguably a toss-up with the Homepage as the first port of call for any user looking to find out more about a SaaS application. Here we were looking to see whether integrations were displayed within a primary menu item or as a sub-menu item.
While this should be a key area to promote connectivity options, it is not as fully capitalised on as perhaps it should be:
| Number of Companies who Promote Integrations in Nav Bar | % of Companies who Promote Integrations in Nav Bar | |
| EU SaaS Companies | 60/107 | 56.1% |
| US SaaS Companies | 95/163 | 58.3% |
| Overall | 155/270 | 57.4% |
Of the companies who publicly provide native integrations:
56.1% of EU SaaS promoted their integrations in their navigation bar
58.3% of US SaaS promoted their integrations in their navigation bar
Overall a tie.
Integrations on Website Footer
Website footers are also a navigation hub. Footers can be scanned to get a quick overview of the relevant elements of a SaaS application.
Of the SaaS companies that offer native integrations, only 20.4% provided a link to, or mentioned of, their integration capabilities in their Footer Bar. Overall a less popular option than the navigation bar.
Interestingly, to extrapolate that figure to the US vs European companies:
26.4% of US SaaS companies link to integrations in their website footer
11.2% of European companies link to integrations in their website footer
| Number of Companies who Promote Integrations in Footer | % of Companies who Promote Integrations in Footer | |
| EU SaaS Companies | 12/107 | 11.2% |
| US SaaS Companies | 43/163 | 26.4% |
| Overall | 55/270 | 20.4% |
The win for the US here may be related to the lack of emphasis on their Homepage.
Overall, however, the footer looks to be an easy win for companies to link to potentially key differentiating features.
Native Integration page Hard to Find
Even with a dedicated integration page, we found that some SaaS companies made you work to find it. In other words no clear linkage from the homepage, nav bar, footer or a combination of the three.
| Number of Companies who made you work to find the page | % of Companies who made you work to find the page | |
| EU SaaS Companies | 16/107 | 15.0% |
| US SaaS Companies | 24/163 | 14.7% |
| Overall | 40/270 | 14.8% |
Once more a draw. Roughly 15% of both EU and US companies have a dedicated integration page confusingly then made it hard to find the said page. An unusual promotional strategy and again an easy win for those companies to compete for toe to toe with their peers.
Combined Promotion Approaches
So we needed to check all the data above to see if companies were consistently using one, two or all three methods of promoting their integrations pages.
Companies who really want to push their integration connectivity features may opt to seed several links or content blocks around their website.
Interestingly, only one of the companies surveyed included integration content across each of their home page copy, navigation bar and website footer. That was a win for the USA (well done to www.grow.com).
|
|
SINGLE OPTION |
MULTIPLE OPTIONS |
|||||||
|
|
Hard to Find |
Homepage Only |
Nav Bar Only |
Footer Only |
Home Page and Nav Bar |
Home Page and Footer |
Footer and Nav Bar |
In all 3 |
Total |
|
EU |
16 |
24 |
24 |
5 |
31 |
2 |
5 |
0 |
107 |
|
US |
24 |
23 |
39 |
13 |
34 |
8 |
21 |
1 |
163 |
Expressed as a Percentage for easier comparability
|
|
SINGLE OPTION |
MULTIPLE OPTIONS |
||||||
|
|
Hard to Find |
Home Page Only |
Nav Bar Only |
Footer Only |
Home Page & Nav |
Home Page & Footer |
Footer & Nav |
In all 3 |
|
EU |
15.0% |
22.4% |
22.4% |
4.7% |
29.0% |
1.9% |
4.7% |
0% |
|
15.0% |
49.5% |
35.6% |
||||||
|
US |
14.7% |
14.1% |
23.9% |
8.0% |
20.9% |
4.9% |
12.9% |
0.6% |
|
14.7% |
46.0% |
39.3% |
||||||
Overall the balance between single and multiple options of linkage was similar between the EU and US at 15:49:36 and 15:46:39 (rounded) respectively. However the bias (highlighted yellow above) for EU companies towards homepage use and the US companies towards footer usage is clear.
We can also clearly see that, from this data, the most popular overall combination to seed your integration content is a combination of your home page and navigation bar (highlighted green above).
Currently, EU companies are leading the way in this tactic, although US companies are more likely to take a combination of approaches as a whole than their European counterparts.
Conclusions
Overall conclusions across the two reports so far are:
- US SaaS companies are more likely to have native integrations on offer than their EU peers
- The vast majority of European and American companies with native integrations provide a dedicated integration page on their website
- European Companies are more likely to promote their integrations on their home page
- US companies are more likely to include links to integration content in their website’s footer
- 15% of SaaS companies with dedicated integration pages still make them hard to find
- Overall the option to cross-promote your connectivity options in multiple areas of your website is underexploited and a quick win
All in all an interesting set of results that show that there is no real ‘common’ way to feature SaaS native integration regardless of your provenance. However, there would seem to be best practices in place across many operators and room for SaaS companies to consider how better to promote their integrations. Remember, only one company featured the triple A* approach of a dedicated page with homepage linkage, nav bar linkage and footer linkage.
