Most comparison pages don't get you customers. Here's what the good ones do differently.

0:00Pull up a SaaS comparison page and you'll see that most of them look exactly the same. They all have a feature table where they win every row, have some cool badges and some nice buttons to click on. The buyer looks at this, doesn't really trust it and closes the tab. I'll break down what the pages that actually convert do differently with real examples and the data behind them. I'm Deian. This is Before They Buy.

0:30If you're listening to this episode and you built comparison pages and followed the advice from episode 1, congratulations, it's probably ranking and it gets traffic. However, maybe nobody's really signing up from it and the conversion rate is really low. Here's what happened. You opened a spreadsheet, listed your features next to the competitor's features, gave yourself the checkmark in every row and gave them an X in most of them and then shipped it. The problem with this is that the buyer lands on the page and thinks, of course they say they win everything because it's their page.

1:03A good page is structured differently. If we look at Coda.io, which makes really beautiful comparison pages, then you can see where the difference lies. Their competitor's name barely shows up in the hero section. If a buyer has 12 tabs open and they do, your page is the one that gets lost. Confluence does something even worse their comparison pages against coda and against quip use the same exact same hero copy word for word that even

1:33they didn't even adjust the positioning to the specific competitor so the buyer feels this this page wasn't written for me this was written for google so two issues here beautiful but useless and unoptimized comparison pages, The thing is that there's a case study that shows what happens to conversions once you fix this. GetUplift worked with Teamwork.com on their comparison pages and the results were pretty big. So let me get into the specifics.

2:04I mentioned Teamwork's results back in episode 1. They increased conversions by 45% and signups by 172%. What I didn't tell you was what actually changed. GetUplift overhauled their comparison pages because the old ones were hidden in the footer. They were also very generic and didn't really have proper feature comparisons. Here's what pages do differently now. Number one is they lead with a specific angle, not just a generic claim.

2:34So Teamwork doesn't say we're the best project management tool. They're saying we're built for client service teams, which a real person hearing this would know that this is their problem. Basecamp does this against ClickUp as well. While ClickUp has more features, they lean into it. Basecamp has fewer features and they lean into that. So it's the same difference, it's an opposite framing. The opposite framing works. In this case, it works because each page is written

3:06for its actual buyer, not every single buyer. Duda does the same thing against Squarespace. They don't say we are a better website builder, they say we are a better website builder for agencies. So they are leaning into the niche positioning. Number two is they acknowledged what the competitors do well. If we look at Chili Piper's page against Calendly, they say something like, if you just want something small and simple, you go with Calendly. Go with Calendly, don't choose us.

3:38While this might sound backwards, what it does is it makes the buyer self-identify. Because the person who needs more than simple reads and thinks, right, I need more, so I'm just going to go with the other one. But the person who just wants basic scheduling, the person who needs more than simple reads this and thinks, right, I do need more. But the person who wants basic scheduling leaves. Either way, you get a qualified lead or you stop wasting your sales team's time. The third thing is the used switching testimonials.

4:11So I mentioned this in the previous episode that generic customer quotes are not helpful. You need quotes from people who left the competitor. Unbounce, for example, fills their comparison pages with testimonials from people who switched from lead pages and why they left and what changed. Klaviyo goes even a step further because they pull migration guides onto the comparison page. So this tells the buyer the hardest part, which is moving, is already solved. Heap does something even more targeted. On their page against Pando,

4:44every testimonial specifically names Pando. One product manager talks about switching from Pendo because they needed answers faster. So this kind of specificity lands harder than any feature table. Number four, they treated the features table as support, not the star. If you're looking at BambooHR's page against Namely, it doesn't even have a features table. It's literally just storytelling. So text blocks explaining why BambooHR is the better choice for growing companies.

5:17Again, this is not necessarily the best call because Teamwork's new pages did include a side-by-side feature table, but it came after the emotional positioning. So instead of putting the table first, you first prepare the buyer with why you're a better choice. And by the time they hit the table, they have already decided. The table just confirms what they know. We're looking at GetUplift's research. We can see that most prospects evaluating

5:48project management software tested two to four solutions at the same time. So they do need the feature level comparison a table offers them. But they still need the story itself first. Finally, here's a quick way to tell if your comparison page is correct. If you're now wondering if your comparison page is effective, here's a quick way to tell if it was built to convert or just built to rank. Open your comparison page and tell me this.

6:20Are you able to tell which competitor you're comparing against within two seconds of landing on the page? If the competitor page is buried below the fold, you've already lost a buyer with a dozen tabs open. Now swap the competitor's name for a different one. Does the page still make sense? If yes, your positioning is too generic. You just wrote a page about yourself and not a comparison. Now look at the feature table. Is every feature in your favor and you're just making the competitor look bad?

6:52Nobody's going to believe this. So the best comparison pages admit when the competitor is stronger and the buyer can trust the rest of the page. Now look at your testimonials, are they all from happy customers or from customers who switch from the specific competitor? Because that's a big difference and generic quotes don't build trust. Finally, where are your comparison pages? Are they in the footer, hidden in some resource section or not even linked? If a buyer can't find it from your main navigation, it might as well not exist.

7:23Here's what I want you to do today. Open the best comparison page you have right now and run it through those checks. If it fails more than two, you don't have a comparison page, you just build a feature table with your logo on it. Pick one competitor page and rewrite the hero with specific positioning to that competitor. Then find a switching testimonial. If you don't have one, go ask your clients right now that's switched. Then move the page into your main navigation. This is just a morning's work and the difference between a page that ranks and

7:55one that converts is massive. This is Before They Buy. I'm Deian, see you next week.