Is Your Value Promise Falling Short? Here’s How to Identify and Upgrade Tired USPs

In a crowded SaaS market, simply saying your product is the best won’t cut it. Users need to see exactly what makes it unique and how it can impact their daily lives. Without clear benefits and unique selling points (USPs), your metrics—like registrations, retention, and referrals—can suffer.

I have no doubt that your SaaS product has countless things that make it great. But do users intuitively understand those benefits and unique selling points across your digital experience? Are you making sure they know exactly what sets you apart no matter where they are in their journey? 

If your answer is anything less than an enthusiastic “yes,” this article is for you. We’re sharing how you can identify and address the gaps in your benefits and unique selling points.

What is the benefits & unique selling points heuristic?

Benefits and unique selling points differentiate products/services by highlighting unique value promises. They show users why they should choose to purchase from you instead of elsewhere. 

Without clear benefits and unique selling points, you leave the user uncertain whether it is right for them. 

Digital experiences that adhere to this heuristic may apply a tactic like breaking down a differentiating feature in a demo video or building an interactive comparison chart that helps users clearly see the advantage of their service/product.

Benefits and unique selling points is one of the six Heuristics of Digital Experience Optimization™ developed by our team at The Good. The full list includes:

1. Priming & Expectation Setting
2. Trust & Authority
3. Ease
4. Benefits & Unique Selling Points
5. Directional Guidance
6. Incentives

These heuristics theme common optimization issues and opportunities. Optimizing your digital experience through the lens of heuristics keeps the user at the center of analyses. When done correctly, it will ensure your strategy creates journeys that feel familiar, do what they say, and function intuitively.

Knowing this heuristic is the first step. Now, let’s look at how to spot areas where you may be falling short.

Use research to understand where benefits & USPs are unclear 

It’s important to understand where and when users are missing the value promise of your product. 

A great way to deepen your understanding of the current experience is with user research. 

Research methods like session recordings, heatmap analysis, and user testing may indicate you are in violation of the benefits and unique selling points heuristic. Watch for these common signs that your benefits and USPs may not be coming across clearly:

Low Directness

• Research methodology: Session recordings
• How it manifests: Users can be seen scrolling through the site looking for specific content and struggling to find items of interest, possibly hesitating on the site, suggesting uncertainty.
• What it means: If you’re noticing patterns of users hesitating to click when looking at the menu or visiting several pages before finally lingering on a page, they may need support in wayfinding. 
• What to do about it: Take low directness as a sign that users need a little directional guidance and use it as a jumping-off point to further evaluate your navigation, labels, and page nesting. If you have a flagship use case that regular customers swear by, try to get users to see it (and its value) earlier, and don’t make them dig for it. 

Attentive/Intentional Reading

• Research methodology: Session recordings
• How it manifests: When a user slowly scrolls over content on a desktop, their mouse hovers over text, and when they are intensely reading, you might even see them go line-by-line.
• What it means: When users demonstrate a detailed reading of the fine print, it may indicate that they are looking for something they simply can’t find or trying to determine if the product fits their use case.  
• What to do about it: Keep an eye out for sessions that include intense reading and try to determine what content the user was looking for (and not finding) so you can serve that up more prominently in the user experience. For consumable products, that might mean clearer nutritional benefits. For a digital product, it might mean showcasing compatibility or use cases. 

Positive Sentiment or Negative Sentiment

• Research methodology: User testing
• How it manifests: User expresses positive or negative emotions towards the site/brand or an element of the site/brand.
• What it means: If, in early testing, users aren’t connecting to your product, you might hear subtle hints like “I would want to go back and make sure to evaluate the alternatives.” When users don’t clearly understand your unique value proposition, they’ll fail to connect and indicate they’re not sold. 
• What to do about it: Use those blasé moments to fine-tune your messaging until it starts to click. Make sure you’re articulating who your product is best for in the language of your users. 

5 Examples of SaaS companies that leverage the benefits and unique selling points heuristic 

Once you’ve identified the areas in your site or app that are in violation of the benefits and unique selling points heuristic, you can address them. 

The goal is to help users make their decisions faster and with ease. As a starting point for inspiration, here are five SaaS companies that showcase the effective use of benefits and USPs, each helping users make confident decisions more easily.

Give a holistic breakdown by value theme like DocuSign

DocuSign breaks down the security benefits holistically, reassuring security-conscious users about important benefits and unique selling points.

List features in a comparison chart like Indicative

Indicative adds CTA buttons to their comparison chart so that as they highlight core capabilities, users have quick-access entry points to get the offer.

Leverage guided tours like Outreach

Sales platform Outreach has use case-specific interactive demos on the website so prospects can see why the tool could be a good fit for them. 

Lead with core benefits like PandaDoc’s feature announcement pop-up

PandaDoc‘s pop-up for a feature rollout announcement leads with the benefit to the user, which makes users more likely to engage with the overlay. 

Animate your pricing page like QuickBooks

QuickBooks’ pricing chart has a visual cue for each feature that pops out with details, benefits, and a pitch video. This increases user confidence.

How to identify your benefits and unique selling points

It can be tough to find the right benefits and unique selling points to highlight across the digital experience, even if you can see where customers are getting stuck.  

Here are some tips to get you started: 

• Write a list: jot down all of the things that make your business, products, or services unique from your competitors – get specific, like your pricing model, customer service accessibility, and features.
• Research the competition: you won’t know what makes you different if you don’t know what you’re up against. Dig into their benefits and unique selling points so you can be sure to stand out.
• Identify your customers’ needs: research your customers using data and surveys to discover their most pressing needs and determine how your tooling is meeting those needs so you can more prominently feature it across the experience.
• Combine needs and differentiators: cross-reference the list of things that make your successful business different and your list of customer needs to pinpoint any that overlap. 
• Consider how you will implement: these points should be woven throughout the digital experience so that users are presented with benefits and unique selling points relevant to where they are in the customer journey.
• Test and validate: With your improvement ideas in hand, it’s time to test the optimizations. There’s no point going all-in on implementation if the language or functions don’t resonate. Consider a second round of user testing, some rapid testing, or A/B testing where it makes sense. 

For more inspiration, check out our article on 14 unique selling proposition examples. 

Heuristics build the foundation of an excellent digital experience

Most SaaS teams have a million things on their plate, juggling KPIs, internal politics, and all the day-to-day tasks to keep the product moving forward. However, nothing is as important as the foundational user experience and how your audience perceives your product.

This is where heuristics come in. You can uncover pain points that can be solved with tactics to address them. It may sound simple, but it can be a lot to accomplish without an external, user-centered POV. If you’d like support in your efforts, contact us.