How to fix a SaaS website with traffic but no signups

Your SaaS website gets a few hundred visits a month, and almost nobody signs up. If you guess why, you redesign the site or buy ads, and the real leak stays open. To fix a SaaS website with traffic but no signups, count where visitors stop, fix that one place, and count again.

Do these three things

About 4 hours today, then about 1 hour a day. If fewer than 300 visits a month come from people who could buy, add 100 personal messages a day.

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1. 1Today: count the last 30 days in four numbers: visits from people who could buy, visits to your signup page, accounts made, and accounts that got into the product. Then sign up to your own SaaS 4 times and fix the first step where most people stop.
2. 2Every day: watch 20 recordings of visitors who left without signing up, read every answer to a one-question "What stopped you?" popup, and write down where each person stopped.
3. 3Every Sunday: count signups per 100 visits from people who could buy, by page and by source. After 300 such visits, change the one part where most people stopped, and keep it only if the conversion rate went up.

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1. Find out how many of your visitors could ever sign up

Before you judge your site, take out the visits that were never going to sign up: your own visits, bots, and people who came for a question your product does not answer. What is left is your real traffic.

Bots are now over half of all web traffic. Imperva's 2026 Bad Bot Report put them at more than 53%. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) removes known bots on its own, but you cannot see how many it removed, and unknown bots stay in. So count engaged visits, not all visits. GA4 calls a visit "engaged" when it lasts longer than 10 seconds, sees 2 or more pages, or ends in a key event.

Do this in GA4 and Google Search Console, both free:

1. 1

   Count engaged visits by source

   Go to Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Set the dates to the last 30 days. Write down the "Engaged sessions" for each source. Ignore the "Sessions" column.

2. 2

   List the pages people land on

   Go to Reports, then Engagement, then Landing page. Add the secondary dimension "Session source / medium". Copy the top 20 pages into a sheet.

3. 3

   Mark each page buyer or off-topic

   A buyer page is your homepage, pricing, features, a comparison, or a post about the problem your SaaS fixes. For each blog post, open Search Console, go to Performance, click the post's row, then open the Queries tab. If the searches have nothing to do with your product, mark the post off-topic.

4. 4

   Take your own visits out from now on

   In GA4, go to Admin, then Data streams. Click your web stream, then Configure tag settings, then Show more, then Define internal traffic. Click Create and add your IP address. Then go to Admin, then Data filters, click Create Filter, choose Internal Traffic and pick Exclude. Set it to Testing, check it, then switch it to Active. It takes 24 to 36 hours to start.

Add up the engaged visits that landed on buyer pages, and take off the ones you know were you. That is your number: visits from people who could buy, in the last 30 days.

Then use this rule:

• Under 300 visits a month from people who could buy: you have too few buyers, not a broken site. Do the steps below anyway, because each takes an hour or two. Then send 100 personal messages a day to people who fit, and answer 20 questions a day in the places your buyers talk. The full routine is in your first 100 SaaS users.
• 300 or more: you have enough buyers to find the leak. Go to step 2.

If most of your traffic goes to blog posts that answer an off-topic question, more posts like that will not bring signups. Write the next ones about the searches your buyers make when they have the problem, as in a blog post that ranks on Google. If visits come from ChatGPT or other AI tools, read them by source with AI traffic tracking.

• Tool: Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console. Both free.
• Time: 1 hour.
• You will have: one number, "visits from people who could buy, last 30 days", and a sheet of your top 20 landing pages, each marked buyer or off-topic.
• It worked if: you can write that number down and say which pages most buyers land on.
• Common mistake: dividing signups by every session, bots and off-topic readers included. A high bounce rate on an off-topic post tells you nothing about your product.

2. Count where visitors stop before signing up

Visitors who could buy stop in one of three places: before they reach your signup page, on the signup page, or after they make an account but before they get in. A free funnel in Microsoft Clarity shows you which one.

Add Microsoft Clarity to your site and your app if it is not there yet. It is free with no traffic limits, and it records visits so you can watch them. If you have visitors in the EU, UK or Switzerland, pass Clarity the consent signal from your cookie banner. Since 31 October 2025, Clarity needs it there to record full visits.

Then build the funnel. In Clarity, go to Settings, then Funnels, then New funnel. Drag in three page visits, in this order:

1. Your homepage or pricing page.
2. Your signup page.
3. The first page people see after they sign up, such as your welcome page or dashboard.

Clarity shows how many visits reached each step. For the number of accounts made, count new accounts in your database for the same days. Do not trust analytics for that one.

Now read the four numbers with these lines, top to bottom, and stop at the first one that fails:

• Fewer than 5 in every 100 buyer visits reach your signup page: the page does not tell them why to try it, or they cannot find the button. Go to steps 4 and 5.
• Fewer than 5 in every 10 people on the signup page make an account: the signup asks too much or breaks. Go to step 3.
• Fewer than 9 in every 10 accounts get into the product: the confirmation email or the first screen is broken. Go to step 3.
• All four pass, but signups are still few: you have too few buyers. Go back to the rule in step 1.

If people get in but never use the main feature, that is a different problem: your activation rate. If you track signups as a goal in GA4 or an ad account, set up conversion tracking for the account-made step as well.

• Tool: Microsoft Clarity (free) and your database.
• Time: 45 minutes.
• You will have: four numbers in your sheet, and one line: "My site loses people at ___."
• It worked if: you can fill in that line with a number beside it.
• Common mistake: redesigning the whole site before counting. Most sites lose people at one step. A new design changes every step at once and fixes none of them on purpose. The four numbers behind why no one is buying work the same way for the whole business.

3. Sign up four times and cut your signup flow to one step

Sign up to your own SaaS as a stranger four times, fix everything that stops you, and cut the signup to one step: an email address or a "Continue with Google" button, with no credit card. People who hit a problem close the tab. They do not email you.

Do the test like this. Open a private window, so you are not logged in. Sign up once on your phone and once on a laptop, each with a new Gmail address and a new Outlook address. Time each one, and time how long the confirmation email takes. It should land in the inbox, not spam, within a minute. Click every button and link on the way. The full test, with what to check, is step 2 of fixing a SaaS launch that got zero signups.

Then cut the signup:

• One field. Ask for an email, or offer "Continue with Google". Ask for name, company and team size inside the product, or in your onboarding emails.
• No card at signup. An agency's data from 86 SaaS companies, updated September 2025, found 8.5% of visitors from search started a free trial when no card was needed, and 2.5% when a card was required. Ask for a card only once you know people pay. Whether you offer a free trial or a free plan can wait until people use it; turning trials into paying customers comes after.
• Let them try first. If the main thing needs an account, show it working before the form: sample data, a live demo, or the first result before the signup. Show HN's rules ask for the same: "ideally without barriers such as signups or emails". More ways are in getting people to try your product.
• Fix the email sender. If you built on Supabase and never set up your own email sender, your confirmation emails may not reach anyone. Its built-in sender allows 2 emails an hour and only to your own team. Set up your own email sending service and turn on SPF or DKIM. Gmail has required one of them from every sender since February 2024.

Also open the signup on your phone's mobile data. If you are still waiting when you want to tap the button, fix the slow site next.

• Tool: your phone, a laptop, two free email accounts and your email sending service.
• Time: 1 hour for the test, about 1 hour for the fixes.
• You will have: four test signups in your sheet, a one-step signup with no card, and every break fixed.
• It worked if: 4 of 4 test signups finish, each in under 60 seconds, and every confirmation email lands in the inbox within a minute.
• Common mistake: testing only on your own laptop, where you are already logged in. In September 2026, a founder on Hacker News found his ads got clicks but no signups, and then found "a stupid dead link on a landing-page I vibe coded". Click everything, as a stranger.

4. Make the first screen say what it does, who it is for and what it costs

If fewer than 5 in 100 buyer visits reach your signup page, rewrite the first screen of the page most of them land on. It must say what your SaaS does, who it is for and what it costs, in the buyer's words, with one button.

Show the page to 10 people who fit your buyer for 5 seconds, on a video call or by sending a screenshot. Then ask three questions: what does it do, who is it for, and what happens if you click the button? Ask them to answer in writing, so you do not help them.

If fewer than 8 of 10 can answer all three, rewrite the first screen. Take your value proposition and the phrases your buyers use in customer interviews. Paste them into ChatGPT or Claude and ask for 10 headlines that say what the user gets, in those words. Pick 3, and test them the same way. Plain words win: Unbounce's 2024 study found SaaS pages written at a 5th to 7th grade reading level converted at 12.9%, against 2.1% for pages written in professional language.

Headline: [What the user gets, in their words]
One line under it: For [who it is for]. [How it works, in under 12 words.]
Button: Start free trial
Under the button: [Price] after [trial length]. No card needed.
Picture: [the product doing the main thing, not a stock photo]

Keep all of it on the first screen of a phone, above the fold. Show the price there or one click away on a pricing page, with the number you set when you priced your SaaS. Add true proof under it as soon as you have any. The whole homepage, part by part, is in how to write homepage copy.

If most buyer visits come from ads or posts, the page they land on must repeat the promise they clicked. Build a matching landing page that converts for each one. If ad clicks bring no signups, work through ads that get clicks but no sales too.

• Tool: a video call, ChatGPT or Claude to draft, and your site editor.
• Time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
• You will have: a new first screen live, with a headline that passed the test and the price in sight.
• It worked if: at least 8 of 10 people can say what it does, who it is for and what happens when they click.
• Common mistake: a clever headline about how it is built, such as "AI-powered workflow infrastructure". Visitors who cannot tell what it does in 5 seconds leave. A competitor analysis shows you the plain words your buyers already know.

5. Put a signup button on every page that gets traffic

Every page that gets visits needs a way to the signup page, written for the problem that page is about. Blog posts, docs, changelog and free tool pages often have none, so readers get their answer and leave.

Take the sheet of pages from step 1. For every page with 20 or more visits a month that has no signup button, add a short box twice: once after the first answer on the page, and once at the end. Write each box about the problem that page covers, not a general "Sign up". AI drafts all of them in one go: give ChatGPT or Claude the page title and your first screen, and ask for one box per page. You check each one.

[The problem this page is about, as a question in the reader's words]?
[Your product] [does the thing] for you. [One line on how, under 12 words.]
Button: Start free trial
Under it: [Price] after [trial length]. No card needed.

Also:

• Give free tools and demos a next step. If you built a free tool that brings in leads, put the signup box under its result. If you have a product demo video, put the button under it.

• Check your listings. Visits from directories, Product Hunt and Show HN should land on a page with the button on the first screen, not on a blog post.

• Click every link. Open each page on your phone and click every button you added. A dead link sends every reader away.

• Tool: your site editor or blog editor, and ChatGPT or Claude to draft the boxes.

• Time: about 10 minutes a page, about 2 hours for 10 pages.

• You will have: a signup box, twice, on every page with 20 or more visits a month.

• It worked if: every page on your list has the box and every link works. After 300 more visits to those pages, more of them reach your signup page than before. Check it in the Clarity funnel.

• Common mistake: one general call to action on every page, such as "Join our newsletter". A reader who came for a problem clicks the box that names that problem.

6. Ask visitors who leave what stopped them, and watch 20 recordings a day

The quickest way to learn why visitors leave is to ask them, and to watch them. Add a one-question popup for visitors who are about to leave, and watch 20 recordings a day of visits that did not end in a signup.

Set up the popup. Tally makes it for free: unlimited forms and answers. Write one question, then publish the form, go to Share, and choose Popup. Under Open, pick "On exit intent" for laptops. Exit intent does not work on phones, so make a second copy with "After elapsed time" set to 30 seconds for phone visitors. Turn on "Show only once" and "Don't show after submit". Put it on your homepage, pricing page and signup page only.

Question: What stopped you from trying [your product] today?
Choices:
I'm not sure what it does
It's not for someone like me
The price
I don't want to make an account yet
I'm just looking
Something else: [short text box]

Watch 20 recordings a day. Open the Clarity funnel from step 2, find the step that loses the most people, and click its recordings icon. Watch 20 recordings, the ones that did not move on. For each, write down where the person stopped: the headline, the price, a button that did nothing, the form. Clarity also marks "dead clicks", where people click something that does nothing, and click errors, where a click breaks the page.

Read every popup answer the same day. If someone left an email address or replied, write back and ask one more question, as in customer interviews. Their words go into your first screen in step 4. You can also ask the same question where your buyers talk, such as Reddit, as long as you follow the place's rules.

• Tool: Tally (free) and Microsoft Clarity (free).
• Time: 30 minutes to set up the popup. Then about 40 minutes a day for 20 recordings, and 5 minutes for the answers.
• You will have: a notes sheet with 20 rows a day, and every popup answer.
• It worked if: after 100 popup answers or 300 buyer visits, one reason or one stopping point shows up more than any other.
• Common mistake: a popup on page load that covers the first screen. People who have not read the page yet cannot tell you what stopped them. The other mistake is watching only the visits that signed up.

7. Count signups per 100 visits every Sunday and change one thing

Every Sunday, count signups for every 100 visits from people who could buy, by page and by source. After 300 such visits, change the one part where most people stopped, and leave the rest alone.

Week | Source or page | Buyer visits | Reached signup page | Accounts made | Got in | Signups per 100 buyer visits | Top popup answer | What I changed

After 300 visits from people who could buy, use this rule:

• Under 2 signups per 100 buyer visits: rewrite the first screen with the next headline from step 4. If one source brings visits but no signups, stop sending that source.
• 2 to 5 per 100: fix the one place where most people stopped, from your recordings and popup answers.
• Over 5 per 100: keep the page, and send more people who fit.

Change one thing, then count the next 300 buyer visits. If you change the headline and the form in the same week, you will not know which one worked. An A/B test, where half the visitors see each version, needs far more traffic than this. Until then, change one thing at a time. Once a month, look at all of it in your monthly marketing review.

While you have fewer than 300 buyer visits a month, keep sending 100 personal messages a day. AI drafts each message from your template and one fact about the person; you add the one true line, which takes about a minute each. Spread them across email, LinkedIn and community messages, and send cold email from a warmed second domain, so no one platform carries all 100. Free ways to bring more of the right visitors are in getting traffic to a new website.

• Tool: Google Sheets, GA4 and Clarity.
• Time: 30 minutes each Sunday. While buyers are few, about 2 hours a day for the 100 messages.
• You will have: one row per source and per top page each week, and a log of every change with its before and after numbers.
• It worked if: every change in your log has a before and an after number, each on at least 300 buyer visits.
• Common mistake: changing five things after one bad day. A week with 40 visits will swing up and down for no reason. Wait for 300.

Your checklist to turn visits into signups

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Step 1 · Find out how many visitors could sign up

• Set up the internal traffic filter in Google Analytics 4.
• Count engaged visits on buyer pages for the last 30 days, by page and source.

Step 2 · Count where visitors stop

• Build a Clarity funnel and count the four numbers against their lines.

Step 3 · Sign up four times and cut the signup

• Sign up 4 times as a stranger on a phone and a laptop, and fix every break.
• Cut the signup to one step with no credit card.

Step 4 · Make the first screen clear

• Run a five-second test with 10 people who fit and rewrite the first screen.

Step 5 · Put a signup button on every page

• Add a signup box written for each page's problem to every page with 20 or more visits a month.

Step 6 · Ask visitors who leave and watch 20 visits

• Add the one-question popup to your homepage, pricing page and signup page.
• Every dayWatch 20 recordings of visits that did not sign up and read every popup answer.

Step 7 · Count signups per 100 visits and change one thing

• Every SundayFill in the Sunday signup sheet.
• After 300 buyer visitsChange the one part where most people stopped, using the rule.
• Every daySend 100 personal messages to people who fit while buyer visits are under 300 a month.

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