How Should a SaaS Test Its Positioning Before a Redesign?

Should you test positioning before you redesign your SaaS website?

Yes. A redesign locks a message into pages, copy, and design for a year or more, so test the message first. Run it through sales calls, outbound first lines, small paid tests, and customer interviews. If buyers repeat it back and ask better questions, it is ready to build a site around.

Many SaaS redesigns start backwards. The team agrees the site looks dated, hires a designer, and then argues about the headline in week three. The headline is the positioning, and the positioning was never tested. The new site ends up beautiful and vague, which is the old site with better spacing.

I build websites for a living, so this is not an argument against redesigns. It is an argument for doing the cheap part first. The words on the page carry most of the weight. Testing them takes weeks and costs little. Building pages around the wrong words costs far more and teaches less.

What exactly are you testing when you test positioning?

You are testing whether a specific buyer understands what you are, why you beat their current alternative, and why now. That breaks into four parts: the target customer, the alternative they use today, the value you add over it, and the category you claim. Each part can be tested on its own.

April Dunford's book Obviously Awesome popularized starting from the competitive alternative, and it is the most useful starting point I know. Buyers judge you against what they do today, which is often a spreadsheet, an agency, or a tool they already pay for. If your message ignores that alternative, buyers have to do the comparison themselves, and most will not.

So write the positioning down as four short statements before testing anything. Who it is for. What they use now. What you do better, with proof. What you call yourself. If any statement takes more than one sentence, it is not ready to test, because you cannot tell which part failed.

How can sales calls test positioning for free?

Use the first two minutes of every discovery call as a test. State the positioning in one or two sentences, then stop and listen. Note whether the buyer nods and moves on, asks a sharp follow-up, or asks what you actually do. Ten calls usually show a clear pattern.

The best signal is a buyer repeating your words back in their own context. When a prospect says something like so this replaces the weekly export my team does by hand, your message landed. When they say so it is like a CRM, the category claim failed, and you just learned which part to fix.

Record what you hear in a simple sheet: date, buyer type, exact reaction, follow-up question. If you use Gong or a similar call recorder, search transcripts for the moments right after your positioning line. The goal is not a score. It is a list of the words buyers use, which is the raw material for your homepage.

Can outbound email show which message works?

Yes, if you change only the message and keep everything else steady. Send two versions of the first line to similar accounts from the same list, same sender, same timing. Reply rate and the tone of replies show which framing earns attention. Small volumes give direction, not proof, so look for large gaps.

This works because cold outbound has no brand halo. A stranger reads your first line with zero context, which is close to how a new visitor reads your hero section. If version A gets polite curiosity and version B gets silence, that tells you something your current customers never could.

Keep the tests honest. Build both lists in Apollo or Clay with identical filters and split them randomly. Do not change the subject line, the offer, or the sending domain between versions. And protect your domain reputation. Testing positioning is not worth burning the domain your sales team depends on.

Are paid ads a good way to test a headline?

They can be, for headlines aimed at a clear audience you can target. Run two or three ad variants with the same image and audience, each carrying a different positioning line, to a simple landing page. Compare click-through and, more importantly, what the people who click do next. Clicks alone reward curiosity, not fit.

LinkedIn is a common choice for B2B message tests because the audience is already professional. The spend can stay small, since you are reading direction, not optimizing a campaign. Check each vendor's own documentation for current targeting options and minimum budgets before you plan the test.

The trap is the clever headline. A provocative line often wins clicks and loses buyers. Watch the follow-through: time on the landing page, demo requests, and the quality of leads in your CRM. A headline that brings fewer, better visitors is the one to build a site around.

What role do customer interviews play?

Interviews tell you why the message works, not just whether it does. Talk to five to eight recent customers and ask what they were using before, what made them look, and how they would describe you to a peer. Their words often beat anything a team writes in a workshop.

Ask about the moment before they bought. What broke? Who complained? What did they try first? Those answers reveal the real alternative and the real trigger, which are the two parts of positioning teams most often get wrong. A founder thinks they replace a competitor. The customer says they replaced a spreadsheet and an intern.

Also talk to one or two lost deals. Win-loss conversations are uncomfortable and incredibly useful. A buyer who chose a rival will often tell you, plainly, what your message failed to make clear. That is cheaper to hear now than after a redesign goes live.

What counts as a passing result?

A positioning passes when three signals agree: buyers on calls repeat it without confusion, one outbound or ad variant clearly beats the others, and customers describe the product in similar words. If two signals agree and one does not, adjust the weak part and test again. If none agree, rewrite before designing.

Do not wait for statistical certainty. Small B2B teams rarely have the volume for it, and chasing it delays the redesign for months. What you want is converging evidence from different sources. When sales, outbound, and customers point the same way, you have enough to build on.

Write the result down as a one-page positioning brief before the designer starts. It should hold the four statements, the exact buyer phrases you collected, and the proof points that back each claim. I go deeper on making that document usable in how to write a positioning statement sales will use.

How does tested positioning change the redesign itself?

It turns the redesign into a build, not a debate. The hero section uses the winning line. The sections below answer the follow-up questions buyers actually asked. Comparison content addresses the real alternative. Proof sits next to the claims it supports. Design then makes a tested message easy to read.

It also changes the brief you give a designer or a Webflow developer. Instead of a mood board and a list of pages, you hand over the message hierarchy: what a visitor must understand first, second, and third. That brief shortens the project and cuts revision rounds, because the hard choices were made with evidence.

If you are not sure whether your current message is the problem, start with the diagnosis. My piece on how you know your positioning is wrong lists the symptoms that usually show up in sales calls and pipeline long before anyone blames the website.

What should you do next?

Write your positioning as four one-sentence statements this week. Use them in your next ten discovery calls, run a two-variant outbound test, and book five customer interviews. Collect the exact words buyers use. If the signals agree, brief the redesign around them. If they do not, rewrite before you design anything.

This sequence costs a few weeks and very little money. It also gives you something a redesign alone never will: confidence that the new site says the right thing to the right buyer. The design work becomes faster, cheaper, and far easier to judge once it is done.

I build websites and the automations behind them for lead generation, and I think the strongest projects start with tested positioning. If you want help running these tests or turning the results into a site that converts, reach out. Let's chat.