How can you prove to prospects visiting your website that your product is great as you say it is, and will solve their problems? Customer testimonials are not enough - everyone has rave reviews. Of course there can be value in awards, certifications, customer stats, industry reports, but let's talk about ROI calculators.
Here are 2 inspiring examples from Top Hat (edtech) and Lumos (SaaS) that I ran across and want to share.
ROI calculators showing cost savings, revenue gains, productivity gains, etc., are a play that I love. If your existing customers are finding a lot of value and sticking around, you should have the data you need to give prospects an ROI calculator quantifying the tangible benefits they should expect from you.
Top Hat provides higher ed institutions with dynamic courseware that increases student engagement and can lead to decreased DFW (the percentage of students who earn a D, F, or withdraw from the course) and drop out rates.
You can edit two fields in their calculator to generate a savings breakdown:
I'm a little confused by "Savings for your institution," as the student retention number is based on tuition continuing - so costs aren't going down, revenue would be going up! Nevertheless the numbers are compelling.
Below that you'll find supporting information showcasing actual customer data, for each section:
At the very bottom, they explain how they calculated savings and link to sources for those who want to scrutinize further. Also, there are no gated forms to access any info, just a clear CTA near the bottom:
I can see this calculator appealing to higher ed leaders, looking to improve student and university outcomes. You might not be interested in EVERY number, you may not even believe you'd achieve every number? But there will be 1 or 2 numbers that resonate, and the customer examples providing quite a bit of detail on exactly what was measured, establishes Top Hat as trustworthy.
Lumos is a very cool enterprise access management platform for IT departments to help them cut wasted software spend, automate access reviews and protect admin accounts. Imagine being able to provision, track and manage all your known software licenses for Jira, Asana, Salesforce, Zoom, Google, Tableau (and the 100s of other products in use) in one place.
The "Lumos Impact Calculator" starts off like this, pre-populated with savings across 5 areas, with 2 editable fields:
The 5 savings numbers in the pie chart are grouped into 2 categories, color coded orange and pink, and you can further interact with the calculator by clicking the 'x' next to savings areas to remove them from the pie chart/calculations.
There are two levels of detail below for each one, with further opportunities to change numbers or customize results:
Lumos takes the proof even further, by mapping out savings by month. What a great way to showcase a quick, 1-month onboarding process and plant the idea that you could start saving a lot in a few weeks! I'm not a CTO and I want this product now.
You'll also find, at the bottom of the page, a secondary CTA to download a PDF version of the report! Without any gated form. Nice.