Seven SaaS UI mistakes non-designers make and how to fix them

Executive overview

Poor visual design on a SaaS landing page or app can lose customers before they understand what you've built. Most non-designer founders repeat the same small set of mistakes that are easy to fix without hiring a designer.

Tracy Osborn, with two decades of design experience and hundreds of SaaS site reviews, walks through seven concrete fixes — from typography to design consistency.

Fixing contrast, text size, line length, white space, headlines, copy density, and app-to-landing-page consistency can dramatically lift conversions with zero design budget.

Typography: contrast, size, and line length

• Light gray text looks clean but fails contrast thresholds — use a tool like WebAIM to check.
• Minimum body text size: 14px; lean larger for a modern feel (Savvycal is a good benchmark).
• Long lines that span the full page width kill readability — add horizontal padding to shorten them.
• Short line lengths make sub-headlines scannable; users will skip anything that requires head-tracking to read.

White space

• White space is any empty area on the page — not the color white.
• More space around a headline draws the eye directly to it and removes competing elements.
• Add spacing between columns, sections, and content blocks to reduce visual noise.
• Dense layouts feel dated and untrustworthy; modern consumers associate generous spacing with credibility.
• A diagonal color line (as used by Scraping Bee) can guide the eye downward without cramming content together.

Headlines and copy

• A headline that names what the product is ("a data collection service") is not compelling — rewrite to say what it does for the customer.
• Focus on outcome or benefit, not category label.
• Keep paragraphs to two or three sentences maximum; shorter is always better.
• Break up dense text blocks and add strategic bolding so skimmers catch key points.
• Apply the same copy discipline to every page, including the About page.

Design consistency between landing page and app

• Founders often polish the landing page but leave the app on a generic template.
• When the app looks nothing like the homepage, users feel disoriented — as if they've landed on a different product.
• Carry the same fonts, colors, spacing style, and line treatment into the app's customer-facing UI.
• Matching design language is a simple template tweak, not a full redesign.