Content for software and SaaS companies that buyers can check

A software buyer rarely starts on your homepage. They start with a broken workflow, a colleague's shortlist, or a question typed into an assistant: which tools handle this process, which ones connect to what we already run, which ones a team our size can roll out this quarter. By the time someone fills in the demo form, much of the evaluation has happened in places you never saw.

Many SaaS sites are built for the second half of that process: a feature grid, a row of logos, and a top pricing tier that says "contact sales." This page walks through what software buyers ask before they reach out, the federal rules that touch comparison pages, AI claims, and review programs, what a software site needs to carry, how our four steps run for a product company, and the lines we hold.

What software buyers ask before they book a demo

The questions split by role, and each role can now ask an assistant before it asks you. The person who found the product asks whether it solves the workflow. The administrator asks about provisioning, single sign-on, and permissions. The finance approver asks how the bill changes as headcount grows. The security reviewer wants documentation before anyone signs.

• Does it integrate with the tools we already pay for, and in which direction does data move?
• How long does implementation take for a team like ours, and what do we have to do ourselves?
• What happens to our existing data during migration, and what happens to it if we cancel?
• How is pricing calculated: per seat, per usage, or per feature tier, and what triggers the next tier?
• How does it compare with the two or three alternatives already on our list?
• Who is this product not built for?

Many product sites answer those with a checkmark. A checkmark tells a buyer that a capability exists; it says nothing about how it behaves in their setup, what it asks of their team, or where it stops. A feature list is not an answer. The pages that carry an evaluation are the ones that state conditions: the integration page that says how often records sync and which fields are excluded, the pricing page that shows what happens at the next tier, the migration page that is honest about what does not come across.

The rules that shape software marketing content

Software marketing sits under the same federal advertising law as any other product, and three areas come up often in content work. The first is comparison. The Federal Trade Commission's policy statement on comparative advertising says the agency "encourages the naming of, or reference to competitors, but requires clarity," and it treats truthful, non-deceptive comparison as useful information for buyers. The same statement says comparative claims are judged by whether they have a tendency or capacity to deceive, the same test applied to any other claim. A fair, sourced comparison page is possible; a careless one is a liability.

The second is artificial intelligence. When the FTC announced a set of enforcement actions in September 2024, its then chair said "there is no AI exemption from the laws on the books." A product page that says a feature uses AI, or that AI makes the product faster or more accurate, is a claim like any other and needs evidence behind it. Before a launch page goes live, a useful exercise is to ask the marketing lead, "If a competitor's attorney read this page tomorrow, which sentence would we have to defend, and where is the evidence for it?" and then fix whatever the answer turns up.

The third is reviews. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, prohibits buying reviews conditioned on a particular sentiment, requires insider relationships to be disclosed in reviews and testimonials, and bars a business from misrepresenting that a website or entity it controls provides independent reviews. That last provision matters to any vendor tempted to run a "best tools" site that puts its own product first. Where a customer or partner receives something of value for an endorsement, the FTC's Endorsement Guides at 16 CFR Part 255 call for the connection to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously when the audience would not expect it. None of this is legal advice; your counsel decides how these rules apply to your pages.

What a software site needs to carry

Google's documentation for AI Overviews and AI Mode states that there are no additional requirements to appear in those features, and that to be shown as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. The same page points site owners toward "helpful, reliable, people-first content." Our working hypothesis, consistent with that guidance, is that specific, self-contained passages give an assistant something accurate to summarize, while vague category copy gives it little to work with.

For a software company, that usually means pages like these:

• One page per integration buyers ask about by name, stating what syncs, how often, and the limits.
• Use case pages written for a role or a team, not for a keyword.
• Comparison and alternative pages that name the competitor, date every claim, and point to the public source behind it.
• A pricing explanation of how the bill is calculated, even when the final number needs a quote.
• An implementation page listing rollout steps and who owns each.
• A security overview that says which documents are available on request.
• A plain statement of who the product is not for.

Release notes and help articles often hold better answers than the marketing site, and they belong connected to the pages buyers read. For a method to find which evaluation questions your pages skip, see How to Find the Buyer Questions Missing From Your Website.

How the four steps run for a software company

1. Authority Asset. We gather product documentation, help center articles, approved answers from past security questionnaires, release notes, win and loss notes, and recorded explanations from your solutions engineers where you have permission to share them. Your solutions engineers already explain integration limits on every technical call, so the writer should not have to guess at those limits or invent them.
2. Hudson Twenty-One. We record how your company actually talks about the product: how technical it gets, which terms it uses for its own objects, and how it handles a pricing objection in writing.
3. Market Intelligence. We map the questions each buying role asks, the category terms buyers use, and the evaluation questions your pages and your competitors' pages leave open.
4. AEO Creation. We write answer-first pages that open with the direct answer and attach the conditions. For a fictional scheduling platform built for field service teams, that might mean an integration page for its accounting connector, a comparison page with a dated source line under every claim, and a rollout page organized by team size.

Software changes faster than most websites, so our quarterly content system revisits priorities before each quarter, which gives a retired feature a scheduled chance to come off an old page.

What we will not do

• We will not invent customer results, metrics, logos, or quotes, and we will not publish a customer figure the customer has not approved.
• We will not build doorway pages: no stacks of near-identical "alternative to" or "software for [industry]" pages that swap one word and add nothing.
• We will not write a comparison claim we cannot trace to your evidence or to the competitor's own public documentation, and every such claim carries a date.
• We will not promise that any assistant will mention your product.
• We will not sign off on legal, security, or privacy statements. Comparative claims, AI claims, and security language go to your counsel and your security team before they publish.

Hudson South takes one business per line of work in each market, which means we are not also writing the competing version of your comparison page.