Companies will often see an opportunity to launch a SaaS but not have the development prowess to pull it off successfully. The more intelligent amongst them will acknowledge this reality and either recruit to bridge the skill gap or outsource to a web design agency with experience in SaaS development.
Here are the best practices for a successful SaaS development worth taking note of.
Hire a Design Agency with Previous SaaS Experience
If you’ve decided to hire out by outsourcing SaaS development to a web agency, then ensure they already have the necessary experience to hand.
While it’s a good idea to verify that they have designed other SaaS projects previously (and to see their work), the team who completed the work may have already departed long ago. Therefore, it pays to check who worked on which projects and how much of an impact they had. The less glossy or more specific staff can be about this, the more convincing it will be.
Web Design is Important for SaaS Development
When it comes to web design for SaaS, the front-end is just as vital as the back-end in all its predictable complexity.
Value Propositions
The value proposition needs to be above-the-fold. Avoid hiding it lower down on a mobile or tablet device where it may get lost in a sea of words.
Identify the key selling points for the SaaS and find a way to market that succinctly through the design.
Show Product Pictures
Visitors who don’t know much, if anything, about your service need to get up to speed quickly.
Diagrams, animations, and pictures are the best way to accomplish this. Figure out what medium explains the service clearly.
Also, factor in that people do learn and process information in different ways, so avoid sticking to one method alone.
A Clear Call-to-Action
When visitors don’t know what they’re being asked to do, they’re left to their own devices. That’s not always a good outcome for the owners of the SaaS.
Be clear about the exact action that you want visitors to take and design the SaaS’s GUI to direct eyeballs where they need to go.
Create Several SaaS Models
Create more than one SaaS model for different phases of development.
Don’t have the SaaS unable to launch until it has all 50 planned features fully designed, implemented, and tested for software bugs.
Instead, create the SaaS in several phases to avoid getting stuck in development and risking never exiting it. Agree what each phase should entail and then avoid scope creep along the way by pointing out its risks and avoiding it at all costs.
Don’t Forget the Testing Phase
Testing is paramount to a SaaS to avoid a costly PR nightmare should it fail at the first hurdle once it’s launched.
You’re simply better to launch with fewer features but ones that are thoroughly tested through both an alpha and a beta phase than going big but failing to test properly. Include likely customers in the testing process to ensure it delivers a real-world experience.
When following SaaS best practices, it avoids making key mistakes that can seriously set back a new SaaS that would otherwise have been successful. The chance to have a successful launch only happens once – be properly prepared for it.
