SaaS App Design: A Guide for Founders

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Getting started

Building a digital product is an ongoing process with lots of moving parts. This article focuses on the importance of product design in SaaS app design.

Gone are the days of building minimum viable products (MVPs). People expect more out of their software. We will cover the importance of design, methods for building, and validating product development. All so you can deliver products that people enjoy using, that achieve their goals.

Why do SaaS companies need great design?

Digital products have three parts: the business, technology, and user interface. Business covers why you're building things (product management). Technology covers the code, databases, services, and servers that deliver product to users (product development). User interfaces connect users with tech, driving business goals (product design).

Product design combines user experience, product management, and visual design for a full-stack user experience. Focus on identifying target users, find opportunities to simplify customer workflows.

Think back to the last time an application left you frustrated. Did the app freeze, confuse you, stop working, etc. Each of these factors impact how we perceive product experiences.

The best SaaS apps provide user-friendly experiences to their customers. Enabling users to hit their goals confidently. First impressions matter, build SaaS apps with a clear and connected user journey.

How does user experience (UX) impact software design?

Good software should feel approachable, and provide consistent customer value. Balancing the product experience to attract and keep users.

UX & UI are at the heart of successful SaaS products, unlocking:

• Improved product engagement and user satisfaction

• Better first-time user onboarding experiences

• Increase revenue with optimized conversion funnels

• Setting apps apart from the rest of the market

Learn more in our article SaaS App Design Basics: How to Build Digital Product UX

How to design successful SaaS Apps?

As a founder moving fast to achieve results may seem vital. Remember to consider the long-term, how will processes scale over time. You will need processes to consistently deliver great experiences as team's scale. Consider creating a framework that addresses the following key points:

• User Research: Discover user needs, goals and pain points. Understand your competition and how your product is unique. Conduct surveys, interviews, and usability testing to gain insights to inform your design decisions. Learn more about user research for minimum viable products.

• Information architecture: Consider how you present data in your applications. Group your app's content in a logical, intuitive manner. Use card-sorting, wireframes, and interactive prototypes to validate your app's structure. Be careful to test assumptions and learn from your customers to get the best results.

• Interaction Design: Use visual cues for interactive elements and animations tied to user actions. Focus on user-friendly transitions that help users complete their desired goals. Implement design patterns that users understand and are familiar with.

• Visual Design: Present branded user interfaces that enhance your user experience. Align on visual design patterns that your audience is familiar with. Create content that your users understand and supplement your visuals with great content design.

A definition of success is vital for the people building products. Understanding why each step is important, and when they've completed each one. This may shift over time, so I'd recommend close monitoring at first.

Create processes to push things forward and keep stakeholder's informed. Teams should know how to succeed at their projects. Through repetition teams find ways to customize processes to work best for their people. Remember the goal is building great software, not following processes.

How to build the right features

Ensure the team is building the right products or features. Validate design decisions with users from the target audience. Here are three high-level ways to measure the impact of a SaaS app design.

• Usability testing: Have participants complete tasks with a product or prototype and researchers observe and gather feedback. Consider using third-party tools to conduct remote tests. Usability testing is valuable at any stage of the product cycle.

• A/B Testing: Create user experience variations to compare which performs better. Implement feature flags with third party tools. Keep variants to a minimum to measure the impact of a specific design choice.

• Analytics: Measure the engagement and success rate of a given feature. Determine what improvements will benefit your product. Keep a close eye on product usage data for insights with your active user base.

These methods work well together. Consider usability testing with high-fidelity prototypes before engineering effort. Determine what changes to make, and whether to test again or move to development.

Roll out A/B testing when you want to optimize/test a user experience. Keep an eye on product usage data to measure feature health at every stage.

How to efficiently manage your SaaS App Design Process

Save time and complete tasks by aligning team members. Use these principles to build teamwork, make progress, strategize, and deliver great experiences.

How to improve collaboration between designers and software engineers

Include developers and UX designers each step of the process. Make it easier to get from design to your final product by aligning both teams. Set your team up to understand tradeoffs and align on ideal outcomes. Coding takes time, reduce risks by letting devs be a part of the process.

Make sure product teams know roles and requirements. Foster teamwork with in-person or virtual real-time syncs. To innovate, create space for product teams to brainstorm together. We recommend a block of time dedicated to ideating on opportunities.

Use collaborative tools like Figma & Figjam to flesh out concepts. Provide a culture of gathering feedback early and often. Document what ideas you are pursuing and why, and make it easy to find past concepts for reference.

How to set up a design process that works

Create space for design focusing on each part of your user experience. Think about creating two tracks for your UX team. Discover and Delivery phases improve your team efficiency and product quality.

Discovery tracks are all about research. Conduct user research to uncover real-world feedback from your customers. Interview focus groups to uncover opportunities that may not be on your team's radar. Consider reviewing social media to learn more about user sentiment.

Use the discovery track to define, test, and validate ideas that provide user value. These solutions result in a backlog that move to the delivery track. The delivery track is all about shipping these ideas as actual products. In other words first determine what to build, then flesh out how to build it.

How to find the balance between business goals and user needs

Align your business goals with your user needs. If your team uses Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), consider using the GIST framework in place of a roadmap. Focus on delivering core functionality asap, and maturing additional features over time.

Identify what part of the customer journey will help you hit your business goals. Make sure your customers benefit from product updates, so you can foster client relationships. Think about projects along two axes, value and effort. Identify low effort projects that provide value to you and your community.

How to deliver consistent user experiences

Set design guidelines to maintain consistency across your app experience. Think about making things as simple as possible for your customer base. A product design system defines your overall user experience, and maps UI components to coded snippets.

Think of ways to remove repetitive decisions and coding to ship products faster. Provide interface designers with the pieces developers have built out in your programming language of choice. Consistency benefits your usability and speed to market.

How to ship quality SaaS user experiences

Create time in your product pipeline for testing. QA testing may feel time-consuming, delivering broken features could cost more. Consider creating a production and testing version of your application. Have both designers and developers check flows for any issues.

UX designers can look at their design requirements for any issues. From UI bugs to broken interactions. Developers can check for performance, workflows, and data errors. Have feature contributors test first.

Next, consider having other teammates use new features before shipping. Think about talking to other departments for feedback that may strengthen your experience. Not all feedback is vital, make changes that effect the outcomes of your feature.

Wrapping up

User experience is vital for you SaaS application's success. Delivering software-as-a-service requires meeting user needs. Create user-centric apps to increase adoption and customer satisfaction. Balance the needs of the business, technical capabilities of your team, and the voice of your users.

Design positive user experiences to improve user engagement. Deliver delightful customer experiences to foster customer loyalty. Validate your design decisions with your community to build the right UI/UX design.

Build a process that makes it easier to build better products. Enjoy the product development experience and improve your customer's lives. Remember, investing in great design is investing in how people perceive your product & brand. Give your company the attention it deserves.