As the Digital Industry is going more and more towards companies and startups offering SaaS (Software as a Service), we can see SaaS UI/UX design becoming a trending word around the UI/UX design communities and professionals. But what do we mean when we say SaaS UI/UX Design? it simply means creating a user experience and user interface for the product hosted on the Internet and delivering that experience to the customers on the Internet.
SaaS UI/UX Design
What is SaaS Product Design?
SaaS is an acronym for “Software as a Service” and is a software application that is hosted on the Internet and provided to customers over the Internet mostly on a subscription basis. Therefore we can say SaaS product design, or Software as a Service product design means creating a user experience and user interface for the product hosted on the Internet and delivering that experience to the customers on the Internet. In simpler terms, SaaS product design can be understood as designing the UI/UX for a SaaS product.
5 Key characteristics of SaaS products:
- Accessibility
- Subscription-based model
- Automatic updates
- Scalability as a feature
- Multi-tenancy
SaaS UI/UX Design Process
Design process varies for designer to designer and there is not hard and pass rule for the prefect SaaS UI/UX design process. But following these 6 steps for your design process will surely give you exceptional results in your SaaS UI/UX design:
Step 1: Sketch the design roughly
Sketching is the first step for a great SaaS UI/UX Design. It is the quickest, low cost and lowest commitment way to start the design and get a high level overview of the design.
Step 2: Wireframing
Wireframe is basically the interface without the visual design principles applied. Wireframe clearly illustrates how the product functions and the core elements of its design. Create a wireframe for your design using whatever tool you are good at.
Step 3: Design Components
By designing component we mean to design things like symbols (buttons and badges), element states (button hover states) or clicked states components (tables lists cards and forms) and shows actual texts and images.
Step 4: Designing the User flow
In this step we will take the wireframes and put them together with arrows into wire flows. For that we can use flow charts and conditional statements. The purpose is to show navigation routes to and to visualize entry, exit and decision points for the user.
Step 5: Designing the prototype
Now we will create the final design and design things exactly as they will appear in the final product. we will add brand aesthetics and thematic elements as per the requirement of the client or the business itself. We will take the final approval from stakeholders and finish up the design from our side.
Step 6: Take feedback and iterate
Wait, your job is not over even after completing the design, for the best SaaS designs you must take continuous feedback from your customers and implement their feedback accordingly.
Importance of SaaS UI/UX Design
As we already discussed in the previous section, UI/UX plays a major part in the success of a SaaS Product. The role of UI/UX can be summed-up in the following points:
- Branding of the SaaS product.
- Communicating the unique selling proposition.
- Building a brand around the SaaS product.
- Increasing the Lifetime Value of individual customers.
- Getting more users and better retention.
- Better interface and experience of the SaaS product.
- Ease of navigation though the product.
- Making data driven decisions.
- Sharing your mission and vision of the SaaS product.
- Converting first time users to loyal customers.
- Catching the users eye.
- Creating an environment of innovation around the SaaS Product.
- Better and more informed decisions on features and functionality of the product.
- Data driven business decisions.
Why SaaS UI/UX Design
After answering the question what is SaaS UI/UX Design, the question arises why do we need SaaS UI/UX Design in the first place. Here are a few important points on the need of SaaS UI/UX Design:
- Data-Driven decision making: The first step of UI/UX is to research about the user need and present it to the business team. Researching about the customers gives valuable insights about the product/service and what things should be improved.
- User retention through SaaS UI/UX design: Retaining the user to spend more time on your SaaS product is completely independent of how good the codebase is. Key to User retention is a good user interface coupled with great user experience.
- Improving the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer: A good user experience might not improve the number of users visiting to use your SaaS product but will surely improve the conversion rate of these visitors coming again and again.
- Effectively Communication and Brand Building: The visual elements along with the copywriting will take the majority part of your communication for the SaaS product and also the brand. Here good copywriting along with great UI can create a lasting impression in the mind of the user.
- Improving UI/UX for scalability: The more your SaaS product reaches the masses, it has to be scaled to that magnitude. And upon scaling a buggy UI starts breaking, while a well-designed SaaS product can handle new functionalities been added and scaling up and down of the application.
- Removing Glitches and bugs that might hinder user’s trust: Even a single bug in the interface can break the users fragile trust and they might end up not using your SaaS product, irrespective of how good the product is.
- Saves resources in longer run: A SaaS product might not survive or thrive without a good UI/UX design. Investing in UI/UX design is longer term, so instead of getting the UI changed every time a new feature is added, its better to come up with a good UI/UX design.
Tips for SaaS UI/UX Design
- Prioritize user-centricity in order to enhance UI/UX.
- Design should be consistent.
- UI must be simple and intuitive.
- Highlight your USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
- Use Illustrations and visual elements rather than plain text.
- Create responsive design keeping in mind smaller screen devices.
- Focus on accessibility for all users.
- Make sure to conduct A/B testing for continuous improvement.
- Take Feedback and iterate on that feedback.
Best practices for SaaS UI/UX design
- Hierarchy and Organization: When building UI/UX design for a SaaS company/product, one thing that we must take care of is the fact that every SaaS product has a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Provide a clear hierarchy for the Unique Selling Proposition and the message you want to communicate with the user coming to the product app or website.
- Consistent website/app and product experience: It is often seen that the user experience of the website/app and the SaaS product defers from one another. It might depend upon the stage of the company/startup or the market but the user should not find the product to be completely different from the branding website.
- User feedback: Taking feedback from the users can provide valuable insights about the product/service and what things should be improved. It is a must part of process of UX design of a SaaS product.
- No replacement of a good SaaS product: Even after the best UI/UX design and branding as well as marketing, if the SaaS product is not good enough, users might come once but will not repeat. Therefore, you should ensure a good SaaS product along with good UI/UX of the product and the website.
Practices to avoid for a better SaaS UI/UX
- Don’t just test users, observe them: You can understand a user better by observing a user on what they are doing by file following them in their environment, instead of just giving them a test or a prompt that leads them to a result.
- Not Customizing: Often we forget the fact that every user group or team design can have different requirement and can need a different customization based on their workflow. We have to make sure to balance between streamlining the end to end flow and customization required for the user or as requested by the design team.
- Never underestimate the user’s intellect: Never consider your user to be dumb and waste energy in super simplifying your SaaS product keeping in mind that the user is stupid. Because they are not, your users mostly will be very professional.
Conclusion
After looking at soo many points regarding what SaaS UI/UX Design is, what is the importance of SaaS UI/UX Design and why is it necessary, we should remember that all these points are not just add on/advantages of any SaaS based startup or business. These are truly game changing both in positive and negative sense) for any startup or corporate. Make sure that irrespective of being a small startup or a established company, anyone can make mistakes around the UI/UX design by taking it lightly. But actually UI/UX design is crucial for any digital product and specially for SaaS products.