How To Create An MVP To Launch Your SaaS Application Easily

Quick Summary: Any new application can fail due to misinterpreted customer demands or coding issues. As SaaS presents one of the best market opportunities to launch an application, businesses launch a minimum viable product with vital features before releasing the application on a large scale. This enables them to record the feedback, comprehend the market thoroughly, and gain insights to improve the overall application.

Due to increasing digitalization, SaaS development has rapidly emerged as a promising market. Fortune Business Heights predicts that by 2028, the SaaS market will be worth USD 716.52 billion! Making your product stand out in such a competitive industry may prove challenging. Making your product stand out in such a competitive industry may prove challenging, and launching a minimum viable product first can come to the rescue.

With SaaS MVP development, vendors focus on releasing a tester product-in this case, an application with core functionality- so that researchers and analysts may examine how well the features in the application perform.

This blog examines the specific benefits MVPs could provide SaaS products and the considerations you should make when developing a minimum viable product.

Why Build an MVP?

Even though every company performs thorough market research before developing a product, the product may still fail in the market. Thus, before investing a large capital in it, business owners can use the SaaS MVP to verify and validate their application or software with a sizable customer base. 

It helps to provide insight into the mind of end users to comprehend the preferences and grievances of the target audience to interrelate and innovate the final product. 

Often, MVP can also demonstrate business potential. If the consumers love the MVP version of the software, it will secure support from stakeholders and investors. 

The three key advantages of an MVP can be summarized as follows:

1) Gets feedback to improve the application and make it distinctive in this lucrative market

2) To gain confidence from investors and stakeholders

3) Encourage the target market to subscribe by endorsing and exhibiting the product.

The Step-by-step guide to planning a minimum viable product:

Wondering how to build MVP? We got you covered!

To understand the target audience’s needs and to design a product that fits the market, we have listed a detailed guide to assist your journey in MVP software development. 

Identify and Understand Your Business and Market Needs

The importance of market research in MVP can not be understated.  Launching an app similar to the already available one will not be a profitable venture; hence, it is crucial to evaluate the market and gather intel. 

Furthermore, it is also important to study the competitors and keep updated with the current trends and technology to always be ahead in the game.

Long-Term Goals

Once you have tapped into the market’s needs, you need to ask yourself these questions that determine your long-term goals. Up to 95% of start-up businesses fail due to their lack of planning. You can avoid being by answering a few questions before venturing into product development.

1. What am I trying to achieve with this app
2. What is the future of this application five to ten years from now
3. What makes my software/application unique

Success Criteria

The next step in the journey is to understand the success criteria of the application. How do you plan to determine that the application is a success? These criteria must align with your company goals. 

Are you looking for loyal customers and subscribers? Or Do you think the overall revenue generated is a measure of success? Or is completing the app on schedule and within budget your definition of success?

Map Out User Journey

The success of the application is directly proportional to user satisfaction. If the app is not user-friendly, chances are that it will not be used, with the risk of you losing potential customers and investors. 

Hence, it is critical to consider focusing on user journeys and experiences to include functions that appeal to them. A start-to-end user journey should be carefully crafted to ensure a smooth flow.

Identify the User

Before designing the workflow, understand who will be the target audience. Can you fit them into one category? One can group people according to occupation, gender, age, etc.

For example, consider a tool that allows you to find the closest doctors and schedule appointments with them. Every gender and profession will use such an app. Hence, your target audience is more than one category.

Identify the Actions

While developing a SaaS MVP, It is anticipated that the actions or jobs that the user may choose. If the application caters to multiple categories, different categories will expect the application to perform distinct actions. 

Continuing the previous example, if the number of searches and bookings for doctors in Area A is more and Area B is less, you can work on adding more doctors for Area A to meet  the demand.

Identify the Story Endings

Not every user will book an appointment; likewise, the ending may vary for every user. Some users might browse to look for doctors, while others might ask a query using the app.

Create a pain and gain Map

It is critical to construct a pain and gain map to grasp the issues experienced by the consumer and the solution offered by MVP. Customers’ challenges are represented by pain, and the feature that helps to solve them is represented by gain.

The map enables you to identify the core problem users are experiencing, for example, if they struggle to schedule an appointment with a specific doctor because they cannot locate the available times. In this example, customer satisfaction will increase if the application makes appointment scheduling simpler by giving users access to all available time slots.

Decide What Features To Build

Since an MVP is created by collating a few features, not everything the customer wants should be on your priority list. The developer should balance what the user requires with what the user wants to produce a feasible MVP for SaaS.

Benefits of SaaS MVP Development:

SaaS MVP development gives businesses a safe and secure route to slowly launch their product in a market without incurring a major financial loss. 

Recognize the Feasibility of an Idea

Even if you think your application is perfect for the market, testing your idea on an open platform is necessary. It gives you an insight into whether your idea is sustainable and compatible enough to gain new customers. 

Save Significant Resources

A complete SaaS software requires a team of professionals to build software with multiple features that appeal to the customer. Hence, it requires a generous budget, time, and resources.

However, there is always a risk of the end product not being appreciated in the market. Since MVP is a small-scale version of the software with only key functionality, it requires less time and money and can help you understand the future of the software.

Collect Rapid Customer Feedback

MVPs can allow users to use and evaluate an application in real time. The developers can ask the customer to rate the application and give feedback. Collecting such data will result in early bug fixes and can help remove additional features that are not necessary for the final version of the product.

Building an Efficient SaaS MVP Development

MVP can be considered as the prototype of the actual application. The real-time user feedback can assist in further improving the MVP. It might also help to research the rapidly expanding SaaS market to launch a solution that answers an unanswered pain point in the market.

Define the Market Trends and Customer Requirements

You can push the software into the development zone if the customer is satisfied with the MVP. Since the product is already tested in the market, there is a massive possibility that with improved features and functionality, it will be a success. 

SaaS MVP Development Cost:

For any startup or an established firm, the developer must estimate the cost of developing an MVP. Everyone thinks their product is the best and can change the market dynamics. However, you should paint a realistic picture and an affordable budget for the MVP model.

It might be challenging to calculate the cost of an MVP because there are so many variables involved in the prototype-building process. For example, the kind of team selected to develop the application, the business goals, the number of features they plan to establish, etc.

However, you must select a developer with experience in preliminary app development who can cater to your needs.

Conclusion:

If you are new to the concept of SaaS MVP, it may intimidate you with all the specifics and technicalities one must monitor before launching it in the market. So, make sure to create products and test your audience to launch successfully in the market. Here at Creole Studios, we will assist you in converting your imaginative product into a reality.

With our rich talent pool of SaaS application development services, we can help you design stunning MVPs to align with your business model at an affordable cost. Get in touch with Creole Studios to discuss your MVPs features.

[ Original Source: How to create an MVP to launch your SaaS application easily? ]

Six Things to Consider While Developing a SaaS Application

Quick Summary: SaaS has many benefits and companies need to think about moving to them. With SaaS, users can easily access cloud-based applications even if they aren’t locally installed, creating a whole new world of possibilities. In this blog, we offer six key considerations for designing and developing a successful SaaS application.

There has been a rapid growth in the SaaS application development industry, which has attracted businesses from many different industries. Thus, more and more organizations are focusing on the development of SaaS applications and moving to the cloud.

Businesses prefer SaaS-based architectures because they offer robust and scalable applications in the cloud for a reduced cost based on pay-per-use. In addition to providing greater business value, SaaS is fundamentally faster.

The SaaS Market grows by 12%  per year, thus developing SaaS applications has become a very lucrative business. It has increased from $31.5 billion to an estimated $171.9 billion since 2015. Since the world is moving toward automation and user-friendly interfaces, these figures will only increase dramatically in the future.

While SaaS first aimed to produce better goods, many of its guiding principles have found their way into marketing and sales teams, changing the way customers interact with the product. Free trials, for instance, were highly uncommon before the development of SaaS but are now quite widespread in the software market.

Things to Consider While Developing a SaaS Application

More applications are continually floating on the cloud by organizations. But what can you do if your company needs a SaaS application development platform? How can you choose the best SaaS app development company to work with? How to develop a SaaS-based application? Are there any factors that must be taken into account when creating such programs, and what purpose do they serve?

1) Understand your market audience:

The software cannot be used in a one-size-fits-all manner. Every business needs unique attributes and preferences before investing in any software. Many software developers make an initial attempt to investigate several market segments without using adequate data or researching the industry. It is a significant factor in why many applications do not succeed.

Plan: Consider creating a study abroad application and promoting it in a region where most people are older than 45. Teenagers and adults between the ages of 20-35 are actively looking for educational support. Hence they would be the current and lucrative target group for such software. Hence, it is important to understand the audience your software will cater to.

Research: The creation of SaaS apps depends on new technologies like AI, DL, etc. It is crucial to stay updated with the latest technological advances to design an app that is more sophisticated and quick than its predecessors.

Analyzing the competition: Consider the following before beginning work on the software: What sets my software or application apart from others? Your software should have special features that target an untapped market niche in this aggressive industry.

2) Establish pricing model:

You must set a good pricing model to make your software accessible to numerous tenants. Even if your software is more sophisticated and well-developed than competing versions, users may choose the latter if the pricing structure suits their demands.

It is imperative to set a subscription price that is neither too high nor too low. Furthermore, developers should entice customers by giving free trials and promotional offers.

There are other ways to monetize your software besides subscription. For instance, you can adopt the freemium approach. Numerous SaaS companies give out their software for free with a few features called Minimal Viable Product (MVP).

3) Generate a client acquisition pipeline:

Even if you make the most extraordinary software, it will be useless if you don’t have clients to serve them. Many businesses focus solely on technology while neglecting the client generation part.

Therefore, SaaS Developers must select a team that continually promotes your program on digital platforms, such as through email, social media, banner ads, sales calls, etc., to attract customers and persuade people to subscribe.

A customer acquisition pipeline will guarantee that your product has more customers and business using the power of different channels, and strategies.

4) Plan for scaling from the start:

One of the major advantages of SaaS-based applications is the ability to grow with the business. Hence, it is important to pay extra attention to the scaling-up ability of your software.

The software’s inability to scale up horizontally or vertically will be detrimental in the long run because you risk losing revenue and a valuable subscriber.

Furthermore, the application should be designed to function smoothly in a multi-tenant format to cater to a larger population without sacrificing functionality or confidentiality.

Four multi-tenancy design options that can complement software design are as follows:

– Isolated
– Infrastructure
– Application
– Shared

The above designs allow one to code for the greatest software with commendable scalability characteristics.

5) Select a proper Database:

Although having a large, flexible, and secure database is essential for any app development, it also needs to be of a specific kind that corresponds to the interests of your clientele.

It should be scalable and enable seamless application operation across all devices and platforms. The database type you choose will be influenced by several factors, including your application’s data, scalability limit, expected client count, the ratio of read-to-write operations, coding preferences, and investment.

Developers typically use relational structure query language (SQL) databases for centrally hosted environments, whereas they favor NoSQL database designs for cloud-based environments when storing data.

6) Provide updates frequently:

Nobody likes to use an outdated version of a phone, let alone software! Hence, in this face paced, technologically advanced generation, it is important to provide updates that add value to the software.  Since no software or application is error-free, the developer must constantly try to keep checking the bugs to improve the user experience.

The market is dynamic, so demand for specific features could surge. It is essential to establish a specialized team to monitor such requirements. It is critical to timely upgrade your application with new features and functionality if you want to gratify and retain your clientele.

Some SaaS application development services automate the CI/CD process, checking for problems and continuously upgrading the software to be compatible with the latest technologies while preserving data integrity and safety.

How to find and hire SaaS (Software as a service) developers?

You cannot overlook SaaS if you want to obtain the right software for your business at a fair price that can foster growth and profitability. A useful software will empower your team and streamline operations to foster a scaling up of a business model.

To make the process easier for you, SaaS software development companies can provide you with tailor-made and robust applications compatible with Android, iOS, and hybrid systems. Get in touch with Creole Studios to hire SaaS developers to discuss your SaaS application development needs.

[Orignial Source: Things to Consider While Developing a SaaS Application ]