SaaS Product Design: Trends & Best Practices in 2024

What factors contribute most to the success of huge firms like Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce that have a substantial number of users?

You might identify a lot of stuff, beginning with the programming on the platform’s backend and finishing with the concept behind the platform itself. However, the design that they utilize is typically neglected.

That sort of stinks. Because:

It is among the most crucial steps in obtaining an audience, and it might even be the pivotal point in the development of your firm if you have a high-quality SaaS interface design.

The question now is, how do you arrive at the design that will win?

We will cover all you need to learn regarding SaaS product design in this post so that you can begin working on a product that will be lucrative and successful.

What is SaaS?

SaaS is a new way of delivering software with the help of internet servers. It is better than the old way because it doesn’t cost so much to provide and use.:

• Reduced needs for storage space in the computer
• Reduced expenses overall
• More flexibility
• Improved User Experience and UI design as a result of Using the Cloud Computing method; 
• Interface Made Easier to Understand and Access.

Additional Reading:

Cloud Vs SaaS: The Main Difference Everyone Should Know

A Detailed Guide to the Types of Software

Consider a few instances of SaaS applications that have been effectively developed by large organizations that are using cloud computing.

For example, Google Workspace includes more than just the conventional Docs and spreadsheet apps. It makes it possible for users to connect safely with other users, as well as view and change material in real time, regardless of the platform or device they are using. There are a large number of additional well-known systems, some of which are Microsoft Apps, Slack, and Dropbox.

Importance of SaaS

SaaS is important because it helps save costs of software development and buying and handling of extra hardware equipment like servers. You can access complex SaaS software anywhere around the globe on your computer. It helps with:

1) Scalability

SaaS solutions exist in the cloud, making them expandable based on demands. It also allows you to interact with other SaaS solutions, turn on extra components, and modify the delivery mechanism. Flexible subscription-based licensing.

2) Security

Data security is a company’s most precious asset and a booming sector. SaaS vendors invest considerably in security, knowledge, backups, and maintenance. They have the knowledge and tools to design secure systems.

3) Speed

It is pre-installed. The cloud server deploys faster, and the app is ready in a matter of hours. This reduces installation and management. Users can do software proof-of-concept. It also permits version migration.

4) Customizable

Customizable SaaS applications integrate with Gmail or any other program. It permits multiple documents or module editing.

5) Cost-Effective

SaaS is a cost-effective business investment. Eliminates installation and maintenance expenditures. The pay-as-you-go concept allows firms to pay just for what they use, saving money on unneeded licenses. It’s a godsend for small firms since it offers subscriptions to pricey, powerful software.

SaaS is a vital element of enterprises today, and cloud technology is the future. It boosts income. Hapy Design is a major SaaS developer offering high-end digital platform services. Our newest technical services and technologies, like digitalization, mobile app development, and more, meet present demands and planning for a smarter future.

The Role of Design in SaaS

Great design differentiates your software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution from rivals’. An attractive SaaS solution doesn’t guarantee usability. Good design combines UX and UI to create a complete product experience that wows customers and turns them into brand supporters. UI specifies how your product appears and UX how it functions. SaaS product owners often make catastrophic mistakes by focusing only on aesthetics instead of usefulness and aesthetics.

As you construct and improve your SaaS solution, clients request features. Your SaaS product grows more sophisticated with each new addition. Hide seldom-used features in settings panels, but be careful with new essential product features. The same functionality may be done differently for two clients. It’s your duty to evaluate how consumers want to use a product and build a beautiful UX, so first-time users can figure out how it works without a guide or knowledge base.

Your SaaS product’s UI and UX must operate across platforms. Creating for smartphones is different from creating for the web, so work with a designer that knows iOS and Android. The online features and the support of your mobile application should be the ones consumers use. You may add functionality to your mobile applications depending on user demands.

Design Standards

The design of software as a service (SaaS) applications follows their specific principles and standards, which are the elements that automatically lend a website an improved appearance and increased accessibility.

The following guidelines are not obligatory to be followed, however, it is highly recommended that you do so:

The left-hand side of the page should be used to display the logo for your firm. Users do not recognize brands when they are positioned to the right, which is a well-established fact. Although a logo is frequently shown in the center of the frame, the optimal location for it is the upper left corner.

Ensure that your website is compatible with mobile devices. Because more and more people are shifting away from PCs and toward smartphones, it is essential to have a website that is compatible with both types of devices.

Make use of a background that is light. A page that is predominantly dark in hue may be difficult to read and cause confusion. In addition, a lighter backdrop offers a quality SaaS UI design, a feeling that is more approachable and laid back.

Challenges in SaaS Product Design

Each variety of website design has its own set of guidelines for what should and should not be included. The user interface design is not an exception to this rule.

The process of integrating additional features and determining which existing ones should be maintained is one of the most challenging tasks that a UI design business that focuses on SaaS interface design must encounter.

You need to assess, first and foremost, if the new update you are contemplating will enhance the desirability of the product or whether it will target the demographic you have in mind more effectively.

You probably have a primary goal in mind for the design; the question is whether the new feature adds new goals or if it improves the ones you currently have.

You should also keep in mind the following, for the second part:

• Is this new information making your life more challenging in any way?
• How does it affect the administration and maintenance of the facility?
• Does it increase the cost of your product?

If that’s the case, you need to carefully weigh this factor against the value that it contributes to the overall design of the SaaS interface.

Finally, you should think about whether or not it is required and cannot be replaced.

If you can replace that with some product or an aspect that requires less work, then it is likely not worth the cost or the effort. Keep the number of stages and the investment you make low so that you may make the most profit possible.

Best Practices for Designing a Great SaaS

After reviewing the common practices and challenges associated with the design of a SaaS application, let’s now proceed to the discussion of best practices for SaaS design.

Here is a list of the best tricks that have been employed by successful companies that have revealed their expertise.

1. Simple UI Design
2. Simple Navigation
3. Easy Registration Process
4. Smart Sorting
5. Product Should Be Personalized
6. Prioritize Your App’s Most-Used Features
7. Design with Your Customers
8. Focus on Your Target Audience 
9. Upgrade SaaS Product Design Regularly
10. Customer Support

1- Simple UI Design

The programming behind software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions is complex and time-consuming. This can result in a wide number of challenges, one of which is a UX/UI that is inherently complicated.

Users have a strong aversion to designs that are difficult to understand or navigate, making this a significant threat to the success of your website.

It is highly challenging to develop a design that is not only uncomplicated but also simple to comprehend, and at the same time is capable of comprehensively covering all of the complexities that are involved in SaaS architecture.

2- Simple Navigation

The most crucial phase in the process of creating SaaS platforms is to ensure that consumers have access to easy navigation and an understandable user interface.

You won’t be able to sell your services through commercials, consultancies, or conferences, so you’ll need a website that is both attractive and simple to use to attract customers.

On the home page, there must be a dashboard that compiles all of the essential connections. Going back to the point that was made before, you need to make sure that you have only the most crucial aspects set up there so that it is readable.

The most effective structure for this kind of menu bar is either a horizontal or a vertical slide column.

3- Easy Registration Process

People don’t like to go through hundreds of pages of sign-up papers and forms; it consumes time and effort, and in today’s fast-paced world, No one has that time and patience.

Therefore, if you do not want to lose customers, the sign-up procedure should be kept as straightforward and uncomplicated as is humanly possible. This is the fourth most important SaaS design principle.

When a consumer uses your product, you will have multiple chances to learn more about that user and their usage habits.

To begin, you should simply collect the most fundamental pieces of information, such as a name and an email address. With every new step, you go further and further away from a potential customer.

The majority of customers will anticipate you asking for their credit card information if you are giving a free trial, even if this will make the process more complicated.

If you want more individuals to sign up for your service, you should try to persuade them to do so on the landing page by having prominent calls to action and buttons.

4- Smart Sorting

Just imagine how frustrating it would be if every search result you sought was accompanied by a large amount of data that was entirely unrelated to the topic at hand that was available on the website.

The dynamic sorting feature offers a solution to this issue by enabling users to tailor their searches to obtain only the specific pieces of data that they want.

The search bar needs to be positioned at the very top of the page to maximize user efficiency. It is also a good idea to include it in the drop-down menu bar of the part that came before it so that it does not clutter up the user interface.

5- Product Should Be Personalized

When a user visits a website, they like it when they get the impression that the site was created with them in mind.

Make it simple for them to communicate with company representatives by providing an online pop-up window that may be staffed by either a real person or a bot.

You will find that this makes it easier to generate ideas for enhancing the website. It is crucial to include a section devoted to frequently asked questions for those customers who would rather not have direct interaction.

6- Prioritize Your App’s Most-Used Features

Google has achieved a great deal of success by developing a single platform that provides all of the functionality required by a user.

They made sure that their users had all they needed on the same webpage, and each one of their applications had the same instantly identifiable design – simple icons, toolbars there at top of the front page that were simple to navigate, and connections to additional helpful resources.

Because of this, the clients were able to move about the platform with relative ease.

7- Design with Your Customers

Every successful company understands the need of keeping in contact with its existing users.

Allow them to help you improve the quality of your website by using one of the many free tools that are at your disposal. They will also be able to add to the design process by interacting through social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and by responding to online surveys that are hosted on social media platforms as well as the website itself.

8- Focus on Your Target Audience 

Keep in mind the target audience for your software as a service (SaaS) offering, even if it should be appealing to all customers in general.

Your landing page’s primary purpose should be to bring in the kind of visitors you’re looking for. You can simply expand the variety of services that you offer by tailoring the registration process to the specific needs of various categories of consumers.

For instance, if your service is a website that provides students with educational materials, your call to action (CTA) should urge them to register online for free access to textbooks.

On the other hand, the registration procedure might branch out and give alternative avenues for teachers and students that desire access for a variety of reasons.

9- Upgrade SaaS Product Design Regularly

Your project will grow and change as you acquire more visitors; as a result, you will need to make adjustments to the user experience and the user interface (UI/UX) to guarantee that the quality of your website is commensurate with the size of your company.

Be attentive to the requests of consumers, and provide them the value that they deserve, as I mentioned before; social media and regular surveys may be your closest allies in this respect.

10- Customer Support

When a customer tries out the free version of your software as a service (SaaS) website and then decides to pay a subscription fee, it indicates that they are highly likely to opt to pay for the subscription on their own.

Ensure they get everything they want so that they do not have to get in touch with customer support; also, you should build an instruction page with step-by-step directions and try to keep the procedure as straightforward as you can.

As I’ve suggested in the past, a complete list of frequently asked questions should be readily accessible and displayed.

Future Trends

The future is here, not just in terms of technological advancement, but also in terms of site design and the visual arts.

 We’ve rounded together some SaaS design ideas for inspiration and compiled a list of the year’s most important design trends:

• The trend in custom illustration is expanding from two dimensions to three
• The typefaces used in logos progress from those that are ornate and intricate to those that are more basic and in the manner of Helvetica
• Design that is welcoming to users from all walks of life and ethnicities
• On the homepage, the emphasis was placed on a large CTA and trial version promotions
• Clear indications of feedback forms

Common Mistakes to Avoid

It is not simple to develop software as a service product. For one reason, it is challenging to find a happy medium between the complexity of the backend architecture and the ease of use of the user interface.

 When building your SaaS solution, be sure to avoid the following:

1. Convoluted and cluttered landing page
2. Extra menu bar features
3. a backdrop that is difficult to read and very dark
4. Protracted and challenging requirements for registration
5. Instead of concentrating on a single target audience, one’s efforts are distributed among a wide variety of various audiences
6. Unable to navigate away from the outdated version of the site
7. Avoid accessing the website using the mobile version

How Much Does it Cost to Design a SaaS product?

Once you have a business idea, implement it swiftly. If you don’t have an in-house team and are busy, you may outsource a software development team Like Hapy Design to help with SaaS application design. What does a SaaS design cost?

Variables include:

1) Size

Product displays, pages, or modules. Designing and testing a 40-screen product with complicated features takes more time and work

than a 20-screen project. More panels or modules mean better product design hourly compensation.

2) Complexity

Complexity affects product design costs. The product logic’s sophistication. The design itself might be complex if it uses custom fonts, icons, graphics, etc.

3) Specifications

Product development expenses rely on its attributes. Basic product design with minimal set costs $15k.

4) Location of the Team

Choose your technology partner’s location carefully. That affects pricing and quality. An Asian designer makes $30-$50 per hour. US designers make double. And both are high-quality. 

Additional reading: Offshore Software Development: Things You Need to Know

How to Become a SaaS Product Designer?

Product designers are UI/UX designers, graphic designers, motion experts, information architects, market researchers, data analysts, prototypers, business strategists, and entrepreneurs. They are excellent communicators, strategic and critical thinkers, problem solvers, good analysts and listeners, visionaries, influencers, mentors, leaders, presenters, and speakers.

A successful product designer nowadays needs understanding in every sector. You can’t obtain complete control of your Figma artboard unless you consider all the complexities, and edge cases, and bring in all the company’s experience.

A “design degree” isn’t required to grasp these things, though. I’ve never attended design or business school. Mastering it takes years. Inside, you’ll learn plenty. I still have a lot to learn after 5 years in the field.

Additional reading: Is UI-UX a Good Career Option for Designers?

Conclusion

SaaS UI/UX design affects product success. If designed and implemented effectively, it reduces customer churn, improves the user’s experience, and delivers a smooth experience. Your SaaS firm will develop owing to additional clients attracted by a well-established design solution.

SaaS product design isn’t standardized. Each project is different; you should stand out. UI / UX best practices for SaaS should help you identify crucial trends and features.

Hapy Design is capable of implementing your SaaS product ideas. Our designers specialize in creating admin panels and dashboards. Free consultations are available. Feel free to Contact Us.

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