Do you know the first step of a successful entrepreneur while building a SaaS product?
SaaS (software as a service) has increasingly gained popularity and is one of the lucrative business models in recent years. With this increase in popularity, it sees an estimated growth of 18% by the year 2023.
The top SaaS vendors include big companies such as Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, and Oracle. With such big market leaders, it becomes challenging to come up with an effective SaaS product but when a great idea is combined with the right technology, everything is possible.
But, before you even begin to build your SaaS product, you need to build an MVP.
In this article, we’ll explore what MVP means and what you should consider while creating an MVP for your SaaS product.
What is an MVP for SaaS Products?
Minimal viable product (MVP) is a version of the SaaS product that has minimum features enough to satisfy the needs of initial customers. An MVP helps you know if your SaaS product is effective as your initial users will analysis your SaaS product and give you feedback on the same.
There’s a lot of misconception about MVP for SaaS but here are the most common features of an MVP:
1. Provides enough features to make your target audience purchase your actual SaaS product.
2. Demonstrates the benefits of your products to engage early users.
3. It creates a feedback loop that helps you get valuable feedback for further development of the product.
How Can a SaaS Startup Benefit From an MVP?
For a new business that is aiming to develop an amazing SaaS product, an MVP can be one of the best decisions for your business. It not only helps you create the product faster but you can also work on a version of the product that offers the most important functionality.
It is one of the most low-risk investments for a SaaS startup as you don’t put all your efforts into developing it and yet get an amazing result.
Some of the benefits offered by an MVP are:
1. Proves the feasibility of the idea
2. Explores/ examines the market
3. Reduces the rework time
4. Helps you generate the first revenue
5. Get feedback from your initial customers
Now that you have known overall details about the importance of MVP, it’s the right time to create one.
Before you get started with the development of your MVP, you need to consider a few things such as:
Don’t Drain all your Funds/ Resources
MVP’s can’t really drain your resources as it only requires minimal resources and time consisting of a few important features. It will basically help your customers decide if your product is worth their money and if it provides them with some kind of value.
While building an MVP for your SaaS product, you can end up spending a lot as you’ll want positive feedback from your initial customers but make sure you don’t spend too much in building an MVP.
Keep it Simple in the Initial stage
When you first started using Facebook, was it the same as you see it now? No right. Every app or software transforms over the years so it is always better to keep it simple at the start. Dropbox, Amazon, and uber created their own form of MVP and presented it to their audience to see its efficiency.
As you gain customers, you gain their feedback and accordingly, your software transforms to its better version. Keeping the design and layout of your MVP simple yet user-friendly will enable your actual product to get a newer version.
A simple MVP doesn’t Mean Unfinished MVP
When it comes to the design and layout of the MVP, as I said before, it is better to keep it simple. But of course simple doesn’t mean that your MVP is unfinished as you’d not want your initial customers to get disappointed by an unfinished product.
Your MVP will be representing your actual SaaS product and your customers will get an overview of your software. Always remember, your MVP is going to be your first impression and you’ll not want your potential customer to encounter bugs in your software.
MVP is not always about receiving feedbacks but is actually about creating your first impression as one of your best impressions.
Offer Best User- Experience
The most important aspect of developing software is the “user experience” and if you ace it, you’re already there. So focus on creating the best user experience for your MVP so your customers would get convinced to invest in your actual software.
Your MVP should create the best positive user experience and even if you have created a wonderful interface, your users aren’t really going to engage if the usability is gross.
Prioritize Essential Features
It is very important to prioritize features that are most important for your SaaS product so your software functions in a way that you expect. Create a priority list and note down everything that is important first so you could focus on the features that matter the most for your MVP.
The priority list that you create should have the least important features, median important features and the most important features. Start working on the ones that are on the top of the priority list and categorise each one of them.
Once you have finished working on the important features, start working on the rest of the features. After this, you’ll be required to define each feature of your SaaS product’s MVP.
Track Metrics
Tracking the progress and evaluating the success of your software will give you a clear idea of how well your MVP is doing. You can track the success of your software by the most effective metrics such as
The mouth of words- It’s a metric where your users recommend your software in their network.
Interview your customers- Your customers will answer all the pros and cons of your software so you solve all the problematic bugs beforehand.
Install Rates- The Effective the software, the higher the installation/ download rates.
Make all the improvements by considering the feedback of your customers.
Start Building Your Product
Now that you have acquired the trust of your potential customer with your MVP, you can go ahead with the development of your product.
If the feedback of your customer were positive, you can start developing your SaaS product but if they have suggested certain changes that are important, then spend some time solving them.
Stop the project if your customers proved that your project is wrong. You cannot waste your time in re-releasing your MVP, instead, you can focus on executing another business idea.
Conclusion
Building a SaaS product for your new startup is very crucial as you are bound to take care of so many things and an MVP comes to your rescue. MVP helps you accumulate precious feedback from your audience before you start building the actual software.
The feedback of your initial customers will then decide if your SaaS product is all set to release or not. If you’re someone who’s planning to build your MVP or SaaS product, reach out to us so we could help you build one of the effective SaaS products.
