Creating and launching a SaaS product isn’t a piece of cake! A lot of research, processes, time, money, resources are involved with the aim of making the product a success. A lot of efforts go into bringing an innovation that solves a problem and in making sure that the potential customers see its value.
We’ll be sharing the steps typically involved in a SaaS development process to paint a clear picture for you.
Concept Development
This involves defining a clear objective of a product – why it would matter, who is it for, what benefits would it bring to them, etc. Here, we focus on how we can simplify the users’ life with our product.
Competitor Research
Doing a thorough analysis of how your competitors are doing in terms of UI/UX, functionality, marketing, pricing, etc is what you need to stay at the top of the game. Keep an eye on the kind of feedback their customers leave for them. This would give you clarity about what your ideal customers like or dislike to some extent.
Figure out where they’re lagging and how you can fill in the gaps in their execution and strategies through your product.
Business Development
Now, comes the most important part of the process, i.e. determining the means to make money with your SaaS. Figure out what features of your product would you like to give your customers for free and what would you want to charge for. Think about the pricing model you’d like to have for your product, if it would be sucbription based or usage based.
Design & Development
Now, comes the phase of putting in all the efforts to have all the planning and development you’ve done till now take a form.
Pay special attention to the UI/UX, as its the medium through which your SaaS product is first going to have an interaction with its users. Then, comes designing and implementing features like signups and onboarding, navigation, dashboard, etc. Various technologies and tools are involved to invoke all these features in the background.
Maintenance
Once you finish developing a product, the job isn’t done yet. For months and years to come, the user requirements and needs may vary with time, which would require you to add updates to your applications suiting their demands. Moreover, maintenance helps you stay ahead of your competitors and optimise your product.
Hope this helped you understand the entire workflow of SaaS development process that helps SaaS startups deliver value to their customers.
