SaaS (Software as a service) companies are service industry companies that host third-party software and provides them to customers as a service. Thus these SaaS relies on customer consumption making customers a key point in their industry. They must strive to retain old customers and attract new clients to succeed and thus all elements of a website or application that determines user experience such as the UI & UX must be optimized.
This raises the question, whether is it really crucial for SaaS companies to invest in UI/UX design & development?
Our study on UI/UX design trends identified several reasons why SaaS companies should invest in UI/UX among the reasons include:-
1. Customer Retention
One of the biggest challenges that SaaS companies deal with today is keeping their customers engaged over the long-term. SaaS companies need to find ways to attract and hook customers to their platforms by ensuring they don’t leave after their first visit. This can be achieved by ensuring UI is designed well to attract user and UX is optimized to enhance user experience. Poor UI barely captures the attention of users and a poor UX is frustrating forcing users to opt for the alternative. If users have an exceptional experience, a company is more likely to retain customers thus improving conversions.
User Experience (Source: Interaction Design Foundation)
2. Ease of Use
SaaS companies need to bear in mind that a professional website design company is one that will keep easy of use of the interface as a top most priority. Focusing on improving simplicity helps to ensure that the SaaS companies are able to come up with a product that is user-friendly and truly intuitive. Even better, if an interface of a website, app or game is easy to use, users are more likely to easily understand and keep on using it hence improving users’ productivity. The chances of them learning how the product best works also keep on rising. Ultimately, they learn to appreciate the value in your product and keep paying for it. For a layman; interfaces should be as easy as it is to find on google on how to edit pdf?
3. Improved User Confidence and Trust
A well-polished UI design helps to boost the trust that users have on the SaaS companies and their products as well. Delivering a positive user experience goes a long way in winning the trust and confidence of users ensuring absolute long-term loyalty. Furthermore, if customers have great trust in a company’s SaaS product, this is also a good indication that the company has met their needs.
Improve user confidence and trust (Source: Hotjar)
4. Cost Effectiveness
SaaS companies need to focus on good design, especially in the early stages of the product development phase, as this helps to save costs. The cost of fixing a problem in a product increases non-linearly as development proceeds. By focusing on the UI design early enough, SaaS companies are in a better position to detect and fix flaws during any stage of development. Furthermore, conducting exhaustive UX research will enable a company to come up with a product that meets the expectations of users. This helps to avoid any need of fixing a flaw at a later stage. It’s therefore much cheaper to fix a flaw in this stage than in a product that has already been released to the market.
5. Increased Revenue
SaaS companies need to invest in their product’s UI/UX to increase their ROI potential. Investing in performance, functionality, and stability of the product helps to attract and retain customers paving a way to product success. It is the strive of every business owner to achieve customer loyalty and motivate new users and loyal customer to refer others to consume the product. Consequently, investing in such a first-rate UI/UX design will help create a sustainable income generating model ultimately leading to better profit margins.
Investing more in UI&UX increases ROI (Source: Uxbert Labs)
6. Competitive Edge
People nowadays are fully aware of the advantages of optimal investment in UI/UX. UI/UX largely defines the customer perception of the quality of the service of a site and thus largely determines if a customer is satisfied or not, happy or frustrated, stays on the site or opt out, completes a transaction or abandon it halfway, and return to the site or choose an alternative.
Poor UI/UX is frustrating (Source: Hotjar)
Users are always on a constant lookout for better services and at the same time, cautious of those that offer poor services not to waste their resources on them. A company with a poorly designed interface is at serious risk of losing customers to competitors with better services. SaaS companies, therefore, need to use their resources wisely to come up with well-designed interfaces if they are to survive the competition.
Bottom Line
What differentiates a successful SaaS company from an unsuccessful is simply their respective investment on UX/UI. This is a distinguishing trait and which can completely change the face of any company as well as its product. Due to a wide consumer choice, customers are extremely choosy and will be unsympathetic if they have a negative experience with your software product. SaaS companies need to be very careful and should focus on casting a good impression on their users by investing in the best UX/UX designers.