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How to design a SaaS application

Sometimes SaaS design appears daunting, especially to people who aren’t tech-savvy and those who don’t know much about SaaS. But here is a quick guide to an effective SaaS design.

23 November, 2022
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Software as a Service (SaaS) has proved to be an essential part of the modern business industry as it enables individuals and organizations to perform complex functions and processes quickly, conveniently, and at a pocket-friendly cost. Many enterprises are now using SaaS applications to carry out important day-to-day business processes and tasks.

With so many SaaS applications being developed every day, competition in this industry has become quite stiff. So, if you want your SaaS applications to succeed, make sure they’re unique, interesting, and friendly to your target users. This calls for exceptional SaaS designs that are based on user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) web design concepts.

Whether you’re designing your own SaaS application or you’ve hired professional designers to do it for you, it’s important to understand the main SaaS website design principles and the entire process of SaaS design and development. It’s logical to hire qualified and experienced UX/UI designers, for your SaaS application because they understand what needs to be done to create the best designs–but even as you hire professional designers for your SaaS apps, you need to learn how to design a SaaS application.

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A Guide to Designing a SaaS Application

The process of designing a SaaS application differs greatly from conventional software design. Sometimes these differences appear daunting, especially to people who aren’t tech-savvy and those who don’t know much about SaaS. But with the right information, the whole process becomes easy, quick, and convenient. Here is a quick guide to an effective SaaS design:

Understanding the Idea Behind SaaS Application

Before you begin the design process, you need to understand the whole concept behind the SaaS app. This includes its intended functions, its overall appearance, and its target users. You also need to understand the desires of your target customers, including how they want to use the application and the kind of features that will help them to achieve their daily goals.

You should keep in mind the fact that the application has to stand out and offer something different. It should be something that even future customers will find useful and continue to rely on to achieve their goals. You can only achieve these objectives if you fully understand what needs to be designed and for what purpose.

Consider the Customer Acquisition Process

When designing a SaaS app, you need to consider the process of acquiring new customers, including how the acquisition is supposed to happen and how much it will cost. This will help you to create features that make the process simple, quick, and inexpensive–you can do this by putting yourself in the target user’s shoes.

You can even write down a short description of how the system should respond to every action taken by the user during acquisition. Write down both positive and negative experiences and use them as your point of reference when designing the acquisition features and tools.

Multi-Tenancy Design

SaaS applications are designed to serve millions, if not billions, of users. Therefore, make sure your application features a multi-tenancy design to allow it to serve multiple users at the same time without friction or delay. You can achieve this by creating separate databases that serve multiple users.

Multi-Tenancy Design
Multi-Tenancy Design

Because your application will be shared among many users, the multi-tenancy design you come up with must be completely secure. There are four main types of multi-tenancy models that you can use in your SaaS app, including isolated tenancy, infrastructure tenancy, application tenancy, and shared tenancy.

Launch, Test, and Improve

Once your SaaS application design is complete, you need to test it thoroughly before you launch it officially. You can do in-house testing or hire app reviewers to use your app for a specific period to identify areas that need improvement. After the tests, be sure to do the necessary improvements before the final launch.

With UX/UI designers from a reputable web design agency like Merge Development, you’re assured of getting unique and interesting designs that are completely friendly to your customers. These professionals have been in this business long enough to understand every new SaaS design trend and how SaaS is changing web design.

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author

CEO and Founder of Merge

My mission is to help startups build software, experiment with new features, and bring their product vision to life.

My mission is to help startups build software, experiment with new features, and bring their product vision to life.

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