Contrary to all the buzz around vibe coding replacing Software-as-a-Service (Saas), it’s still the norm for how consumers engage with tech. It’s built through rigorous app development and, when done right, unlocks economies of scale and enables a repeatable growth strategy. However, there are pitfalls to avoid when building and growing your SaaS business. By avoiding missteps in product-market fit, compliance, and pricing, your app has the best chance of succeeding and meeting your customers’ digital expectations.
Explore all three in detail below:
1. Product Market Fit
Understanding your target market is the key to success for virtually any industry. Your product must do a few things well:
- Solve customer pain points better than other platforms.
- Incorporate the user habits and preferences of your primary demographic for it to resonate with your end users.
Additionally, SaaS products often operate in niches, as seen in marketplaces trending in this direction, and therefore require careful consideration when prioritizing features.
For example, if you’re designing your SaaS for the Chinese market and using email as the primary login method, your product will likely be met with a negative reception. The onboarding experience will not resonate with your Chinese users, who typically prefer to sign in and interact via mobile phone number or WeChat.
Similarly, designing your SaaS for users in one language and localizing your product in another language as an afterthought is almost a death sentence for your app. When taking your SaaS product global, we recommend using our Local IQ™ framework to determine the best approach to localization. You’ll need to consider not only the message or language but also the design and features of your target audience.
2. Compliance with Regulations
As teams get busy from sprint to sprint before the launch of your SaaS product, it’s very easy to lose sight of things. Regulations and compliance are crucial and must be satisfied to commercialize your product within any market.
For instance, if you’re designing your SaaS for the European market, you must comply with GDPR standards. Or, if you’re rolling out a digital healthcare product within the United States, the odds are you must be HIPAA compliant.
The repercussions of violating compliance go beyond financial damages. Your brand’s reputation and public trust also take a significant hit. Therefore, collaborate with experts who can navigate you through legal and regulatory compliance before even writing the first line of code. Additionally, you should leverage cloud service providers, such as AWS, to de-risk your company and shift that risk to them. In doing so, you can focus on your customers’ needs.
3. An Effective Pricing Strategy
Many SaaS products are overloaded with features that are sensational but fail to monetize. SaaS products must choose one of three pricing strategies: cost-based, value-based, or competition-based. Furthermore, SaaS products often offer discounts for high-volume usage or substantial upfront payments.
To get this right, we recommend conducting research interviews to understand your target market and their pricing preferences. Getting the pricing strategy right is more about experimentation than theory. However, you can optimize your strategy with enough upfront research.
If you have a pricing strategy in place, you’ll need to select the pricing channels
- Are you using third-party integrations?
- Will you be earning money on both iOS App Store and Google Play Store?
- Have you also accounted for the transaction fees to use a payment processing partner, like Stripe?
Creating a transparent, painless, and efficient payment processing is paramount to your end users. Therefore, ensure your SaaS platform guarantees a seamless payment experience.
4. Use Common Sense
At Uplancer, we love to over-deliver! In fact, there is a fourth consideration to keep in mind: common sense. We’ve got a few pointers on managing your app:
- For starters, you must demand that your development team provide full documentation on how your product works, where those resources are located, and grant you access credentials. We’ve seen situations where one or all three weren’t handed over, causing your product to shut down completely once dev leaves the picture.
- Make sure that your developers use three separate environments: development, staging, and production. Creating a formal code deployment pipeline with appropriate checks and balances will help prevent costly mistakes, such as releasing major bugs into your production environments.
- Request an external audit of your product to ensure your SaaS is built for compliance. Skipping an audit can prompt regulators or even your service providers to shut down your SaaS. There are several audits, including ISO, SOC1, SOC2, and HIPAA, so audit accordingly.
- Employ quality assurance (QA) specialists to test and retest features before releasing them on production. We cannot overstate the importance of thorough QA to avoid introducing catastrophic errors in your SaaS product.
The Bottom Line / TLDR
To build a successful SaaS, you must understand, inside and out, the impact of market fit, compliance, and pricing strategy. Additionally, you should review our marketing and app development checklist for startups before going full throttle with your business.
Reach out to Uplancer today for a free consultation on how to design and build your SaaS business!
