Did you know 90% of your users stop using an application after having a bad user experience? While improving and introducing new features is imperative, so is building a SaaS application with excellent UX design.
SaaS products enjoy the same interface and follow the same design principle as other websites or mobile applications. Most SaaS users expect your products to provide the shortest and easiest route for reaching their goals. Whatever features a brand introduces must be created with a user-centered approach.
That’s why UX is one of the most important contributing factors to the success of a SaaS product.
In this article, we provide tips on improving your SaaS UX design to improve the user’s journey and increase the consumption of SaaS products.
Let’s explore!
10 Tips on How to Improve Your SaaS UX Design
Use these tips to improve your SaaS UX design:
Focus on the UX persona
Personas are commonly used tools in your UX design. They’re the archetypes that help you understand your target audience like never before. User personas are fictional and generalized representations of your target audience because they’re based on real data.
Focusing on a UX persona helps answer the question, “Who are we designing the SaaS product for?” Defining your target audience is a basic principle of UX design.
The rule here is simple: if you end up designing for everyone, you’ll end up designing a SaaS product for no one.
It helps you make user-focused design decisions and shapes the direction of your product.
When UX designers see things from a user’s perspective and consider their needs in the design process, they create SaaS designs that are more likely to appeal to them. Other advantages of using personas in your UX design process are:
- Builds empathy
- Provides direction for making design-related decisions
- Communicates research findings
To understand more about these personas, read Maze’s guide to building user personas to understand the target users’ concerns, expectations, and motivations.
Clarify with onboarding
As a rule of thumb, the less friction your customers or users encounter during the onboarding process, the better. Remove any unnecessary steps or fields from your signup form.
Poor onboarding experience leads to user confusion, leading users to another SaaS application. A positive and frictionless onboarding experience ensures a positive first impression, which helps in a long-lasting relationship with your product.
Ensure your users receive clear instructions on how to use the product. When users know how to go about using it, there is less scope for confusion and more scope for user enjoyment.
Design your SaaS UX to provide users with all information while being creative.
Give users the option to skip specific steps for later, as it removes immediate onboarding bottlenecks and increases user satisfaction.
Share onboarding blogs and videos with new users. The overall goal is to make users accustomed to using your application. The design of your SaaS app should aim to deliver tutorials creatively.
Streamline information architecture
Ease of usability and information architecture are two things users require in a SaaS application.
As such, your SaaS application should be intuitive and minimal. SaaS applications that provide an excellent human experience and a simplified flow of functionality are the ones that users love to use.
A good IA works as the skeleton of a project, and designers need to focus on IA before jumping onto the design elements.
When design elements like graphics, visual elements, functionality, and navigation are built on vital IA, it enhances the SaaS product and provides a seamless user experience.
Streamlining the IA is essential because even the best design and content will fail without having an appropriate IA.
A good IA boosts engagement because it improves usability without compromising on the simplicity of your SaaS product.
Focus on hyper-personalization of in-app experience
Your users have different wants and requirements when using your SaaS product. Taking them into account is essential for a seamless in-app experience. It also helps retain users in the competitive market.
Focus on creating a SaaS design, offering a personalized product experience for users in several ways. The key here is triggering relevant experiences for relevant users at the right time.
During the user onboarding process, Notion separates users into three different segments. By identifying the type of user, Notion makes a call as to which unnecessary step a user can skip.
Doing so provides a tailored experience for each user.
Use emotional design across the user experience
Emotive interactive design is part of the UX design process that evokes emotions in users, such as joy or excitement.
When a user has a positive experience with your brand, it encourages them to experience and live those moments again, repeatedly engaging with a product.
For instance, in Asana, when you or your team members complete a task, Asana celebrates by displaying a 3D animated creature flying across your screen, celebrating your success.
Such in-app experience is what users look for in a SaaS UX design because they evoke emotions such as joy and happiness.
Use minimalistic colors
The approach of color palettes in design has seen a drastic shift to minimalistic use. Though SaaS products and websites with vivid colors might draw user attention, it’s best to use them only in a few elements.
Today, users prefer SaaS product design that uses brand colors. Focus on using accent colors for call-to-action buttons and navigation.
Most designers use two complementary colors and white spaces because they’re easy on the eyes, and viewers can view and read your content without colors distracting their attention somewhere else.
For instance, Marquiz uses pink and black as primary colors.
Ensure brand consistency across the journey
Consistency is excellent for UX design. It differentiates a successful product from one with a high churn rate.
Consistent design across your SaaS product enhances usability and increases learnability about a product.
When designers use similar UI elements and functions, they successfully create the “Aha” moment for users.
Focus on using universal design patterns to create familiarity, and reduce a product’s learning curve and human cognitive load. These universally recognizable patterns give your SaaS
products foundational consistency to strengthen your brand.
For instance, the universal design for notifications is a bell symbol. Using a different icon or pattern for representing notifications might confuse the viewers and increase the learning curve of your SaaS product.
Build interactive walkthroughs, not linear product tours
Instead of a multi-step tour that your users might not remember, consider creative interactive walkthroughs that provide users with relevant information.
When each step of their walkthrough tour is triggered depending upon the action of the previous steps, it creates a personalized experience. It works the same way as AI-enabled chatbots, which provide you with solutions based on what information you input.
For instance, see how Bullhorn provides a real-time interactive walkthrough depending upon the user’s input.
Triggering reactions based on the user’s action allow users to use and understand your product at their own pace.
Apart from guiding users, these walkthroughs help in faster product adoption, ensuring quick multiple-format content creation and ensuring users spend less time talking with your support team to understand a particular feature.
Provides an efficient search tool
Another important feature of every SaaS product has a search function. Users expect a SaaS product to allow them to look up information related to the product’s functionalities.
It’s a shortcut that allows users to skip the line and directly access the information they require, almost like teleportation with the SaaS app.
With a dedicated knowledge base and educational content, SaaS products become fairly simple and easy to use.
When creating the search functionality, use an autocomplete feature for text queries to save users time and minimize potential errors. It’s an easy piece to embed in your SaaS product.
Additionally, try understanding the different kinds of queries your product receives to devise a way to classify user queries. It becomes easier for users to get the information they desire.
Ensure uninterrupted UX
While in-app prompts are great for driving user engagement, but only when they are mindful of the UX design.
Maintaining awareness of the user’s thoughts and feelings before triggering a modal or pop-up goes a long way in building a strong relationship with users. Use small native tooltips or pop-ups to enhance users’ learning.
Improving your SaaS UX design
Today, with the SaaS marketplace becoming saturated, your products should not just offer innovative tech solutions. They should provide top-notch designs.
By implementing these tips and tricks, you improve your user’s experience and let them enjoy using your SaaS product. If you need help getting started, you can enhance your UX skills by enrolling in popular courses to improve design skills to become better at your trade.
Remember that your UX design can make or break your SaaS product. At every step in the UX design phase, put yourself in your users’ shoes and create products they love to come back for.
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