Developing a SaaS application is neither a small task, nor a low-cost venture. There are many factors to consider, both upfront and during the development process itself.

Here are things you should know before starting SaaS application development.

Establish your business model and pricing strategy

This is critical to success and will impact how you build SaaS application. You need to determine what features are essential for your customers, what price they’re willing to pay, and how you’ll generate revenue.

First, define your target market. Who is most likely to buy or use your SaaS application? Do some research and identify who these people are – including their demographics (age, gender, location) and psychographics (interests, values).

Then, select your app monetization strategy. The choice between a subscription-based billing model and a consumption-based one depends on the industry and services you’re planning to provide.

Create a prototype of SaaS application

A prototype of a SaaS application is an effective way to test its feasibility and identify potential problems before investing too much time or money. The prototype doesn’t have to be perfect – just enough so that you can start getting feedback from potential users and refining your plans accordingly.

Creating a prototype typically starts with developing a high-level functional specification for the system. This document describes how the system should work in broad terms and what features it should include. Remember: too little functionality and users won’t find it useful, too much – and you could drown in complexity (and cost). Strike the right balance!

Once functional specifications are complete, you can begin building a working model of the SaaS application using whatever technology makes sense for your project.

Ensure good design & usability

How easy is it for users to navigate your system and complete their tasks? Good design makes life easier for users; lousy design can lead to frustration (and lost customers). Always make sure that essential functions and features are easily accessible from within the SaaS application. Navigation should be simple to use, with no hidden buttons or menu items.

Also, test your SaaS application on different browsers and devices (including smartphones and tablets) to ensure compatibility across all platforms. In addition, pay close attention to overall aesthetics – the layout should be tidy and visually appealing, without too much clutter or overlap. And lastly, provide clear instructions for users who are new to the app – don’t leave them guessing how to do something or where they need to go next!

Build a SaaS MVP

Your SaaS MVP doesn’t have to be perfect, but should include the core features needed for your target market segments. It also makes sense to build additional features later on based on customer feedback and demand – but don’t try to do everything at once, or you will risk overwhelming yourself and early adopters.

This process usually starts with creating a wireframe or prototype of the app, which helps you figure out what needs to be included in the initial release. You’ll also need to determine how to measure success — whether it’s based on user registrations, active users, or some other metric.

Once you’ve launched your SaaS application MVP, it’s important to continue gathering user feedback and making changes accordingly. This process should continue until you’ve reached a point where adding new features no longer makes sense or slows down customer adoption rates.

Plan for scalability from day 1

One of the benefits of SaaS applications is that they can often scale easily with increasing demand from customers. However, this requires careful planning upfront. Think about the number of customers you expect to maximize with the application and ensure the infrastructure can support that growth rate.

Although many other factors are involved in creating a successful SaaS app, these are the most important ones to consider early in SaaS platform development. By addressing these issues upfront, you’ll put yourself in a better position for success with your new application.

Technical aspects of SaaS application development

One of the most important things to consider when building a SaaS application is scalability. When your app is hosted in the cloud, you need to make sure that it can handle an ever-growing load of traffic and requests. Therefore, you ought to design your system for horizontal scalability, which means adding more resources (such as servers) as needed in order to meet demand. You also need to make sure that your application can scale up or down easily depending on usage patterns — you don’t want to be stuck with unused resources when demand drops off.

Another vital consideration when building a SaaS app is performance. Since users will be accessing your app from all over the world, you need to make sure that it can handle high levels of traffic without slowing down or becoming overloaded. This means optimizing your code for performance, using caching mechanisms where possible, and load balancing across multiple servers if necessary.

But wait, that’s not all. If you want your SaaS app to succeed, you need to consider more technical details: database design, data security, programming language, and third-party integrations. 

Discover more here.