Software as a Service (SaaS) has become an increasingly popular business model over the last decade. The ability to access applications over the internet without needing to install anything has made SaaS very attractive to many types of users. As the SaaS industry continues to grow, having the right features is key for providers to stand out.
There are certain functionality and design elements that the best SaaS products have in common. Understanding these key features can help guide development and set user expectations. When executed well, these SaaS features create stickier applications that customers integrate deeper into their workflows.
Scalability
One of the major advantages of SaaS is scalability. The ability to scale up or down based on usage means customers only pay for what they need. As startups grow or enterprise organizations downsize, the SaaS model can adjust appropriately. Partnering with a SaaS development agency can ensure scalability is built into your platform from the ground up, delivering the flexibility and robustness needed to adapt to dynamic customer demands.
Here are some ways that SaaS applications should be scalable:
1. Usage Based Billing
Most SaaS apps offer different pricing tiers based on the features needed. However, some also charge based on usage volume, which provides more flexibility. For example, an API platform may charge per API call made or a cloud storage provider based on gigabytes stored. This ensures customers pay for exactly how much they utilize the service.
2. Automated Provisioning
Adding or removing users and application resources should be simple through self-service administration consoles. Customers should not have to put in extensive support tickets every time they want to scale capacity. The best SaaS platforms make scaling frictionless.
3. Multi-Tenant Architecture
Multi-tenancy allows a single instance of an application to serve multiple customers. All customers share the same infrastructure and code base while their data and users remain secure and isolated. This makes maintenance and updates easier for the SaaS provider, which increases overall scalability.
4. Load Balancing
There should be extensive load balancing across servers to ensure high uptime and resource efficiency even during traffic spikes. Customers should not notice any degradation in performance as platforms scale to demand.
5. Elastic Computing
Using a cloud infrastructure gives SaaS platforms access to elastic computing power. Cloud servers can be programmatically spun up to meet needs and save resources when not required. This prevents resource shortage errors even with sudden usage surges.
6. Database Sharding
Sharding splits databases across multiple servers to optimize performance, redundancy, and scalability. As data volumes grow, shards are added to scale capacity and execution parallelization. This enables platforms to take on more data as customer usage increases over time.
Security
Cybersecurity threats are increasing, so proper protections for customer data are essential for any SaaS app. Security should be baked into the development methodology from the start, not an afterthought.
Some SaaS security best practices include:
1. Data Encryption. All sensitive customer data, both in transit and at rest, should be encrypted. Leading encryption protocols help prevent unauthorized access even in the event of a breach.
2. Role-Based Access Controls. User permissions should be granular, based on roles like “admin,” “manager,” “user,” etc. This restricts access to only necessary data and actions to reduce the risk surface.
3. Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) adds an extra layer of identity verification by requiring a rotating secondary one-time access code in addition to a password. This significantly reduces susceptibility to brute force and phishing attacks.
4. Intrusion Detection. IDS systems analyze network traffic patterns to identify anomalies indicative of an attack. Catching threats early allows the attack vector to be cut off before major damage is done.
5. Automated Security Monitoring. Staying on top of vulnerabilities requires constant vigilance. Automated tools that continuously scan for weaknesses allow problems to be remediated quickly.
6. Regular External Audits. Unbiased external security evaluations can uncover overlooked issues that are not visible internally. Regularly scheduled penetration testing from ethical hackers simulates real attacks.
7. Backups. No security is impenetrable. Maintaining recent backups ensures application and customer data can be restored in the event of catastrophic failure or data destruction.
Reliability
Customers hate downtime, and SaaS businesses hate paying for it. For reliable uptime, there are a lot of measures for redundancy, failover capabilities, and disaster recovery.
Some elements that improve SaaS reliability:
1. Load Balanced Servers. This prevents a single point of failure in application loads spread across multiple active servers. If one server dies, traffic is routed to the next available server.
2. Failover Data Centers. Redundancy is reached by having active-active data centers in different geographic regions. When an entire site goes down, traffic moves to the backup site.
3. Infrastructure Monitoring. With extensive monitoring, they see all the hardware, software, networks, and services. Error alerts and performance metrics can serve as warnings to you, allowing you to tackle potential problems before they halt service.
4. Automated Backups. It is supposed that data should be backed up, and all should decrease to cloud-based and local storage. This crucial task is minimized for human error risks with automated backup processes.
5. Disaster Recovery Testing. Disaster recovery tests are regular, and they assess how the failover effectiveness simulates emergencies. It ensures that when the redundancy systems are needed most, they work.
Customizability
Enabling personalization and integration with existing systems gains user adoption. SaaS apps should have various customization and extensibility options.
Some examples include:
1. White Labeling. This allows end users to be more familiar with the application and more continuous, as the application can be branded with the customer’s company logos and style guidelines.
2. Integrations & APIs. iPaaS capabilities enable customers to connect SaaS applications to other systems they use. Data sharing and workflow automation are done using API webhooks.
3. Configurable User Permissioning. Assigning granular user roles with specific access controls allows customers to customize application experiences. Permission sets should be highly flexible based on the use case.
4. Custom Fields & Metadata. Allowing customers to define additional proprietary fields and metadata makes apps more tailored. This allows the capture of all necessary data points beyond standard out-of-box attributes.
5. Tenant Isolation. While leveraging a shared cloud infrastructure, tenant isolation logically separates each customer instance. This prevents customizations for one customer from impacting the experiences of another.
Analytics and Reporting
Business users need data and insights to inform strategic decisions. SaaS apps should have robust analytics capabilities to satisfy diverse reporting needs.
Some analytics must-haves include:
1. Custom Reports. Ad hoc reporting with custom parameters gives users flexibility. Filtering, sorting, and formatting options help highlight insights most relevant to business goals.
2. Dashboards. Visual dashboards consolidate vital real-time metrics in a single view. Trends become apparent faster when data is synthesized visually rather than in tables.
3. Monitoring abd Alerts. Setting usage threshold alerts helps teams stay ahead of issues. Alerting on key performance indicators also speeds up reaction time.
4. Data Exports. This allows for offline analysis and additional visualization options. Outputs like CSV, XLS, and PDF make it easy for customers to use their favorite reporting tools.
5. Drill Downs. First, we analyze information at a summary level, but we also have access to the raw details through drill-down capabilities. This enables the investigation of data atypicalities (anomalies and outliers), as well as data patterns.
6. Visualizations. Charts, graphs, histograms, heat maps and more visualize data relationships. Interactive displays help spot insights hidden inside the numbers.
7. Segmentation. Viewing analytics sliced by user groups, time frames, behaviors, attributes etc., spots trends across meaningful segments. This enhances context beyond overall totals.
8. Predictive Analytics. Statistical models and machine learning uncover usage patterns to forecast future outcomes. This shifts analytics from reactive to proactive.
Mobility
With growing mobile usage across all demographics, SaaS apps must accommodate anywhere access from any device. This necessitates unified experiences across mobile and desktop.
Some ways SaaS apps can deliver mobile capabilities:
1. Responsive Design. Responsive web design creates adaptive experiences optimized for different screen sizes. Application interfaces dynamically realign for desktop, tablet, and mobile displays.
2. Offline Access. Browser or app caching enables application usage even without an internet connection. Local data syncs back when a connection is reestablished. This is crucial for mobile usage.
3. Touch UX. User experience design must account for touch inputs instead of mouse clicks. This means proper spacing, sizing, and placement of buttons and links to ensure accurate tapping.
4. Mobile App. Some applications might benefit from having the best mobile experience delivered through Native iOS and Android apps. Users can use device capabilities such as GPS, notifications, or cameras with this.
5. Device Agnostic. However, there should be no limits on what devices customers can use – Apple, Android, Windows, or whatever. It all just works seamlessly across all platforms.
6. Smaller Interface. Navigations, menus and information hierarchy make use of real estate on compact mobile displays. And it helps by limiting clutter by prioritizing the most vital functions.
Onboarding and Support
The first impression customers get when onboarding sets the tone for the entire user lifecycle. Ongoing support also needs to be enterprise-grade.
Some best practices for assisting customers include:
1. Self-Guided Tutorials. New users are guided through core platform capabilities by interactive walkthroughs. Early ramp-up does not require live reps, as you can embed tutorials.
2. Community Forums. Knowledge bases and discussion forums help customers help each other. Feedback from peer forums also helps to guide enhancements to products.
3. In-App Chat. The instant chat functionalities allow customers to ask questions without leaving the platform. It results in faster resolution without disrupting workflows.
4. Support Tickets. Support systems with tickets have them logged in great detail, with screenshots or file attachments. Tickets are a means to coordinate responses across stakeholders.
5. Phone and Email. But there is still a role for those who prefer a human touch point. Multiple channels need to be provided to satisfy the diverse needs of customers.
6. Status Pages. Transparency builds trust. With public status pages, users can see operational metrics, see historical uptime, and know how many active incidents there are.
Key Takeaways
To meet customer feature expectations, modern SaaS applications must check quite a few boxes. Common capabilities in scalability, security, customization, mobility, analytics, and more are the most common capabilities in the most successful SaaS products.
The specifics will be dramatically different depending on the target market and industry, of course. However, solving for the areas covered in this article will ensure that any SaaS provider is ready for increased growth and stickiness.
To read more content like this, explore The Brand Hopper
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