Importance of Working Out UI/UX SaaS Design
Tags: uiweekly, ux, saas, design
Published: 2020-08-30 15:01:16

Today, there are a huge number of artists who are ready to take up the development of your site or applications. The enormous difference in the cost of the same project among different performers is striking because the price of a site starts at $ 100 and ends with space figures. In this article, we will tell you about the importance of UI/UX for SaaS, its components, about typical misconceptions and myths based on our personal experience working with clients, and help you determine the cost of SaaS product design so that you get exactly what you expect from the designer.

What is the Main Misconception Creating SaaS App UI design

Many clients think that development does not require preliminary interface design because the developer, in principle, can do everything himself. This becomes the main misconception at the initial stage that when using some standard components and approaches from the library, everything will turn out beautifully and conveniently at once. This misconception is most often encountered when creating startups because they are more limited in budget and try to save on everything. Often, the founders of startups do not really understand the values ​​of different stages of development and begin to save on what cannot be saved. In particular, they save on the work of the designer.

It’s even worse when they begin to save on the analyst’s work because it’s the analyst who needs to figure out all the requirements and conceptually draw the architecture of the project, the screen and users, what functions will be, describe iOS cases and so on. That is, he prepares the first materials that are already delivered to the designer, and he, in turn, makes this a beautiful and convenient product. Since many customers like to save money on analytics, as a result, they skip this stage of design. The worst case is when they immediately begin to develop functionality, believing that the developer is professional, which means that he can do everything right as the client wants. This is a huge misconception.

Let's see if it is worth saving on UI UX design and what could be the consequences. What can be lost and what mistakes can be made if this is not done.

3 Myths about Design Practices of SaaS Application

1. We are a small project - we don't need UI/UX design
The first myth is that the client believes that SaaS application UI design is something that is needed only for beauty and only for image and only for very large successful companies. In a small project, this is not necessary and you can just do it somehow and they will forgive you because you have no money. If this is a small company and no one knows you, and therefore everything may not be important if only it can work somehow. This is a misconception because users do not forgive the low quality.

2. Developers can design a product - we don't need a designer
The second myth is to think that a developer can do everything himself without an analyst and without Web Design Companies. This is absolutely not the case for two reasons. Firstly, the developer is a technical specialist who sees everything quite differently as ordinary consumers have completely different habits of using software products and a completely different level of readiness to deal with something difficult to achieve a goal that an ordinary person will not do. Secondly, the developer is a person who knows how to create a software product, but he does not know anything about a specific industry niche, about future users, about what market trends are formed, about that stack of products and solutions. Therefore, he cannot, by definition, do this. In the best case, he can make the application convenient and understandable for himself and for people like him.

3. It is too expensive - we are a small startup, we have no money
The third myth is to think that work on UI UX design is very expensive and you can really save on it. This is absolutely not the case. This work requires very little time, much less than it takes time to develop it. It is absolutely impossible to save anything on this.

Consequences of Believing in Similar Myths

The system will either be inconvenient and users will simply leave quickly. Or they won’t understand the rules of use at all, because the training that will be necessary is so long and long that it will demotivate people and they will go to competitors who are much easier. That is, if the product is not adapted to the behavioral characteristics of people, to their habits, to how they would like to use all this, then the probability of failure is 100%. Look at this image below - your customer is that little kid watching those cute fluffy asses rotating in a random direction :)

Your customers will see this if you skip UI/UX design of your application

What is often ignored before starting UI/UX design

Too many companies that do not have real product experience in creating a product and launching it on the market and bringing it to a successful state, design an interface for reasons of component usage standards as recommended, plus their own vision of convenience.

This is wrong because the SaaS UI design of the interface should not be focused on your own tastes and not on your own concepts of convenience, but on the audience who should use this product later. Most designers and analysts are aware of the existence of standard components and some kind of classic interface solutions. They create a beautiful, but ineffective and inapplicable interface in this business because they ignore the following:

Your interface should be at least as good as the interface of your main and best competitors. But preferably even better, not much, but at least a little better. Sometimes this is enough for users to prefer your product. An example here is Airbnb and Booking, and one of the universally recognized advantages of Airbnb is its simple and convenient interface compared to old school Booking. Therefore, before we begin to design interfaces, we are sure to study in detail at least two or three of the best competitors of our client's product.
You can never do the style of appearance based on your idea of ​​modern and good SaaS app UI design. All this must be taken at least from those competitors (or even not competitors), but from those products that have already worked in this niche for some time. Each niche has already developed its own stereotypes and its own trends and standards that must be taken into account. Your product should be a logical evolutionary continuation of the whole story, and not go into any new direction, but be at least one step better than existing products.

A good interface is always created only with a product manager or marketer who knows the audience of future users well, understands their daily needs, and understands how to build their work so that it is convenient for everyone. Complex things should be solved easily and beautifully. By the way, that’s why you can never trust developers to make an interface on their own. But even a designer by himself without a marketer will most likely not create a SaaS UX design that will be really user-friendly.

Often, to save money, the customer makes a static SaaS interface design, that is, a set of screens, instead of making at least a clickable prototype. This is an opportunity to try this interface precisely in dynamics and to realize all the routes through which the user will have to go through to do something. Such a prototype is a very cheap and effective method to test the convenience of an interface on a focus group. It is correctly planned routes that are 80% of the success of the interface because most of the time the user spends to understand what sequence of actions you need to do to get the desired result. And this is by no means just an intuitive arrangement of components on the screen. Although this is also of course important.

Important Conclusion

A high-quality interface is the fruit of the work of 3 people: a marketer (or product specialist) + analyst + UI/UX designer. Yes, these 3 heros save the planet and our brains from annoying and unusable interfaces.

3 heroes rescuing us from bad UI/US design and letting us live longer

Cost of UI/UX Design for SaaS App

In the SaaS development of the first version of the product, investors usually invest in hundreds of thousands of dollars if development takes place in the United States or Europe. In our company, the same thing will amount to tens of thousands of dollars. At the stage of launching the first version, startups have no room for error - there are no extra tens of thousands of dollars to redo the frontend. If a product does not enter its consumer because of the very complex learning process and development due to the complex interface, then the startup will simply have no money left to redo it. As a result, the project will have to close. Even if there is money, then at an early stage it is very inefficient to spend it on fixing mistakes. It would be much better to use them for remarketing in sales or simply in any other development of the project.

Good UI/UX design saves money - now they are yours!

Our experience in SaaS Interface Design

We recently had a very significant case. We were approached by a client who developed his product for two years by a rather considerable team. There were about 4 developers. This is a lot for a startup. Four people developed a huge amount of functionality over 2 years, working monthly and without any single design at the level of products that would take into account marketing or usability. Therefore, they threw one functional on the second and added it wherever possible.

Thus, a huge number of absolutely uncomfortable pop-ups appeared some completely illogical interface solutions for simple tasks. To the developers, this seemed like a convenient solution and structured beautifully, but for a normal person who goes to work every day and needs to use this product, it was very very difficult and confusing. This client contacted us so that we could make a complete redesign of the entire system. Initially, there were about 40 screens and forms. 

After the redesign, we simplified it to about 27-30 screens and forms, while retaining all the functionality, we made all the chains much more logical, more compact without duplicate information. Everything became available in one or two clicks. For all this work, we spent about 3 weeks of work of one designer and one week of work of an analyst in analytics, that is, a total of 160 hours. At our rate, it is $ 5600. That is, it is less than the salary of one developer per month that this client paid for 2 years.

Therefore, it is obvious that it is impossible to save on design. After the redesign, 4 developers reworked the entire product externally for approximately 2 months. That is, for two months, four people worked to convert a bad design into a good one, and this amounted to about $40,000 - $60,000. As a result, it turned out that analytics plus competent design took about 10% of the time that you need to spend to remake the entire interface of the entire product. It would be simpler and more profitable not to save on design, do it right away and not spend the extra $40,000 - $60,000 to change the appearance. Please, take a look at this example of UI/UX design in more detail.

Final Thoughts

The main thing that any business needs to remember when developing a new project: the right UX / UI design thinks about the simple needs, motives, and goals of a person. A nice shell and convenient functions should work for a real person, simplify his experience of interconnection with the interface. Due to the constantly growing demand in the market, more and more specialists in this field are required, who are able to analyze the behavior of the target audience, to offer quality solutions to enhance usability. Our team will help you avoid many problems that you may encounter too late, and most importantly, it will significantly save your costs. If you need help with UI/UX design for any kind of your software, fill in the contact form below.

Originally taken from https://ardas-it.com/importance-of-ui-ux-design