SaaS might feel like a relatively new part of the business world, but it’s growing rapidly. At the last count, there were around 30,000 SaaS businesses worldwide.
Deciding to launch a SaaS is undoubtedly exciting, but success isn’t guaranteed. You’ll need to ensure your innovation is viable for your business idea to flourish.
Read on for a step-by-step guide on how to validate your SaaS startup concept.
Competitor Analysis
It’s a common myth that a market with many competitors is saturated. Therefore, you must search elsewhere for a startup idea. Thriving competitors are the best indication of plenty of potential in that market.
Search for the main competitors in your niche and start to gather a few metrics, including:
How long have they been in business?
What’s their growth rate?
What do customers dislike about them?
Doing this analysis will provide a way to verify your idea. Plus, it will give you many innovative ways to differentiate yourself from what’s already out there.
For example, you could start an app in an industry where only web-based solutions exist.
Create a Target Customer Profile
Learning about your competitors is only one piece of the puzzle. You’ll also need to do in-depth research into your customers to see what they demand and whether you can meet that need.
First, narrow your target customer profile. Focus on your target audience’s demographics, and explore a detailed persona of this customer, including their interests and online behaviour.
If you can, conduct a survey to get more feedback about customer needs.
Use open-ended questions to invite customers to talk at length about their problems. It will give you more insight into whether your app technology can fill a market gap.
Create An Early Proof of Concept
Adding a small proof of concept to the app store containing your product’s key features is an excellent way to test whether your idea is viable.
Keep things simple and develop your idea quickly. Builder.ai has the tools to create fast prototypes, so explore our app features.
Use email marketing to gather a small list of beta testers. You could offer a discount on the final software in exchange for their feedback on the proof of concept.
Refine Your Idea
Once you have feedback from the proof of concept, it’s time to start putting together the final design for your software.
You’ll probably want to refine the design at this stage, and it’s also an excellent opportunity to refine the branding and marketing for your launch campaign.
Take an incremental approach to the development so that you can continue to get further feedback from your beta test team.
Find Success with Your SaaS Startup
The SaaS industry, still in relative infancy, is ripe for an ambitious and organised company. To succeed, use these steps to ensure you validate and refine your concept before your official launch day.
Apart from this if you are interested to know about Choosing the Right Software Development Firm then visit our Business category.
