SaaS website design is as important as any other web design. SaaS is a great way for businesses to provide their customers with appropriate software to be accessed over the internet via a web browser. A lot of work goes into building a great site, which can be taxing and time-consuming. You may put all your efforts toward building a new site only for some visitors to find it annoying and confusing. Therefore, you must have a clear strategy right from the beginning in order to have the best site that attracts visitors. While this article will not tell you how to build a great site, it will provide a breakdown on some of the design principles that cloud-based web designers need to know.
Interactive Website
First, why is a SaaS website important? When building a more advanced SaaS website, you should pay some special attention to certain aspects like interaction and marketing. Unlike in the era of enterprise software, when most vendors were content with their low-tech, poorly designed, and static websites with low quality stock photos, today’s websites are dynamic, high-tech and more sophisticated than before.
It requires a more experienced web design expert to pull it off. Businesses back in the day got by with those mediocre websites, because the internet was still going through infancy, and a great website design was not the business’s primary marketing tool. Today, however, a simplified marketing campaign backed with a SaaS application and a non-invasive sales model means that your customers are less likely to interact with your sales force at all. Therefore, your site now turns into the de facto face of the business and its number one salesperson.
Indeed, the primary goal of any site is to attract as much traffic as possible, whilst also aiming to convert those visitors into potential, paying customers. But there are also some secondary objective, such as keeping a comprehensive database of email addresses of those visitors who may enroll for a free trial and take advantage of some of the promotional offerings. Your site shares information with its partners, posts information about the available job opportunities and promotes your brand.
Since attracting visitors to your site is important, your sales pitch should aim at convincing and appealing to grab the attention of the visitors and make them want to know more. This should be backed with a visible call-to-action. So you need to present your visitors an offer they cannot resist, especially if they are not ready to accept your trial offer. This can take the form of anything, from newsletter subscription to a callback button. You may also opt for something more interactive like a webinar or a live chat. Compiling a database of email addresses can help you when you need those contacts in future.
Simplicity is King
When it comes to website presentation, simplicity is always the way to go, as this will make it less likely for visitors to turn away from your website prematurely even before they view your site in detail and find out what it has to offer, which they can only find in the inner pages. Simplicity has been a gradual yet steadily-evolving technique adopted by SaaS website designs since their inception. For instance, there’s a saying that the first impression lasts.
That saying applies more to homepages, which act as virtual front doors to companies or businesses. You have a small window to impress your visitors, who may immediately retreat if not immediately impressed. Therefore, take advantage of the first impression to prevent your visitors from hitting the “back” button within the first few seconds of entering your site.
For company products that have become household names, you may forgo providing an in-depth description of who you are or what your company offers. But the truth of the matter is that most businesses do not have that luxury and have to persevere the pain of answering all the visitors’ questions, to their satisfaction.
Typically, your homepage should be narrower in scope – using an easy-to-understand language to attract the right audience. A great SaaS website design homepage will try to avoid too much unnecessary info or fluff that could bore visitors. Instead, make your homepage attractive enough to appeal to visitors to stay longer and find out what your website has to offer. Let your homepage be the bait and hook that captures the visitors’ attention and clears their mind of any ideas of navigating to the competitor’s site.
Friendly User Interface
Your website should be easy to navigate. Avoid fancy objects that could impede browsing. While animations, banners, and pop-ups are great, too much of these can not only clutter your site, but also distract visitors away from what is important: the actual message that your company or business is trying to convey. Moreover, do not be caught up in putting up fancy objects on your site to the point of forgetting primary and secondary calls-to-action (CTA) buttons, which are critical elements of any homepage, as they redirect visitors’ attention to the next logical steps in the web page hierarchy.
If anything, the main objective of a homepage is to appeal to visitors to dig deep into your site’s inner pages and find valuable information that they are looking for. CTA buttons act like a road map: guiding the visitors through your site and preventing them from getting lost whilst persuading them to buy your products. In summary, a well-designed, friendly user interface is critical in building rapport, guiding the user and establishing communication channels. Therefore, make sure your web pages have effective layouts whilst making optimum use of fonts, colors, CTA placement, and other crucial page elements.
Conclusion
Designing a SaaS site starts with having a quality product and a sophisticated, yet easy-to-navigate website that visitors can easily find the information they are looking for and even sign up for a free trial. This should also focus on improving online visibility and increasing lead generation through clearly visible call-to-action. To provide your site’s visitors with a better idea of what they should expect, your SaaS website design should have images of the software, including tutorials and videos that make using the software much easier.