Tips For Creating An MVP For Your SaaS Startup

Written By
Rakhi Sethi
Blogger
Last updated at July 20, 2022
Tips For Creating An MVP For Your SaaS Startup

Did you know that the majority of unsuccessful startups failed because they couldn’t find the right audience for their product? It's true that until you try your SaaS product with genuine customers, you can't determine your correct niche.

 

However, this does not obligate you to dive headfirst into a full-scale development project and hope for the best result. Instead, with just the minimum amount of time, budget, and effort, you can create a SaaS MVP to give your customers a sneak peek at your product.

 

Building MVP for your SaaS startup will help you gather feedback from your customers. Now you must be wondering how should you start? Do not worry. In this article, Noetic will explain to you more about the important steps and tips to construct an MVP for your SaaS application.

 

What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for SaaS?

 

The SaaS MVP is a simplified version of your product that you should employ to demonstrate your concept before launching with help of real customers’ feedback. 

 

Your SaaS project may benefit from an MVP development in terms of idea validation, quick product launch, concept depiction, and initial cost savings. After this, your startup is now prepared for more design and development, updates, and any necessary pivots. 

 

Three well-known examples of using a SaaS MVP include Airbnb, Spotify, and LinkedIn. Moreover, take a look at the following reasons why you should build MVPs for your SaaS.

 

  • Small Efforts - Your team can only focus on the essential functionalities of your SaaS product. Since SaaS MVP demands fewer resources than creating an entirely functioning product.
  • Low Risk in Investment - You get feedback from customers and testers, so you can decide how much time and money you should invest in creating a SaaS product. 
  • Faster Product Launch - Since an MVP just provides the essential functionality, so you can develop and launch it much more quickly. This is one of the characteristics that sets it apart from other products.
  • Additional Time to Refine Product - SaaS MVP helps you create a feedback loop with your clients hence, you get more time to modify your product before launch. 

 

Tips to Build a SaaS MVP 

 

Here are some best tips that you should consider when trying to build SaaS MVP straightforward, quicker, and less costly.

 

Determine the Target Audience

 

Before dedicating yourself to the development of SaaS products, you should create a precise customer persona. For this, you should try to discover the answers to the subsequent questions:

 

  • Who is your audience?
  • What are your customers expect from your product?
  • Are your customers’ problems valid and significant adequately?
  • What gadgets do your users use?
  • Are similar products available in the market currently? If yes then what functionalities do they include? And how will you compete with them?

 

Hence, try to collect as much information about your target audience as possible. If your concept for a project doesn’t have customers, then it might not be the right idea to execute. 

 

Research the Market & Competitors

 

Approximately 19% of unsuccessful startups didn’t spend sufficient attention to the market & competitors. You should do thorough research on the market and current competition as you create a SaaS MVP. Think about the following questions -

 

  • How big is your market, and is there a need for a fresh approach?
  • Is your audience centralized in precise locations?
  • What laws and rules (such as the GDPR, APPI, etc.) are relevant to the geographies and sectors of your target market?
  • How do your opponents solve the identical issues?
  • How do your target customers sense your competitors?
  • How will your product stand out from the remains?

 

Add Only Core Features

 

Numerous companies load their SaaS MVPs with unnecessary features and make them too complicated. So keep in mind that your SaaS MVP is not a final product. Hence try to concentrate on adding minimum and only essential features in your product that you want to test by the audiences. 

 

Select a Business Model

 

Numerous startups fail since they couldn’t discover a proper business model to scale their business. This is why you should specify your revenue model and pricing method earlier.

 

You can try to stick to the subscription-based pricing model since monthly recurring fees can help you to convert more customers. Apart from that, you can also pick different pricing strategies like flat rate, tiered pricing, user-based pricing, usage-based pricing, variable pricing, and freemium. 

 

Make a Product Roadmap

 

Before starting the development of the product, your developers & designers should make a complete roadmap for all project requirements, like:

 

  • Software specifications with applicable and non-applicable factors of the MVP. For example frameworks, APIs, subsystems, etc. 
  • Structure specifications with critical features, user interface, application logic, and methods to execute needs during the coding stage.
  • Cloud judgment to decide the optimal architecture and infrastructure for your product. 
  • Security estimation to recognize, assess, and control risks.
  • Make documentation after deployment to assist the supervision and support teams after the launch. 

 

Advertise Your Product Before Launch

 

If not enough people have a chance to test it out, you won't know if your MVP is up to standard. To draw customers, influencers, and prospective buyers before the launch, you must present your product.

 

You can start with a landing page or a video that demonstrates audience issues and demonstrates how you can address them more effectively than competing businesses.

 

Deploy MVP to Contain Feedback

 

Post-launch is also vital for your MVP since it enables you to study your hypotheses about the market and consumers. You should form a secured feedback loop with your customers to understand what people like and dislike about your creation.

 

Easy Practices to Speed Up Your SaaS MVP Development

 

Even though an MVP is brief and typically supplied quickly, there are some ways to speed up your SaaS MVP development:

 

BaaS

 

The backend as a Service (BaaS) solution enables automating backend procedures so you can concentrate on only frontend development. BaaS providers can incorporate third-party assistance into your application via APIs and automate your background operations such as database management, system updates, notifications, etc.

 

Fewer Code Platforms

 

Platforms that contain graphical interfaces, reusable modules, pre-made code, ready-to-use AI algorithms, and templates can help you to develop MVP faster without complex coding. You can use these solutions to deploy your SaaS MVP with the smallest coding and in a short time. 

 

Popular Languages for Fast Prototyping

 

The intricacy of the project will determine the core stack, although we favor employing the famous frameworks and programming languages for fast development such as JavaScript, Python, Node.js, and React Native. 

 

Open Source Solutions 

 

Open-source solutions such as Bootstrap and GitLab are the most cost-effective ways to stimulate your MVP development. These can save you a tonne of time in the initial stages of the project, despite the dangers of errors and a lack of data. Considering that your SaaS is unlikely to have millions of customers at launch, you can also save money by choosing free databases like MySQL.

 

Conclusion 

 

Creating an MVP for your SaaS product can assist you get the chance to understand what your target audience likes and dislikes about your product so you can modify your strategies to better fulfill their demands. 

 

Nowadays, most startups are obtaining help from outsourcing SaaS MVP development companies like Noetic. We have extensive experience in developing custom SaaS MVP products. So contact us today and talk to our specialists to begin discussing your ambitious project.



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