UX Redesign: Why Your SaaS Needs It (And How to Tell When It’s Time)

What is the key to the product's success – the right balance between functionality and design? That's right – design matters as much as the functions of the SaaS product. Heaven knows how many good and excellent SaaS companies lost customers because of poor or outdated UX design. Its redesign is the right preventive measure. In this article, we will explain in detail why and how to implement it to save and drive the sales of the SaaS product. What is also important is when to launch the UX redesign process to succeed.

Why UX Design Matters for SaaS

If you are still critical about the role of UX design and are confident in the total importance of functionality overall, here are some arguments to keep in mind:

• UX, which stands for user experience, determines the general level of customer happiness. A well-designed website ensures users easily and quickly find the necessary information and features. Less effort from the client's side also means more loyalty. A customer may also recommend the product to acquaintances as a pleasant bonus.
• Business outcomes. Better SaaS usability always drives sales. A visually appealing interface dramatically simplifies achieving business goals. It bolsters user experience and engagement, which always positively impacts conversion rates and revenue. Users with a positive experience with the product will pay for it longer and be loyal to it overall. Again, as a pleasant bonus, they will also recommend the product to their acquaintances.
• Better brand perception. A well-shaped US design can greatly enhance the perception of SaaS products. This is how the brand can build its reputation easily. Neglecting this aspect or failing to polish it after some time passes can lead to getting worse, if not negative, customer feedback. The latter is a serious threat to the brand's reputation that is much easier to gain and keep rather than restore after failing to do something meaningful for the product's image and perception.
• Competitive advantage. In the modern digital world, a superior UX design ceases to be a must-have. It may also become a competitive advantage that makes a product distinct and recognizable among the dozens of competitors. The UX design is a differentiator for many customers based on their product choice.
• User behavior analysis. A well-designed SaaS even allows users to gather helpful information about how customers interact with the product. It enables the gathering and processing credible data about user behavior and needs. This analysis will help make more informed decisions about enhancing the SaaS product to meet or exceed customers' needs and expectations. This is an always possible deliverable for professional developers and designers.

Signs You Actually Need UX Redesign

Do all these things sound good and reasonable, but you don't know when to start? Keeping your UX in line with the most recent trends is a must-have if you want to bolster your sales. There is no need to wait for the below troubles to appear on the horizon.

These are the main factors signifying you need UX redesign:

• You often get requests like ''How does this work?'' or, what is worse, ''Why doesn't this work?''. There are several reasons for the large number of such requests. First, your support service may fail to solve the problems smoothly. Second, you may have bad UX overall. For preliminary diagnostics, test usability. If required, update the documentation and guides to help your users. If none of these things work, you need a UX redesign.
• Low user engagement. If your customers are not actively interacting with your SaaS platform, they will more likely leave it. Before that, a poor UX design will also cause one negative consequence. The users will not see the value of your product. To tackle these issues, track feature engagement, promote key functions, and enhance the overall discoverability of the primary features. If this doesn't bring the expected results, the overall UX redesign is more likely needed.
• Poor mobile experience. If you want to lose customers, keep the mobile version of your SaaS product outdated or, otherwise, perform poorly. Keeping this function workable is essential since it drives around 50% of traffic. Test this feature and optimize its performance.
• High bounce rate. A bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave the platform after viewing it only. This rate signifies that users don't find what they need. Another reason for the high bounce rate is poor UX design overall. To overcome this challenge, streamline the platform's navigation.
• Low conversion rate. This is serious trouble, meaning your SaaS products fail to achieve their business goals. The poor UX is a major reason for such a negative tendency. This poor UX discourages users a lot. There are two ways to solve the situation. The shortest implies a scope of measures – analyzing user behavior and simplifying forms and features. The longer way is usually more effective and needs UX redesign.
• An outdated interface that looks worse than the competitors have. Old trends become even more visible when potential users navigate through different websites. If your SaaS platform looks and works worse than your competitors, the choice will likely be made not in your favor.

Steps to Pass and Make a Superior UX Redesign

If you have faced one of these issues and want to solve them in a way that helps to bring your product to the next level, make sure you pass all the must-have steps. Note that professional developers and designers never limit their efforts to redesigning features and functions. They also carry out extensive preparatory work to make things work smoothly and coherently. In the end, this combination of steps will maximize the results.

Know Your Target Audience

Making a UX redesign is much deeper than correcting one or several functions. You should have a clear view of your customers. The good news is that you already have background information based on previous user experience about how customers use your product.

Among other things, draw attention to your customers' "pains". Their feedback and customer support performance outcomes are two of the most viable sources of information for the upgraded SaaS UX design model. Also, emphasize how long they use your product.

Several tested methods exist for collecting credible information about your users' behavior. You can review the analytics, review heat maps, and track their performance. Conducting surveys and asking users to complete questionnaires is also a good source of information.

Conduct thorough research and analysis to conclude the key highlights of the future UX design model. Then, proceed to the next steps only later.

Understand Your Business Goals

The most crucial point in this case is probably to keep them realistic while encouraging the company's growth. By the way, this point is not limited to the conversion rate and sales alone. There may be many other goals for UX redesign.

For instance, you may want to ease the overall navigation through the SaaS platform to simplify your customers' lives in this simple way. You may also keep in mind the increase in page views. Implementing next-level technologies, like virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR), are other big milestones in making a competitive advantage of your UX design.

As you can see, there are many things to cover before starting the UX redesign. If you find it difficult, it is better to seek professional help to get the entire effort to the point.

Conduct Competitive Analysis

There is a simple reason for this: Your product should not appear and perform worse than similar ones of your major competitors. The best solution is to improve the performance of your SaaS platform.

When you carry out the UX audit of your competitors, also emphasize several essential questions:

• What things do your competitors accomplish differently?
• What works and what doesn't work in each model you review?
• What experience of your competitors can you integrate into your own redesigned UX model?
• At which points can you perform better? What new technologies can you integrate to make your product even more competitive?

Sure, finding the answers to all of these questions without specific technical expertise may be challenging. That is why working closely with professional developers and designers is better.

Prototyping

Once you identified your customers and competitors, proceed to creating prototypes. These schemes cover the must-have functionalities and structural solutions envisioned during the previous stages.

When working with a prototype, it is essential to elaborate on several user paths. Review the suggested path from the user's perspective to determine whether it is smooth and straightforward. Given the dense competition in the market, making it intuitive is no longer a desired but a must-have outcome. Be clear about the functionalities involved in each case and choose the most workable one that perfectly aligns with your business goals.

Testing

Each prototype you consider has to be validated. First, the developers test each option independently to ensure it operates as it has been set. Second, it is necessary to do the same involving real-life users in the process.

They should test and validate each solution. A/B testing works well when we speak about UX design testing. In this case, drawing special attention to a seamless and straightforward experience is essential. Based on the feedback you get, you should adjust your strategy to make it align with the goals set previously.

Testing before launching the updated product will help you identify hidden issues. In software development, it is called a churn. This is an issue resulting from unknown or misunderstood UX problems. A few illustrations in this case, such as onboarding and checkouts, are too complicated. Both aspects are very irritating for the customers when they are poorly arranged. That is why it is essential to make sure everything works smoothly before launching the renewed UX design version.

One important note here is that you should never involve real-life users in the process. Otherwise, you may easily waste more time and money, as the UX design may require extra corrections at the later stages of development, for instance, during its integration. That is why making decisions and monitoring based on user feedback is essential.

Integration

Multi-stage integration is essential to seamlessly integrate all aspects of your project. It is also necessary to check whether the new model works smoothly and is transparent.

Compatibility is another important aspect. When it is ensured, the overall operation will be streamlined. If all the assignments at the previous stages were completed well, the integration usually goes smoothly. However, occasional corrections may be required.

Monitoring

Once you have integrated your SaaS redesign solution, ensure it works as designated. Continuous monitoring is essential for this purpose. Customer support will help you learn firsthand about users' challenges and problems and inspire future developments.

UI & UX Redesign Case Study: Projects That Achieved More

The practical implications and impact of the user experience redesign are sometimes challenging to overestimate. Here are just several examples. Some of them may, probably, impact even your life too:

• WingWork is a comprehensive, B2B cloud-based software designed for private aviation companies. The clarity and short turnaround time are as important here as anywhere else. The upgraded interface of the aviation game changer helped to make navigation more intuitive and effective. Seamless user experience helped to drive new customers (+120%) and significantly improved the usability score (97). The redesigned UX greatly optimizes workflows and boosts the overall productivity of companies with it. As a consequence, fleet management and maintenance are always simple and straightforward. This directly impacts the safety of flights and overall passenger satisfaction.

• Valocore is a prominent software that helps optimize contract management by eliminating paperwork and digitizing. This seamless and user-friendly software converts paper tasks into digital ones. This effort dramatically increases the speed and transparency of processing. The advanced software handles various assignments – billing, invoicing, reporting, payment receipt, etc. The redesigned UX/UI helped to involve more users (+137%), increased the user retention rate (94%), and greatly improved the ease of use score (91).

• Airclub is another B2B software that streamlines gym operations, helping to save time and boosting the profits of gyms. Its previous UX design needed more attention from users and their clicks while navigating between different members and their details. The payment updates are especially crucial and needed to streamline the workflow. As an outcome of UX design optimization, Uitop has greatly simplified member management and payments, bolstering the overall effectiveness of the internal client's processes. Enhanced interface and analytics ensured a much higher ease of use score (96) and significantly streamlined the overall operation.

Make Your UX Design Work Smoothly and Enjoy High Returns in the End!

The UX is vital for the success of any SaaS product. It probably has the same value as its functionality. Making both wings work coherently always brings high returns to business owners.

If you care about your customers, this endeavor is always rewarding. You may also get high yields and loyalty, building a consistent brand. When your SaaS product's audit shows a high bounce rate and a low conversion rate, redesigning a UX is probably high time.

Hire a professional UX design agency, Uitop. Let your performance meet or exceed your business goals and customers' expectations!