Put Your SaaS Customers on the Centre Stage and Get Behind the Scenes—Here's How

If you desire to do well as a product designer, then you must learn to be innovative – consistently devising new, creative, and strategic ways to serve your customers.

This is an age-long product design rule, but it is unfortunate to see SaaS businesses suffer for ignoring this rule. Blockbuster, Nokia, Blackberry, etc. suffered this fate, and so have many other big and small businesses.

From my observation, being innovative in business is more or less about putting your customers first. Put your customers at the centre stage of your business while you work so hard behind the scene to ensure their satisfaction.

Objectives:

• The importance of innovation in SaaS product design
• How to maintain an innovative SaaS product

By the end of this post, you’ll see why the user-centric approach is important and what “backstage” responsibilities you need to take on to ensure you stay in business, stand out, and “shine bright like a diamond”.

Innovation will keep your SaaS business in business

The story about Airbnb and IKEA shows how innovation can keep your SaaS business in business.

#1 – Airbnb rebuilt from ground up after the pandemic

When Airbnb started in 2008, the idea was simple and straight to the point. Then came the pandemic in 2019, and the company almost came to a halt.

Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb stated;

“We had to rebuild the company from the ground up and went public [in December 2020]”

I dare say that Airbnb is still standing strong today because they were smart enough to innovate; aligning their design with the changing world.

Lesson:

Do not dwell in your past glory. Keep analysing and updating your product design to suit your customers at every point in time.

#2 – IKEA makes more sales by feeding their customers

When you hear “IKEA”, what comes to your mind? Furniture, right?

IKEA is known to provide affordable, functional, quality, sustainable, and DIY furniture pieces. In addition to all that, they go above and beyond to make their customers happy; and they have an outstanding success story to show for it.

A very good example is the IKEA Bistro. The idea behind this bistro was to make food available for sale to their customers so they don’t have to leave the store to buy food if they get hungry while shopping. Hunger interrupts the whole buying process, and hungry customers buy less, if at all.

In 2024, IKEA was worth $22 billion, had over 480 stores around the world, and made sales to over 900 million customers. This massive success is attributed to their user-centric approach, which may be negligible but quite consequential.

Other instances include;

• How the store layout is designed to appeal to customer’s subconscious mind in a therapeutic manner, making them feel at home
• How customers feel a sense of worth, satisfaction, and commitment after assembling an IKEA piece
• How the furniture pieces are cheap and easily available

All these qualities helped make IKEA the retail giant it is today.

Lesson:

Feed your customers when they are hungry – and no, it’s not just about food. It could be anything, so long as it makes their life easier so they don’t have to leave your site/app for your competitors “when they get hungry”.

Why “your perfect product” is dead on arrival – user flow optimization

Let’s circle back to the reason for this post – why you should put your customer on the centre stage and get BTS.

The only reason your product may be dead on arrival is if you put yourself in the spotlight and not your customers – that’s not very user-centric.

Ask yourself, does my idea serve me or my customers?

If your idea serves your customers, well, congratulations, you have a great product design for your product.

But if your idea serves only you, then it’s time to go back to the drawing board and start all over again, putting your customers first.

Check out these stats:

• 94% of people say easy navigation is the most important website feature
• Stronger UX design can improve conversion up to 400%
• Smart UI can increase conversion rate by 200%
• Every $1 invested in UX returns $100

From these numbers, you can see that going back to your drawing board or starting all over with your product design is a worthwhile task.

You may need to redesign your product from bottom up (like Airbnb), or make some adjustments here and there (like IKEA). Whatever be the case, it would be worth it in the end.

Here is a simple guide on how to get started.

#1 – Your product funnel is your best friend

So your SaaS business is not giving.

What you need is a true friend to guide you to the right track and stay by you when every other thing may be falling apart.

That friend is your product funnel.

Let that sink in for a moment!

Your product funnel takes you by the hand and shows you how customers interact with your product. It shows you the five stages of a customer journey:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Consideration
• Retention
• Advocacy

While building or rebuilding (as the case may be) your product funnel, there are a few things you must keep in mind.

• Transparency and overview of the user journey
• Identification of growth opportunity through user behaviour
• Optimization of product features to promote innovation
• Strengthen marketing strategies for better conversion

#2 – What are your competitors up to?

Before getting into competitive analysis of any form, do yourself a favour and study “your brand” first.

Sun Tzu, Chinese general and strategist once said;

“If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

Don’t rush off to study your competitors like others do, study yourself first. What resources, assets, and systems do you have in place? – that’s internal analysis.

Next, find out everything you can about your competitors – that’s competitive analysis.

Then take note of your competitive advantages and unique capabilities. In a case where you’re lacking in both, then you need to work on what needs to be done to give you better competitive advantage and unique capabilities.

#3 – What are your customers up to?

Let’s refer to the IKEA case study for a moment.

Aside from providing modernist DIY furniture designs for their target audience, they also provide food for sale.

Question: Why exactly did IKEA start selling food?

Answer: They discovered that customers bought little or nothing when they were hungry. The customers would quit shopping at the IKEA stores just because they were hungry and needed to find a place to eat. So IKEA decided to invest in bistros and cafes “for their customers”.

Did it work?

Well, yes it did! – as a matter of fact, the IKEA foods segment generates 2.5 billion dollars annually.

This IKEA success story which applied to their brick and mortar stores can also be applied to a digital setting in SaaS product design. Here is how.

• Invest time and resources into building the ideal customer personas (ICPs) for your business.
• Map out the current user flow chart for your product to see their real live pain points, motivations, and needs.

#4 – Adjust your product design to increase retention

Now it’s time to design (or redesign) your product.

With every information you’ve gathered so far, draw up a strategy.

• Create a user journey map:

The whole idea of creating a customer journey map is to identify areas where customers are likely to interact with your product based on past events. Capitalise on these critical areas by creating a user flow chart for them.

With these new user flow charts, it is easier to refine the product, providing users with their desires and demands.

• Use consistent design themes:

According to Jay Conrad Levinson, an American writer:

“Consistency breeds familiarity, familiarity breeds confidence, and confidence breeds sales.”

If you want your customers to have confidence in you, then you need a consistent design theme. Consistency breeds familiarity, which in turn results in predictability, and then confidence.

A consistent design theme includes a definitive colour palette, topography, shapes, etc. It gives greater visibility and accessibility to important pages, groups certain elements in the same manner all through your site or app, etc.

• Get your page to load faster:

  
  

Sorry to say, but “slow and steady” is bad news when it comes to app/site load time. Just a split second of delay can increase bounce rate, decrease revenue, and damage your credibility.

To make your digital product load faster from a design perspective, you can compress white spaces, optimize images, reduce redirects, etc.

• Communicate effectively at every stage:

George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright and critic said;

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

Never assume your customers know anything about your product. Make every step explicitly clear at every stage and easy to navigate. Use easy and accessible CTA buttons, tooltips, and navigation tools to give your users a seamless experience with your product.

#5 – See how the new update is doing/prototyping:

When you’re done with the possible changes required to give your customers a seamless user experience, then it’s time to get outside opinions – was the juice worth the squeeze?

Get a few people to test your prototype, preferably potential users and co-workers. Watch closely to see how well they can orient themselves within your product and take detailed notes.

Rework your product where necessary, prototype again, rework, till you’re satisfied with the outcome. Do not obsess over perfection though.

Conclusion:

When you design your product with users in mind, it is easier to achieve user satisfaction as well as business goals. Spare no cost to understanding your brand, competitors, and optimizing your product design for effective results.