If you're a startup founder, product manager, or Indie hacker aiming to skyrocket user satisfaction and outpace the competition, this guide is for you. Below are seven costly mistakes we made in the first 2 years of running our first SaaS startup, so you don’t have to make them.
Some of these mistakes are obvious, some counterintuitive, and many could creep in as your product evolves. Most importantly, we offer actionable remedies to avoid them. Don't let preventable errors stand between you and your revenue growth!
The monthly product update is an unsung hero of SaaS success. It's the bridge that keeps your customers engaged, informed, and excited about your offering. Yet, this task often falls by the wayside because it sits at the intersection of product and marketing—both the CEO and CTO may consider it outside their task domain.
Your customers signed up for your SaaS product because they had a need that wasn't being met. If you failed to wow them the first time, regular product updates give them a reason to revisit your offering and see the improvements you've made. According to a study by Totango, companies that regularly communicate product updates see a 30% increase in user engagement.
Having a predictable user interface is a critical milestone for a new SaaS product. When users navigate through your various modules and features, they should encounter a familiar and intuitive experience. Mixing and matching navigation design patterns—be it sidebars, nav bars, tabs, or alignment—can create a disjointed and confusing user experience.
Imagine the frustration of a customer who is seamlessly navigating through the main dashboard, only to be confronted with a completely different navigation scheme when they switch to the settings page. This cognitive dissonance can erode trust, hinder adoption, and ultimately lead to customer churn.
You only have one chance to make a first impression, and the look and feel of your UI is just that. Many early SaaS startups focus on functionality, and hand over their brand guidelines to a new frontend developer, only to find that the resulting design strays far from the intended aesthetic. Suddenly, your vision for a sleek application is adorned with a hodgepodge of colors, fonts, and UI elements that fail to align with your brand's core identity. When you ask your frontend developer about it, they’ll reply, “I had to pick a color to finish the job.”
It turns out that 5–10 colors often aren’t enough for a slick-looking app. You'll encounter edge cases where some colors don’t provide enough contrast, aren’t suitable for a call-to-action button, or need to be more differentiated. This creates technical debt which all software will have to clear eventually - better not create it.
Talking to users is one of the most important jobs of a founder or product manager. This is not a mistake we made personally, but one that gets hammered on a lot by YCombinator, because many people have an aversion to talking to stranger.
This mistake is best illustrated by a cautionary tale from the early days of Twitch. During their first four years, the founders hardly talked to their users, focusing solely on product development. It wasn't until they started actively listening that they unlocked a treasure trove of low-hanging fruit features that dramatically increased user satisfaction and drove exponential growth. For example, users wanted higher-quality video streams. For Twitch's backend, this was as simple as switching a setting, but it was a big success with their customer base.
Without this critical feedback loop, you risk building features that miss the mark, solving problems that don't exist, and ultimately losing customers to competitors who are more in tune with their audience's needs. This costs you many thousands of dollars.
This mistake can creep up silently, especially when your SaaS product is still in its early stages. It's easy to get swept up in building features and lose sight of the specific user personas you're aiming to serve.
Consider a hypothetical example: You start building a tool for developers, only to realize that developers generally prefer to build solutions themselves rather than pay for software. Pivoting to a no-code solution seems the next step, but if you fail to adjust the language in the product your new, less technical, target audience, you'll end up with a product that fails to resonate with anyone.
Treat your product like a sales funnel, every additional click is a chance for users to get frustrated and abandon your product. Customers want a quick win—a seamless path from signup to realizing the core value of your offering.
Imagine a new user signing up for your project management tool, only to navigate through a maze of menus and onboarding steps before they can start planning their first project. This convoluted experience is a surefire way to turn off prospective customers. We also found out first hand we increased conversion rate of signups by 23% by putting an image next to our signup form.
A ‘split screen’ signup page often increase conversion. The small drawback is you have to make a different page for mobile signups.
On your SaaS landing page, you probably have multiple CTAs asking users to book a demo or sign up. Yet, when they enter the product and receive the value they're looking for, you don’t ask for money? This is a missed opportunity.
To do this well, you need a clear idea of which features are free and which ones you want your customer to pay for. Ask yourself: If my customer is going to increase the usage of my product, what will they need? Place your feature flags and upgrade buttons there.
Chances are you're offering a 7-day or 14-day free trial of the premium version of your software. Send your customers onboarding emails, and towards the end of the trial period, let them know their benefits are expiring. Give them a way to upgrade right away!
As you can see, a lot of these mistakes will automatically happen if you leave them unchecked don’t actively combat them. Would you like some help implementing or these tasks? Do you want to generate more demand for your product? Claim your free consult with us today!
