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Tag: tips

  • 8 Tips to Stay Productive while Working Remotely

    Due to the drastic spread of novel coronavirus or COVID-19, companies are making several efforts to keep their employees safe and maintain the productivity at the same time. Most of companies have asked their employees to work from home. As majority of the people don’t have experience in working remotely, it is difficult for them to stay productive as much as they would be in their offices. Here are the tips for employees to maintain the productivity while working remotely.

    Set Up a Routine

    The remote work obviously often allows you to set your own hours, a lack of structure or routine can be damaging to your workflow. When you engage in remote work, it’s easy for your colleagues in regular offices to think that you’re always there to “take calls.” It is better to use a digital calendar tool to let co-workers know what your working hours are so that they can know when it’s appropriate to ask you questions or when you should be left alone. One must schedule their hours around appointments, lunch, and other activities just as you would at an office job but it’s also important to pencil those into your calendar as well. Make sure to discuss your remote work hours with your manager before you begin and once those hours are established, make a point of sticking to them. Within that “block” of time, divide out your subroutines. It is essential to make sure that you clearly establish which times you’re receptive to emails, phone calls, etc. and when you’re officially off the work.

    Keep Your Workspace Clean

    At the end of every day, or at least every week, it’s worth cleaning your office(your workspace). Make sure that you have dedicated space that’s “yours” to work in. It can help you effectively if that space is solely devoted to work only. After a few weeks, you’ll instinctively know it’s time to lock down as soon as you sit down. Throw away what’s unnecessary. It will help clear your mind too. Psychologically, it is proven way to boost efficiency. It is important to keep things at right places. You can start by creating a dedicated and welcoming workspace. Next, invest in the equipment you’ll need. For example – an office chair and desk, a speedy internet connection, a hands-free headset, a good quality webcam for your video conference calls, etc. Creating a cozy and inspiring environment is important too. This is a space where you’ll be spending a lot of time. Give it some love.

    Communicate Frequently

    When we work in a team, communication becomes extremely important. When in doubt, communicate with colleagues and managers. This will make sure you remain in touch with them. When working remotely, it’s better to over-communicate than it is to under-communicate. After all, your employer won’t necessarily know you’re working, so you’ll need to make sure everyone is aware of what you’re doing. It is advised to keep records or updates on any messaging platform to let other Teammates know what you’ve been up to today. It encourages us to get things done every day and lets others know what we’ve been working on.

    Be transparent

    When you’re out of sight and people can’t reach you as easily, small doubts can begin to arise. Therefore, it is a must to build trust from the start by agreeing with your employer and colleagues by keeping them updated on your progress and activities. You could propose quick but regular status calls to teammates or a simple progress report that you can send out at regular intervals to your manager. If in case you aren’t going to be reachable for a period of time, provide advance notice to the colleagues who might miss you.

    Communication becomes essential while Working Remotely

    Use the right tools

    The right kind of tools can be game changers when it comes to remote teamwork. Tools like Slack, SmartSheet, Skype, Hangout, Zoom and Google Drive are just a few to name. These tools are really essential because they can help you collaborate on projects and share documents. Now, many of these softwares & tools have cut down their charges. Moreover, they are also providing the additional features. Thus, by using the right video conferencing software like FaceTime, Zoom or Skype, etc., one can stay connected with their team to increase the productivity.

    Set goals & meet them

    As mentioned above, it is important to create the routine but it is equally important to stick to the plans. Distractions are an issue when you work from home. At the start of the week, determine what hours you plan to work and stick to them. That’s why it’s a good idea to set concrete work goals to keep you focused and moving forward. And while setting goals is important, one must make sure to hold themselves accountable to them too. Use your smartphone for information and not distractions even though you have got liberty use it whenever you want to. When one works with focus & discipline, after completing those goals, it inspires them more to follow the same attitude towards their goals.

    Take Breaks

    It is the best to mimic from home the same habits you would have if you were working in a physical office such as taking a moment to chat with coworkers or grabbing a cup of coffee at your local cafe. It’s also vitally important to move your body. Don’t sit still for the entire day. Get creative with your breaks and run out for lunch with a friend or take a walk around to get some fresh air. Ideally, try to work out once a day, or at least go for a daily walk. One can rock out at home with a rich playlist to get into the zone. Essentially, anything you can do to give your brain and body a break will be beneficial to your overall experience and productivity. Mentally, too, it’s good to occasionally stop working and move around.

    Separate Work from Life

    Now that you work from home, the boundaries between work and life will seem thinner. But it’s important to keep those boundaries as interference of either of these would land you in troubles. So, avoid working where you sleep or where you eat. Find a space where you work and only work.

    Conclusion :

    A remote team can be just as effective, if not more effective, than a local, in-house team. Although it requires some coordination, it allows everyone more flexibility, which can help your team maintain a healthy work-life balance. When done the right way, a remote job can provide both workers and their companies with a healthy balance of freedom, flexibility, and production. Using the tips above can serve as a guide for how to make remote work as effective as possible.

  • How to Remotely Manage your Workforce?

    The rise of remote work might be unavoidable, and you should want to take advantage. Allowing remote work can benefit not only your employees, but you as a manager and the organization as a whole. Not only do remote workers tend to enjoy what they do more and find remote work less stressful in general, but they’re more willing to put in extra hours as a result. However, that’s just one of the potential benefits of remote work for employees, managers, and companies alike. Remote work is about more than just the advancement of technology, it’s something that has the potential to help the way we work, manage, and lead.

    Remote work
    Remote work

    With 50% of the workforce working in some sort of telecommuting role and 80 to 90% of all employees saying they would like to work remotely at least part of the time, according to Global Workplace Analytics, offering remote opportunities is an attractive way to gain productive workers. That’s just the beginning, though. According to Owl Labs State of Remote Work 2019, 42% of remote workers have plans to work remotely more often over the next five years than they do now.

    Also read:

    The Challenges of Managing Remote Employees

    While there are great potential benefits of allowing remote work on your team, there’s a problem: most founders and managers still aren’t familiar with the challenges of managing remote employees. Remote work is different from the typical work structure in a few big ways. And while there are big benefits, there are also new and unique challenges with both hiring and managing remote employees that managers never see coming.

    According to Buffer’s State of Remote Work report, these are the major challenges with remote work in general: Without any prior experience working remote it can be hard anticipating the challenges your remote employees will face.

    Challenges of working remotely
    Challenges of working remotely
    • Loneliness and isolation – Regular human interaction can be easy to take for granted, until you don’t have an office full of people to be around every day. Do what you can to engage them socially with the rest of the team whenever possible.
    • Communication issues due to a lack of non-verbal cues – When you don’t have enough face-to-face communication, it can become difficult to sense intent in messages between you and your employee. It’s harder to understand a message when it’s only text, or you don’t know them as well as other, in-office employees.
    • Feeling left out – The feeling of being left out– of company celebrations, consideration for a promotion, and your opinion in general– is more common among remote employees than those on-site. When you work remotely, you miss out on so many opportunities to connect with your colleagues and managers.
    • Monitoring – You can’t physically monitor them.
    • Feedback system – Reviewing work and providing feedback is difficult.
    • If you have multiple remote employees, it’s hard to keep them moving in the same direction.

    Relevant read:

    Top 7 Tips for Managing Remote Employees

    Remote management can feel like a totally different challenge than managing people you work side by side with. Things that work in an office don’t always translate exactly to remote employees. Use these tips to be more conscious of the unique approaches you should take for managing remote employees.

    Hire the Right People

    Let’s face it- not everyone can be a remote worker. Everyone loves the flexibility of working remotely. But only some have the attitude and discipline to be productive as remote employees. When hiring a remote employee, look for people who can work independently.

    Good remote workers have a positive attitude and motivation to do their job well. You don’t want people who always need a push to complete the task. It will be a nightmare if you have to micro manage your remote employees. A good remote employee will not wait for you to ask for updates or assign tasks. Rather, he or she will proactively update you on the status and schedule.

    Hire the right people
    Hire the right people

    Always hire employees who communicate well as it’s the key to a successful remote team. The better your remote employees understand your instructions and communicate with you, the easier it will be to manage them.

    Set Clear Expectations

    Everyone has a different idea of what doing something “quickly” or “well” means. Whether showing examples of what you expect to be done, calendar sharing, etc., make sure you have clear expectations from those you work online. The more prepared they are, the better they can serve.

    Set clear expectations
    Set clear expectations

    Explain what you want from your remote employees and when you want it. There is no better way for managing remote employees than using well-defined and measurable goals.

    How to:

    Engage Regularly

    It’s hard to keep all employees on the same page if you have multiple remote employees. Engage with your remote workers on a daily basis through some kind of communication. Use multiple channels to communicate. Then, plan a regularly scheduled face-to-face meeting.

    Engage regularly
    Engage regularly

    This can be weekly, monthly, or annually, and could be combined with a training or coaching program. This constant interaction and engagement will help remote workers feel included in an important aspect of the organization. You can identify issues early and manage them better with frequent communication.

    Have Reliable Tools First

    If remote employees can’t download files, struggle hearing on a conference call, and consistently receive meeting invitations for times when they are still asleep, you have failed to address the basics. First, invest in reliable tools to make collaboration possible. Then develop clear processes to use such tools.
    These are some of the Tools to Help You Boost Team Collaboration.

    Track Progress of Your Remote Employees

    Be sure to track the progress of your remote employees daily. You stay on top of project status and eliminate nasty surprises later by reviewing work every day. Give your remote workers periodic feedback to ensure they are heading in the right direction.

    Here are some tools you can use to track time, project status, and tasks:

    1. HiveDesk is a time tracking software for managing remote employees. You can create automatic timesheets, capture screenshots, track project & tasks, and measure productivity with HiveDesk. Start your 14-day free trial.
    2. Hubstaff is a staff monitoring software which screenshots the activity levels.
    3. Asana is a project management software that allows you to organize to-do lists, projects & meeting information, conversations, and emails in an easy-to-read dashboard.
    4. Trello is a project management tool that allows you to manage tasks and projects.

    Must read:

    Stay Focused on Goals, Not Activity

    It is important to manage expectations and stay focused on goals when embracing a remote workforce. Don’t worry as much about what is being done. Instead, concentrate on what is being accomplished. If we are meeting our goals, then great. If not, we need to look into the situation further. It is all about accomplishment, not activity.

    Conclusion

    There’s a lot about managing remote teams that’s exactly the same as managing those on-location. However, it’s a mistake to assume that a remote employee is the same as one working in the same office as you. Remote employees are faced with unique challenges and you have to understand those challenges to effectively manage your entire team. What do you think of this list of tips to for managing remote employees? Please share it with your team and followers on social media.

  • Why Outsource Software Development?

    Building a SaaS product introduces a lot of challenges – especially acquiring the right talent for the project, meeting budget and time targets. Outsourcing brings many advantages to SaaS development. The offshore SaaS development process is now smoother than ever with implementation of better development methodology and qualified product developers.

    With adequate resources available, one can use simple development methodology to implement a communication and result oriented strategy. With a team-based approach to SaaS product development, you get access to additional benefits of flexibility and speed. The best place to find local developers to collaborate with is to attend local tech meet-ups and start asking around. Find like-minded people you’d trust to collaborate with to develop your idea.

    Why Outsource Software Development?

    At the most fundamental level, outsourcing can help solve three specific issues: providing access to talent, saving time and lowering costs. In addition, outsourcing can also provide scale and reduce time to market. Many large companies have already turned to outsourcing. Startups and mid-sized technology companies are getting there, but they seem to have a harder time making the decision to try it.
    Working with an outsourced development team provides a number of benefits to SaaS companies. Both during the MVP stage and growth stage. Besides, outsourcing the development of your SaaS products give you multiple benefits.

    Why Outsourcing?
    Why Outsourcing?

    Most software companies build early versions of their software in-house and iterate until they find a product-market fit. Then, they rapidly grow their user bases. But as growth accelerates, so does the pressure to meet aggressive product roadmaps, add new features and fix bugs and usability issues. The weight of this work strains the internal software development team, and they need to expand.
    At this stage, companies immediately run into the realities of finding and hiring IT talent — the 50-plus days it takes to find, interview and hire (which doesn’t include on-boarding) and the high incremental costs of adding new employees. All while managing sales, marketing and growth processes. If you’re facing similar challenges, outsourcing might be the best answer.

    Also read:

    Benefits of SaaS Software Outsourcing

    In addition to providing access to talent, outsourcing development affords companies many other benefits, from time and cost savings to process improvements.

    Start Software Development Projects Right Away.

    Outsourcing can help you manage growth without getting overwhelmed. It can speed up software development by providing quick access to developers and testers. Instead of spending 50 days to hire each developer, you can hire a whole team in one week and get started. And you don’t need to spend 80 hours screening every hire; it’s done by your outsourcing partner.

    Lower Costs

    Like most other tech companies, SaaS ventures typically operate on a shoestring budget focused on reducing initial development costs and maximizing the return from their finalized software. Because of these limitations and the intensely competitive nature of the SaaS industry, it is incredibly difficult for companies in this arena to have the budget to hire the sort of large, highly skilled internal development teams necessary to produce a minimum viable product (MVP) that can connect with consumers.

    Outsourcing lower costs
    Outsourcing lowers cost

    That’s why many companies, large and small alike, turn to outsourcing when undertaking a new SaaS development project. Some companies opt to outsource their entire development process to an experienced end-to-end delivery team, capable of translating a rough idea into a polished final product. Whatever your needs, your outsourcing partner should help you create a cost-effective plan of action that allows you to add hyper-specialized developers to your company as soon as you are ready.

    Implement Efficient Processes.

    Software development requires both skilled developers as well as strong processes. A good outsourcing partner can improve development by leveraging its experience in executing similar projects. It can, for example, apply its framework and practices for managing code quality and protecting intellectual property.

    Outsourcing Implement Efficient Processes
    Outsourcing Implement Efficient Processes

    With an outsourcing partner, you can meet demand at a reduced cost, allowing you to invest more in key growth drivers, such as marketing, sales and product development. You actually can have your cake and eat it too!

    Relevant read:

    Find the Right Talent

    Find the right talent
    Find the right talent

    For the modern companies, one of the most harrowing challenges that they face is finding the right talent in a competitive job market. The Annual CIO Survey found that 65% of technology leaders said that the search for tech talent is one of their industry’s biggest challenges. However, thoughtful tech leaders can sidestep this problem through software outsourcing–and by working with outsourcing partners who have a wide network of experienced software engineers ready to begin their next project today. Just as importantly, their recruiting staff can identify which software engineers are best suited for your organization given your internal capabilities, budget, and project goals.

    Flexibility After Development

    In the midst of a major software development project, most employees don’t have time to think ahead to next month, much less next year. But, one of management’s primary responsibilities during this time period is to make sure that their team is prepared for the next steps once the software is brought to market.

    If you outsource SaaS development from the very beginning of your project, you can simply thank your temporary team members for their hard work and contributions and wish them well on their next project. This is an enviable position to be in: managers who followed the old system of hiring a full-time staff are trying to figure out how to reduce their budget and put these employees to work, while those who outsourced development are looking towards the future and reorganizing their augmented staff for the next big project.

    Learn from Others

    Outsourcing software development allows you to bring in the most sought-after experts in the SaaS development field without the need for a drawn-out hiring process and, even more impressively, allows you to add them to your team almost immediately since your outsourcing partner will have these engineers on-call.

    An incredibly difficult aspect of the SaaS process is that management should fully understand the SaaS development cycle, their customer needs, and the challenges that the project will likely bring. However, no matter how experienced your management team is, they can undoubtedly benefit from working with outside advisors who have overcome those very same challenges repeatedly throughout their careers.

    Must read:

    Some top SaaS companies that outsourced development and became successful.

    Slack

    Slack
    Slack

    One of the most popular communication tool used by many businesses. Not everybody is aware that the development of this collaboration application launched in 2013 was in fact outsourced. The four founders of the startup contacted a design company to handle the design of the website, application and Slack’s logo. The MVP was later distributed to beta testers and gained 8k users on the final launch day. As for today, Slack is used by nearly 8 million users per day and is steadily gaining momentum and recognition.

    Microsoft

    Microsoft
    Microsoft

    Yes, Microsoft, a giant that does not have to be introduced. Employing more than 131k people, Microsoft is said to have as many remote contractors as its direct employees. In 2010 Microsoft signed an outsourcing deal with a provider in India to manage its internal IT operations. The partner was responsible for managing IT help desk and servicing applications, devices and databases in 450 locations in more than 100 countries. This allowed Microsoft to reduce IT support costs.

    Groove

    Groove
    Groove

    Groove – an online customer support platform – is yet another amazing example of what outsourcing can give you. Its founder – Alex Turnbull – after selling his previous company, wanted to get back into the game as quickly as possible. Lacking technical knowledge and staff, he decided to outsource the entire development of the product. This allowed him to save money that would have been spent on hiring employees, offices etc. In 2016, Groove gained a total revenue of $5.2 million and is now employing people all around the world.

    Conclusion

    In the development of any software product or service, the most crucial resources are time, money and energy. SaaS software or products are the applications that will only witness a rise in the coming years. There are various tools and applications available in the market today for efficient project management overseas. With Skype, Google Hangouts, Jira and various others, you can easily manage the offshore development of your SaaS product.
    Those few stories from SaaS startups that recognized the value of outsourcing their development are truly inspiring. They are proof that outsourcing saves money and allows to quickly create prototypes and shorten time-to-market. So, what do you think about outsourcing software development? Please let us know in the comments section below.

  • How to Convert Blog Traffic to Leads?

    Are you struggling to increase free trial signups? You’re not alone. Of course, if you have a SaaS product, you’ll eventually want to increase your conversion rates to get paying customers, but the process of getting a sustainable user base starts by getting more people to take free trials and check out demos. If you don’t, your business won’t last very long, because you won’t make the revenue you need to keep it going.
    Blogs are a popular, effective, and affordable way to bring people to your digital domain. That’s the good news. But the bad news is that traffic generation is only half the battle. Page views, likes, tweets, and comments are nice, but none of them are the ultimate goal. You need to convert that traffic into leads.

    Obviously, growing an audience isn’t enough. Content marketing is about delivering value while paving the way for the sale. It’s very rare that a first-time visitor of your blog will immediately buy your product. Thus, instead of hoping that visitors will somehow rediscover your blog later, you want to take actionable steps towards building a communication channel – so you don’t lose them.
    Here are several ways you can capture leads to build a relationship with your audience and ultimately convert them into new customers.

    The Reader to Revenue Strategy

    Here’s a super simple framework for understanding how you’re converting readers into customers. You convert readers to customers in just 2 ways:

    1. Through direct links to sales pages
    2. By capturing reader emails and emailing them.

    That’s it. Once you put your conversion strategy into that simple framework, you can move on to measuring how both funnels are doing and then increasing the conversion rate.

    Also read:

    Methods to convert your blog traffic to leads

    Offer an Irresistible Incentive

    One of the main challenges with converting blog traffic is driving visitors to your main website. When you think of it, that’s not why they came to the blog for in the first place. And chances are they aren’t that much interested in your product or service. But you can motivate them to be by presenting an irresistible incentive.

    An incentive is something that can motivate a person to take action. It works for a simple reason – it helps making the decision easier. In online marketing an incentive is typically an appealing element such as discount, bonus, special offer or promise constructed to stimulate a desired action. Whatever incentive you choose though, for it to work you need to communicate it to visitors. And there are 4 main ways to do that:

    • Display a Static Ad
    • Use A Scrolling Ad
    • Display a Notification Bar
    • Play on Visitors’ Curiosity with a Navigation Link

    Improve your pitch

    You’ve heard of an elevator pitch, right? It’s how you concisely pitch a prospect in less time than it takes to ride an elevator cab to the destination floor.

    Elevator pitch
    Elevator pitch

    Elevator pitches work in digital marketing, too. In fact, they’re often more effective than long, drawn-out pitches. You just need to know what works for your audience.

    Let’s say, for instance, that you’re selling shoes. Most people know what shoes are, so you don’t need to explain how they work or what they’re for. You just need to bottom-line why they’re the best shoes for your audience. If you search for Nike running shoes on Amazon and click on one of the models, you get very scant product copy:

    Nike running shoes
    Nike running shoes

    That’s eight bullet points. Why? Because it’s all the prospective customer needs to know. How can you tell what pitch will work best with your audience? Test different pitches. Try long- and short-form pitches. Adjust the wording. Switch up your headlines and calls to action (CTAs).

    Newsletter signup

    You’ve put in the work to get people to your website; make sure you capture as much of it as possible. Walk them through the next step of becoming your customers. A newsletter signup is a great way to do this. There are a few methods you can use to motivate them to sign up for your newsletter. One way is a pop-up that opens on the screen when users have scrolled down to a specific piece of the content. Some great tools to set this up are JustUno or Popup Domination, either of which will open up a pop-up to attract visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, just like the one below:

    Newsletters
    Newsletters

    Another technique is to have an email newsletter sign-up option on the right-hand side of the blog. This is always visible while being a bit less “obnoxious” to visitors who are reading the blog post. Some great tools for this are Get Drip or Hubspot, which allow you to create side opt-in forms, like the one below:

    Subscribe popup
    Subscribe popup

    The cool thing about this pop-up is that it makes it easy for visitors to become subscribers because it gives them multiple options, depending on their preferred contact method.

    Relevant read:

    Collect Immediate Feedback

    The best way to find out what’s working to increase free trial signups is to ask your visitors. Collecting feedback will help you tweak your marketing strategy and messaging to increased effectiveness. Options for collecting visitor feedback include using a customer survey and interacting with visitors via live chat, as in this example from Missinglettr.

    Feedback system
    Feedback system

    Popping up a survey just before people leave can help you find out why some people are ignoring your free trial. Then you’ll be able to adjust your marketing to get their interest next time around. Or you could email free trial signups immediately after they’ve signed up to ask what they’re hoping to get from the free trial. Again, that’s valuable information for future marketing.

    Call to Action

    Your blog posts need a call-to-action. Every one of them. You need to get your visitors to do something: sign up, download, click, read something else, subscribe, install, contact you, and so on. Giving prospects a clear action to take is the key to converting passive blog traffic into real, active, and engaged customers. This is arguably the most important persuasive skill you need as a marketer.

    A high-quality blog post without a compelling CTA is a lead lost. They’re already on your site. They’re already interested and engaged with you and your brand. So, give them more. A strong CTA is action oriented, benefit-to-them driven, visual, persuasive, and ideally creates a sense of urgency.

    Example of CTA - Dropbox
    Example of CTA – Dropbox

    I recommend including a clear call to action in every blog article you publish. Too many blog articles, even on the best blogs, don’t result in any action after a visitor reads them. Including social share buttons at the bottom of a blog article will help visitors easily share your article, further expanding the reach of the article. Having a contact us button with an action-oriented color, like orange, can make it easier for people to get in touch with you if they have comments or questions about what they just read.

    Lead magnets

    Lead magnet is anything that your potential customers will find valuable. You’re going to offer it for free in return for their email and consequently a chance to develop a relationship with them. A classic lead magnet example is an eBook.

    Lead magnets
    Lead magnet

    There are however many other content types you could use to collect visitors’ emails:

    • Free tools – Hubspot’s Marketing Grader is a good example. The tool allows you to grade the marketing effectiveness of your site, in exchange for an email of course.
    • Templates / Checklists – Whitespark offers a Review Handout Generator allowing users to print instructions on how to leave a Google review for their business.
    • Discounts – Many Ecommerce and B2C websites offer discounts for the first purchase if you sign up for their mailing list.
    • Email Courses – Create an educational resource your visitors need and offer it for a sign up. For example, Enchanting Marketing offers a free, 16-part writing course.

    Must read:

    Show off case studies, testimonials, and social proof

    Collect reviews from your customers, ask clients to create testimonial videos, and mention any high-profile clients you have (with their permission, of course). If a well-known person in your industry has tried your product and loved it, mention that fact on your homepage, landing pages, and elsewhere on your website.

    Social proof, case studies, and testimonials are all excellent ways to convince your website visitors to convert. You want them to know they aren’t betting on something new and untested. You want to infuse them with confidence.

    Conclusion

    Generating blog traffic is only half the game. It’s knowing how to convert blog traffic that differentiates winning marketers from the rest of the crowd. Apply the actionable strategies we’ve discussed, and you’ll start seeing how your blog can be an effective tool to win you the sales you seek.

  • How to Launch your SaaS Business?

    Launching a SaaS business takes a lot of hard work and determination. Many entrepreneurs feel that it is about getting the product out the door. Unless you’re an experienced entrepreneur, this approach can be quite disappointing. You launch your SaaS product and hope to get a few signups every day. Days turn into weeks, and you don’t find anyone coming. Why? Because your product is only part of the puzzle. There are quite a few things to sort out before you take your product to market.

    Here are 9 things to take care of before you launch a SaaS business.

    Validate business idea early

    You don’t want to end up spending thousands of dollars to realize it’s just you and your best friend using the app you’ve built. Reach out to relevant communities on social media, forums, put together a survey and ask as many people as you can. Make sure there are people who not only need your product, but are also ready to pay money for it.

    Chanty business idea validation survey
    Chanty business idea validation survey

    Also read:

    Learn about your target market

    Getting to know your buyer persona is extremely important while running a business. Never stop learning about your target audience as their needs evolve and so should your product. When you are just starting out, put a survey with several questions to find out the biggest pain point. Apart from doing a survey, make sure you communicate with your potential clients directly. The more you talk to your customers, the better (and faster) market fit you’ll get.

    Have customer onboarding

    No matter how simple your SaaS product, you need to have an automated process to onboard new users to your app. This will make it easier for people to use your product and quickly turn them into paying customers. At the minimum, it should allow users to sign up and sign in, display a welcome screen and give a quick product tour of your top 3 features that help them get started. Don’t walk them through all the features as it will only confuse them. You can use free plugins like Intro.js to provide a step-by-step guide to your application. Also, have automated lifecycle emails (after signup, after activation, end of trial).

    For example, Slack has an awesome new user onboarding which uses a combination of tooltips, animations, static screens, and in-app examples.

    SaaS customer onboarding
    SaaS customer onboarding

    Relevant read:

    Get the tool kit ready

    There are certain software tools your team will need to operate. For example:

    • CRM to track your tasks
    • GitLab for coding, testing and deployment collaboration
    • Confluence for company wiki and meeting notes
    • G Suite for a corporate email, storage and documents collaboration
    • MailChimp, Mailgun and Amazon SES to send out emails to our customers
    • Team communication tool like Slack
    • InVision app for prototyping
    • Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, SimilarWeb for keyword, traffic and backlinks research
    • Google Analytics, Hotjar, Yandex Metrica for site analytics, heatmaps and more
    • Buzzsumo for content research
    • Canva, Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Manageflitter, Hashtagify to manage and design  social media accounts
    • LinkedIn Sales Navigator to outreach potential clients in LinkedIn

    Wow, I didn’t realize there were so many. You’ll probably have the kit of your own, however, this list should at least help you receive an approximate idea of what you’ll need. These are just examples of software that do the task, there are plenty of good alternatives for each one of them. So, choose accordingly.

    Don’t charge your customers initially

    When you launch a SaaS startup, it might be tempting to charge your customers. After all, paying customers are the best way to validate your product. Here’s why it’s not a good idea. If you need to charge your customers, you need to add a payment gateway such as Stripe or 2Checkout to your website, which will cost you integration time. You also need to apply for a bank account and run around for additional procedures such as incorporation. The whole process can take months and delay your launch unnecessarily.

    Instead, release your SaaS product as a beta version, and mention that it will be free during the beta period (3-4 months). This will give you enough time to validate your idea, as well as set up the payment module.

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    Don’t forget the social media

    While social media is not the primary traffic source, it’s still important to keep your customers updated. Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook serve this purpose pretty well. Even if you don’t plan any social media activity yet, it’s still a good idea to reserve your brand name at all the major social platforms.

    Social Media
    Social Media

    Start a blog

    Content marketing is a big thing. If you choose to attract organic traffic with your articles, I advise you to write in-depth articles that bring value. This task can be given to freelance writers but sometimes their articles don’t reflect the personal experience, the passion for what you are doing, their words are not filled with excitement. Don’t expect instant results. Running a blog is a lot of time and effort. In fact, according to HubSpot, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads than the ones that don’t.

    Start a blog
    Start a blog

    Plan A Media Stunt

    Motivate those who already signed up to share your startup with their friends. You can offer an early access to those who invite a number of friends (usually 3-5) by providing a unique url to share. You can also move them up in a waiting queue of beta testers or offer other rewards your audience would be interested in.

    Earning press coverage requires being the subject of a news story. Avoid stunts that will ring as desperate or cynical and focus instead of events or actions closely related to your brand’s mission. Put the focus on the most newsworthy element of the SaaS itself and how it is relevant to conversations about current events

    Set up Analytics

    As you’ve seen, there are quite a few things you need to do, to get your SaaS product off the ground. However, they’ll be fruitless if you’re unable to measure, analyze and improve their performance. Luckily, Google provides two amazing free tools that will make your life easier.

    The first one is the Google Analytics (GA), that helps you analyze website traffic and understand user behavior. Add a piece of code to your website and GA will do the rest. It provides tons of informative reports out-of-the-box that help you understand the most visited pages, how much time people spend on your site, their location, device, browser and a lot more. You can even set up goals and events to track clicks. This will help you understand how users interact with your product and which features they use the most.

    The second one is the Google Tag Manager (GTM), designed to simplify both developers’ and marketers’ lives. Once you add the GTM code to your site, marketers can add or delete any further piece of marketing code such as Hotjar Analytics, or the Facebook Pixel on their own, without distracting developers.

    Once you start tracking the right metrics, you’ll know what to improve and see if your activities are moving the needle. It also allows you to set growth objectives and review your progress regularly. Here’s a sample Google Analytics dashboard that shows you detailed information about your website visitors

    Google analytics dashboard
    Google analytics dashboard

    Conclusion

    Starting a SaaS business is a formidable task, but if you implement it carefully, you will surely be able to launch a SaaS product that gains traction quickly. We hope the experience we’ve shared helps you during your SaaS product pre-launch. If you have any questions, feel free to reach us in the comments below. We’ll be happy to help. Meanwhile, good luck pre-launching your product!