The Five Most Important Lessons In E-Commerce SaaS (Software As A Service)
The e-commerce software as a service (SaaS) industry is rapidly growing. According to a December 2019 press release, Research and Markets predicted this industry to grow more than $220 billion through 2022, with an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.1%. Having been deeply involved in SaaS over the past 10 years, I believe this is great news for my industry, given the current job climate, and is a sign of what's to come over the next few years.
To speak of my recent experience in this field, I am the director of sales and strategic partnerships at a prominent SaaS company that offers a cloud-based solution for retailers selling online. Part of my job is understanding exactly how our complex yet user-friendly systems work, and how they can help our end users streamline their daily operations.
In the course of a given day, I find myself talking to various partners near and far, helping them resolve pain points in their automation, fulfillment strategies and reverse logistics. Needless to say, there are few dull moments and lots of "aha" ones.
Along the way, I've had the pleasure of learning many different types of lessons, five of which I think are at the top of my list of most important. I am here to share them with you today to help you with your SaaS journey.
1. Your software needs to speak for itself
We've all had a disingenuous experience with one software solution or another — whether it was a service you tried out during the free trial period or if it was an operating system you loathed that led you to change to a different service (e.g., switching from Microsoft's OS to Apple's iOS). The end goal of the product you're selling as a service is that it has to resonate with your end users and help them streamline a goal, function, operation or automation.
2. Feature-rich and user-friendly should go hand in hand
When it comes to e-commerce SaaS, I've been lucky because it's easy to talk up software that helps companies, especially in the unprecedented times we're living in where e-commerce has become the mainstay for consumers (and many business models) worldwide. I've been able to notch easy wins in SaaS because of this, and it's the most important lesson I've learned along the way: You're only as strong as the foundation of what you're selling; you need walls before you can build a roof.
For me, those walls comprise having lots of useful features and knowing that they help my users solve real-time problems. Don't underestimate the importance of user-friendly features — consider these integral to your offering, as well as the ability to explain to users how these features help them.
3. Uptime is a promise your customers will remind you of
There is nothing more frustrating than downtime, no matter what form it takes. As a SaaS provider, downtime alerts are equivalent to a four-alarm fire and can drag you out of bed at 3 a.m. to troubleshoot for East Coast users. (I work for an Arizona-based company.) You can bet that customers have a long memory when it comes to uptime, too, and are happy to remind you of it in the aftermath.
Predicating downtime with reliable server arrays, backup servers and regional options makes it easier to sleep at night. Assuredly, downtime in some form is unavoidable. But it's the measures that you take to retain users in the aftermath that matters most. Even a simple account credit being offered or a reassuring conversation goes a long way in preserving loyalty and usership.
4. Price points are dwarfed by usability and scalability
I've seen (and currently use) some services that have rather high price points. Now sometimes, you're willing to pay a price point to get certain features that have the "wow" factor you won't find anywhere else. Among the lessons I've learned, however, this is rare.
Your price points have to match your usability and scalability model, or else you'll realize an exodus of users when they find a solution that offers similar features at a more convenient cost. But, if your features, functions and automation are bar none, you'll be the SaaS that everyone's talking about.
5. If you solve common pain points, you'll likely win big
Every user has a pain point. I'd say it's probably 90% of the reason why SaaS is growing so quickly. I can't even imagine a company fulfilling 50 packages per day, much less 10,000, without having software to automate things like packing slips, invoices, tracking numbers, customer updates and so forth. Before there was software to do this, it was a manual process, one that was a persistent pain point in the early days of e-commerce.
The case in point is as such: Software as a service is supposed to alleviate pain points, streamline and automate previously tedious, cumbersome and error-prone functions with a high degree of accuracy and efficiency. If the system you offer is doing this, you're already on the road to scoring more loyal customers. If not, make it a point to consider pain points and how you can alleviate them.
Final Thoughts
Above all else, the most important thing to focus on is quality. For me, it's found in my approach to the partnerships I forge and the enterprise clients I engage with on a daily basis. It's part of what makes me tick, and it's why I love working in this industry so much.
As the late Steve Jobs is attributed to have said: "Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles."
These are wise words we can all live by.
