Author: Jay

Do what you do best in – that’s what I’ve always believed in and that’s what I preach. Over the past 25+ years (yup that’s my expertise ‘n’ experience in the Information Technology domain), I’ve been consulting to small, medium and large companies ‘About Web Technologies, Mobile Future as well as on the good-and-bad of tech. Blogger, International Business Advisor, Web Technology Expert, Sales Guru, Startup Mentor, Insurance Sales Portal Expert & a Tennis Player. And top of all – a complete family man!

Know The Benefits Of Hire Remote WordPress Developers

Posted on by Jay

COVID-19 Pandemic has changed the entire global market almost in the period of a week. And the business industries having no exception from this calamity.

Perhaps, the anti-dote might be under development but this global epidemic is going to make a long-lasting impact on the common society.

We can say the business to each individual is putting themselves in lockdown to skip this calamity. But certainly, we can not stop working. Every business and industry must go on.

If we would not, we can face global economic crises in the very recent future. There will be sectors, companies, and workers that will be severely harmed.

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So, let’s not stop running our business rather change the way we work. So that we can achieve equivalent productivity.

As also most every Government of states has released the advisory to stay at home and maintain social distancing to stop the spread of this virus, the online business stakeholder may consider hiring the dedicated or remote team for outsourcing their business needs.

When it comes to the point of running or starting-up new business;

Building a business website online may be something in your mind for days even not for months.

Well, it will take some time before you start as you need to decide on the right development platform and package.

Maybe, you want to try one of the top 3 CMS platforms (WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal) and are already seeking answers from professional wordpress website development company companies.

Even if you have professionals to build your website, you still like to manage it yourself once it is launched. So, you need to make certain crucial decisions like which platform to choose and use for your website development.

The million-dollar question is why?

Why Businesses Choose WordPress CMS:

Well, WordPress is one of the most commonly used CMS platforms for developing websites. More than 24% of websites worldwide are built on WordPress.

Since 2003, this CMS has taken the world of blogging by storm. However, several transformations have made it more than just a blogging website to an open-source web development platform.

WordPress is used by millions of web users globally and is a perfect platform to promote products and services. The CMS is easy to use, full of unique features.

WordPress also offers plenty of plugins that can dramatically improve user experience. With the help of an experienced WordPress development company, you can build a website that will boost sales and visibility of your business.

It’s not just about digital presence and sales though. With a WordPress-based website in place, you can leverage many other benefits to improve business efficiency and stay ahead in the competition.

Also Read: 8 Incredible Benefits for Choosing WordPress Development for Your Website

Advantages Of Remote WordPress Development Team

If a fast time to market is one of your priorities, with outsourcing app development you can start your project very quickly. It especially works best in the conditions of nationwide strict quarantine, when remote work is obligatory for everyone.

In such case the best option is to set up a team of remote developers who work for a software company, not freelancers since it is quite risky, and taking risks is not a good time when your business is operating on the edge.

Cost Reduction

It is one of the main advantages of outsourcing over in house development. An offshore outsourcing company helps businesses reduce development costs, which in turn frees up resources that can be used for new development opportunities.

Outsourcing Saves Time

The market typically requires a fast turnaround for the process of mobile application development. When outsourcing such a project, you do not waste time and money on hiring, training, and retaining employees.

Best Engineering Talent

When you team up with employees from other countries, you are getting access to the best engineering talents from all over the world, as opposed to simply hiring people that are available within a radius of 30 km from the location of the company.

This factor becomes especially crucial when you have not just a company, but a startup: where every new employee is an important decision that will almost certainly affect the outcome of your business.

You hire an experienced WordPress Developers, well-coordinated, and dedicated team. Well-established outsourcing companies offer fully staffed and dedicated teams of developers where team members have known each other for a long time and worked together on many projects.

You can be sure that these employees are professionals and have a lot of experience to meet the requirements of your project and introduce the best solutions.

High Communication Standards:

You get a team that follows the highest communication standards to ensure full transparency throughout the process, just as if you were working with an in-house team. Needless to say, they adapt to your local hours.

Close Supervision:

Your personal manager will keep you in the loop with regular meetings, demo sessions, and constant communication. As a result, you will always know exactly what your team is working on as well as monitor the progress status of the tasks and their expected completion date.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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End-to-end services and support. On-demand access to a pool of developers, DevOps, QA, designers & architects. You can easily and accordingly adjust your team size or skill set(s) to the project requirements throughout the evolution of your project.

Risk Reduction:

After signing a contract, all project risks are transferred to the outsourcing company. Typically, an outsourcing company guarantees delivery on time and on budget. Also, all your sensitive data regarding the project is protected due to signing a non-disclosure agreement, so that you can be sure there is no risk of a “project theft” or any confidential information leakage.

Also Read: What’s Going To Be WordPress Trends for the Year 2020?

Wrapping Things Up

Choosing WordPress to develop a website is a wise decision term for both performance and profitability.

If you want to build a website for your business, WordPress offers you a perfect platform for engaging target customers. By hiring a WordPress development company, you will get a quality website having all the features that will promote your business. You can also show the world that you offer them something unique to choose from. WordPress websites stand out in the digital space in terms of performance, appearance, and user-friendliness.

Looking for a remote WordPress Developer Team? Get in Touch!

How To Boost eCommerce Sale During Covid19 Pandemic

Posted on by Jay

Since the last few years, COVID-19 has made the most unexpected impacts worldwide. As of December, 2021, COVID-19 has affected millions of people worldwide with many deaths.

As with the New variants of Covid-19, the Omicron variant is emerging again, creating a major impact on millions of lives and to the economic sector.

As for the impact on the global business, we can’t say the industry like eCommerce is experiencing the complete fallout. The online sale has taken the hit but it is not completely down.

It’s clear that moving forward, choosing between online sales and brick-and-mortar stores won’t be the answer — instead, “offering a compelling Omni channel experience…is a requirement for survival,” says McKinsey analysts.

The drastic E-commerce growth amid movement restrictions induced by Covid-19 has increased the online Retail sales from 16% to 27.6% in 2021.

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According to a report by UNCTAD, online retail sales have grown in many countries, with the Republic of korea holding a large number of  shares at 25.9% by 2021, up from 20.8% the year before.

This pandemic has spread to over 100+ countries now. But as an eCommerce vendor, it is also time to deliver to their customer despite the circumstances.

Actually, it is very important to handle every step along the way with safety as paramount.

Despite this “post- Covid” era, the situation is constantly changing. With retail and E-commerce business has begun to observe behavioural shifts in the shopping habits , along with many new behavioural shifts observed in the shopping habits.

Online Shopping Increases By Demographic:

A report by BigCommerce has shown that in the Covid-19  various gender and age-groups have adopted E-commerce in varying degrees.

According to a survey it was observed that in the UK and US, 96% of millennials and GenZ are worried about the pandemic which has affected the economy. The widespread worry was  observed that this age group differentiate their behaviours  more noticeably in comparison to other generations.

Agility PR has reported that 30% of millennials has done more Online shopping during pandemic. In contrast 20% of Gen X, 24% of Gen Z and 8% of Baby boomers. 

More data has shown that 24% of boomers and 34% of GenZ have seen Covid-19 has created an impact on the items they are purchasing, compared to nearly half of millennials. These effects might include the cutting back on spending, carrying certain items  and spending less on the experiences.

There is also much disparity observed between genders, with 24% of men found to be online shopping in the pandemic, in comparison to 18% of women. Also, one third of men, in comparison to 25% of women, said that Covid-19 has created more impact on how much they spend on products.

Here I have drafted some safety measures that you should adopt to make your selling experience more effective.

Sanitize Every Place That You Work

For the safety measures, you need to do this at shipment centres, inventories, warehouses, and all the workspaces of your organisation where works are made out. This is the top priority for included people, especially those in the eCommerce sector, considering the far-reaching geographical capabilities of the industry.

Here are some precaution checkpoints of sanitization that you can undertake:

  • Screening the warehouse personnel regularly
  • Instant sanitization of the warehouse
  • Minimizing the working resources and maintain the social distance
  • maintain heavy caution on entry and exit points
  • An emergency phone line to contact the hospital or police station, if required
  • Maintain the manual register for all visitors
  • Contactless delivery

By setting as an example India with1.3 billion people shut down, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said “India’s COVID fight could make or break the global war. WHO said India has a tremendous capacity to deal with the pandemic as it has experience of eradicating smallpox and polio”.

With the contactless initiative, customers can ask the delivery guy to leave their order package in a secure location, from where the end-user can pick it up.

“It can go a long way in containing the spread of COVID-19 and protects both your courier partner and the end customer.”

Winners On The E-Commerce Shift:

Big commerce has reported that month over month, the food and beverage has increased. The impact of E-commerce on emerging markets has grown to 18.8% and also shows a big growth in the downloads of  mobile applications. It has allowed people to hire personal shoppers to prepare and also in some cases they deliver the goods.

The rise of E-commerce popularity was observed as many of us were quarantined  at home, usinging Netflix, Disney+ and all the gaming subscribers has observed growth at an unprecedented rate in Q1 2021.

Provide Training On Sanitization

In these testing times, the biggest threat to society is perhaps, ignorance.

Ignorance, perhaps this is the biggest threat to society. It is so important that each and every single person is well informed about the basics to fight effectively.

Government officials of many countries have adopted epidemic training and awareness procedures for staying safe.

This includes;

  • how to wash your hands
  • how to wear a mask
  • how to stay away from infected surfaces
  • how to deliver using contactless delivery

Collaborate With Shipping Aggregators

The most advantageous outcome of partnering with a shipping partner is to reduce the workload of your internal team and make sure a clean, hygienic shipping process end-to-end.

There are many vendors using this workflow, so you will be able to choose an alternate courier partner without wasting any time.

Keep Customer Support Paramount

To ensure customer satisfaction and general peace amongst customers, make sure that customer support is available round the clock.

Customer service at whim can make sure that the customer and the seller are constantly in touch.

Okay. These are the safety measure for online vendors to ensure the safety of packing to deliver the goods to end-users.

But can we see this lockdown period as an opportunity to boost your eCommerce sale?

As people are willing to stay at their homes these days and they need their daily life stuff also.

So, the answer is YES!

Strategies To Boost Online Sales

It is very obvious that the consumers are spending more time on the internet as they are social distancing and IT professionals are working from home.

So, our recommendation would be to consider your online presence of the online store. This depends on the eCommerce platform you use. Various eCommerce platforms have different limitations.

Example; The core features of Magento, WordPress, are pretty much search engine friendly.

If everything is OKAY.. then revisit your marketing spend and improve the effectiveness of your virtual communications.

1. Reach Out To Your High-Value Customers

Analytica says, “20% of your customers contribute 80% of your total revenue”. Considering this you need to prioritize the high-value customers ensuring their lifetime loyalty.

eCommerce Stats
Source: Squarespace

Applications like Wakeupsales, (cloud-based Salesforce Automation tool) act like the customer relationship solution and contacting platform all in one.

Through this, your marketing staff can stay in touch with the prioritized high-value customers remotely.

So, you can send personalized recommendations that include links to purchase online.

2. Adapt Your Marketing Messaging

During this sensitive period, you also need to rethink your marketing strategy.

However, brands should be cautious of pivoting too far away from their core brand messaging, or worse yet, coming off as opportunistic.

Below are some examples of brands that made simple adjustments to their messaging to “read the cultural room” while remaining authentic.

3. Create “Social Experiences” On Social Media

Staying home means surfing the internet and social media. So the brand needs to get creative about how they leverage their social media presence.

The brand can create problem-solving social media campaigns to gain more reach of your brand or product.

Also, consider the campaign must make aware of your brand and how your brand gets to solve the daily life requirement.

This helps to acquire loyal customers.

4. Offer Free Shipping Or Local Pickup And Delivery

Shipping cost is always a barrier for online users. So if possible, you can consider offering free shipping.

There is another option available “curbside pickup”.

This term of delivery is actually, a customer ordered a product online and can pick it up fro your local store.

It decreases the hassle of the delivery process. And for customers, it also cut the waiting time.

Still, you need to integrate the whole setup on your eCommerce website. This is not a big development process. You can integrate this delivery set up by hiring an eCommerce developer remotely.

5. Extend Your Return And Exchange Policy

“Extending your return and exchange policy in acknowledgment of the current climate could alleviate buyer doubt and incentivize online sales.”

So, changing the return policy can bring some sighs to your customers. As on the lockdown period, the delivery time and pick up time could be delayed. So, extending the return period could help to gain some loyal customers too.

6. Use Retargeting Ads To Reach Your Customers

Paid advertising can help you to reach such people which you cannot go with organic campaigns. And doing it smartly would help you to regain such visitors who were at your store before.

Technically, we called this a Retargeting campaign.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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Through it, your ads or product can be displayed to those users who visited your website recently.

The various ads managers like Facebook, Google, etc have the algorithm to perform such methods.

Conclusion:

Developing and delivering the fruitful content display will always have the high-end stuff for your eCommerce website too.

So, before adopting all these methods and strategies, you need to ‘consider your existing website performance and capabilities.

When we come to the point of COVID-19, there is no ETA on when this crisis is going to end. But it is heartwarming to see all people coming together to fight this pandemic.

As the new Covid Variant, Omicron is growing gradually, therefore it is important to take all the necessary steps and grow your business gradually. Develop your E-commerce application now with Andolasoft. 

Our experts, App developers, will guide you with this path, by developing your desired eCommerce Application.

We at Andolasoft also urged the merchant to follow the guideline and secure every touchpoint.

Is your eCommerce site fully integrated to fight this situation? Let’s Discuss.

How To Make Your SaaS Development Idea Successful

Posted on by Jay

With many SaaS companies in the market these days, it’s becoming harder for everyone to stand out from the crowd. That’s why it’s important for any SaaS business to have a well-thought-out development road-map. If you don’t, you’ll do yourself a serious disservice, because a successful SaaS business is built on solid, tested software solutions. Even so, there’s a lot of competition out there. That’s why you have to be extra cautious when thinking about your SaaS development strategy.

The statistics say SaaS has been wiping out the dependency of an enterprise’s old, outdated software to pursue its operations. And the reasons are:

  • Software-as-a-Service has the on-demand usage model with the minimum entry point. Unlike on-premise apps, as z huge upfront costs need to be showered at the time of software updates, customization & other IT-infrastructure related requirements.
  • On SaaS, the end-users don’t have to invest in the total IT-infrastructure setup, as the entire hosting, customer support, and hardware & software implementation process are taken care of by the SaaS vendors itself.
  • The elements inside these cloud offerings can be easily scaled up & down by doing changes with few clicks or adjustments from the data centers and with certain cost allocation, whereas if the investments are done on the on-premise infrastructure, the cost & load would be comparatively heavy.

By the end of this year , 80%-90% of businesses will run their core operations over the Software-as-a-service model. It’s because this software helps to continue with complicated tasks without putting a load on hardware memory, run from anywhere via an internet connection, purchased on a subscription basis, leaves the technical glitches & upgrades part with the providers only.

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That means software-as-service is here to stay and those who are on a lookout to become a SaaS application development provider, they need to be mindful of the pitfalls of software-as-a-service development and come up with practices & measures that can help them stay afloat & reap home the desired revenue figures.

Don’t know these pitfalls or measures that can help you become a top-notch SaaS app development services provider?

Worry not, the following has all the answers that Infoxen believes will be of sheer help to you.

1. Know Your Client-Base First

Knowing the target audience is very important before starting the software-as-a-service-based development business – as based on that only you will prepare your acquisition & pricing strategy.

A complete list covering buyer persona in terms of his behavior, business type, profession, motivation, passion, demographics will help you march towards the path where you can easily identify “type of product or service they are looking for”.

Know Your Client-Base First

By interviewing such elements or your potential clients, you can plan to create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) first, as such products will always have scope for further enhancements & will always invite users to put-in their thoughts & functionalities within it.

You can develop as many product packages based on every different buyer persona to gain a competitive edge.

2. Choosing A Pricing Model That Compliments Your End-Users Requirement

On a broader level, there are 3 types of pricing models for extending software-as-a-service solutions that you can choose from-Usage-based pricing, flat-rate pricing & Tiered pricing. Let’s extend these terms to get their better understanding:

  • Usage-Based Pricing:

It’s the most common pricing model where users pay the fees each time they use storage, data or make transactions. As a development company, you can opt for this type of pricing model for your clients who have a small startup or financial base and cannot afford to pay extensively at one go.

  • Flat-Rate Pricing:

It’s the basic pricing model where only a single software-as-a-service product, with a particular set of features under one pay, is made available to the end-users. Here a predetermined subscription fee is charged from the client’s pocket. As a SaaS application development service provider, you can go ahead with this model if your end-users are comfortable at paying hassle-free all at once rather than after utilizing the services.

  • Tiered Pricing:

Here a variety of software-as-service packages at different cost plans, features & functionalities are circulated for different clients’ requirements. This model is great to have on-board if your company wants to target buyers of multiple personas & requirements single-handedly.

You can choose any of the above pricing models based on your client behavior, buying pattern & growth opportunities.

3. Keep User-Experience & Customer Satisfaction Mainstreamed

To start on a good note as a SaaS development company, make sure the user-experience & customer satisfaction you deliver to your clients is top-notch. Be precise & careful while developing your first software, choose the UX elements carefully.

Keep User-Experience & Customer Satisfaction Mainstreamed

Here is how you can add on to your Customer Satisfaction:

  • Be transparent with your customers, timely update them with every module, and ask them for necessary suggestions to ensure project success. Along with it, find the best solutions to treat lacking areas before final deployment. Since every development will be parsed through agile methodology, it will be easy to iterate fast & make the fixes asap.
  • To give your clients the hang of your developed software, draft some welcome emails, tutorial guides, or allot a personal assistant to guide through the functionality of developed products from your end.
  • There is no such thing as over-communication. You can strengthen your bond with your clients by always keeping them in the loop, questioning their requirements, gathering their feedback to foster a better product development environment & customer experiences.

4. Deploying SaaS-Specific Marketing Practices

Software-as-a-service solutions since they have no physical traces and changes constantly need special attention when it comes to their marketing. Although, if SaaS products are carefully architected & render top-notch services, there lies no need for marketing tactics, much.

But if the product has just started on hit & trial methods and demands huge penetration in the market on the initial levels, these all things for you as SaaS application development providers can do to gain better traction with your prospects:

  • Give your customers free trials to let them vibe with the product & get the better tuning with it until they don’t start paying for it.
  • Shoot a series of blog posts in the software-as-a-service community, defining your business stories and how you craft products suiting to every project requirement.
  • Reward a customer if he/she suggests you or refer your SaaS app development services by inundating some reward programs.

5. Preparing For Third-Party Integrations Way Before The Software Development

Since SaaS applications work on a cloud network, their integration with data centers & other third-party platforms has to be secure, effortless & quick. A SaaS development company here has to be well-equipped with third-party integration strategies way before they commence with the development phase. Here is how you can go ahead:

  • SaaS applications must have great data synchronization with different third-party channels. For instance, if the app targets the travel tech industry, the integration with accommodation options like Airbnb could be considered.
  • Consider developing a platform that makes your end-users life easier by enabling them to work with PDF files, ZIP files archives to streamline data import.
  • Create a browser extension of your product to let users have your product in hand all the time. For instance, popular app Grammarly has a web extension that allows users to integrate it with already in use applications.
  • Decide the payment integration option that users prefer and are safest in all accord.
  • To achieve great user coverage, integrate your product or software with SDK tools of framework like Microsoft (as it’s vastly used for enterprise suites).

6. Render Software With Possible Offline Mode Support

Downtime of the app or unstable Wi-Fi can take a toll on anyone, especially when the important task is in process.

International Data Corporation compiled a stat that “for the fortune 1000 companies, the average cost they had to bear after their unplanned application downtime was ranging between $1.25 – $2.5 per year”.

No matter the enterprises operate via software-as-a-service applications, one downtime or poor-connectivity can lead to unsubscription of such software.

Extend support of offline accessibility as a SaaS application development services provider:

  • Make provision for the information or data to store even in the offline mode, as soon as the connectivity restores, data should be able to sync well.
  • Make a feature of “download files” (to let users download important files) when situations like downtime come unannounced.
  • Make an automated/manual update function to help with the syncing of data or documents when a proper connection is available.

7. Bring Aboard A “Customer Success Management” Department

“Customer success is not about support or being reactive – it’s always about being proactive.”

Having a customer success management department will act as a link between “where the sales happen” & the “product’s functionality” – which will help to evaluate your customer’s actual health by using mixes of usage data, contextual inputs, marketing, sales & customer support strategies.

The advent of such will evoke the users to share their true stories behind the usage of such software or product, which will eventually help to drive more cross-sells.

This is how you can funnel your CSM or Customer Success, and Management team:

  • Customer success management (CSM) team should be collaborative with the other organizational teams be it sales, product or marketing as it will help in sketching & resolving customer issues from all ground levels.
  • “Users love when they are served beyond their expectations”, the job role of your CSM team shouldn’t restrict to just delivering what users are expecting but it should race beyond the delivered promises as well. Your team can go the extra mile by preparing product based on different users & their traits, arrange some webinars or seminars to educate your product scope, or shoot a support mail even after delivering the product maybe with a message “Hey, how are you doing with the software we developed for you”.
  • Be on tips with the consumer metrics, these metrics can be in terms of – when & how soon the user is willing to upgrade to high-subscription plans, or how much they are liking the product/software that they are ready to prefer it to a friend or inside their circle.

8. Keep Your Analytics Handy To Measure The Key Metrics

It’s important to keep the analytics handy to determine the progressing growth of SaaS development services company, as such businesses are prone to suffer losses in the early years of their operation. Losses occur because acquisition costs exceed, sometimes customers pay only after utilizing the product/services, which is why actual revenue comes very late.

Thereby, it becomes immense for such software development businesses to know & understand the key metrics in advance – to know whether their business is scaling up or is turning towards major pitfall.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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To know when to put the breaks on time or know if your company is viable in proceeding ahead, consider the following metrics to measure success:

  • Consider billing date over the booking date to evaluate your revenue flow, as on billing date you get the actual sum flowing into your bank account – this will help you access the true financial health of your company.
  • Evaluate the reason behind the churn rate. Churn rate is a situation where users stop subscribing to a particular service (here it’s SaaS). Calculate the number of churn rates & possible reasons that triggered its advent.
  • Balancing the Customer Acquisition Cost is the cost spent on customers to persuade to buy the product/service. LTV or Lifetime Value is a predicted net profit that is expected from the future relationship with customers. The LTV figures should be 3 times greater than CAC, even if it’s the other way, that should not be continued for a long time as higher CAC value depicts that the company is putting a lot of cost on retaining customers than actually gaining from them.

These were the few metrics that can help to evaluate your business drive & allow you to put in the breaks before you are close to any downhill.

Winding Up!

These were the few ways demonstrating how you can go big with your software-as-service specific development business, the success & profitability of establishing such business lies in how well you are staying in competition and treating your customers with the best possible product ever.

Go the extra mile, beyond delivered promises, know what your customer’s persona is, find what pricing strategy is keeping LTV in action, create your metrics that are visible in your customers’ success, and chalk out several other your side of strategies to funnel your business.

To get basic to extreme support in the preparation of your SaaS-based business model, reach out to Andolasoft Inc, a SaaS application development company, where we consult, develop & deploy the high selling SaaS-based products by following the aforementioned points & hundreds of others (which you will find out on consulting us).

Have a cloud-based app development project to finish? Request for a callback!!!

How To Evolve Your Saas Business In Upcoming Year

Posted on by Jay

The changing environment and the growing digitization have become the primary disruptive factors in the market. And with that, it is challenging task for companies to make their SaaS offerings stand out from the others.

This is not just about in this year. The SaaS model has evolved over the past 12 years.

The rise of cloud-based software has helped to redefine the enterprise workplace, unleashing truly mobile and collaborative workforce and new customer-facing interactions.

 

 “Most of all, I discovered that in order to succeed with a product you must truly get to know your customers and build something for them.”

– Marc Benioff

It’s also democratized IT management and stimulated a shift in technology adoption that’s transformed the way companies buy and consume products and services.

Moving beyond, the SaaS global market looks to continue with fast-paced growth.

According to Gartner, public cloud services alone are set to increase by 17% around the world to $266.4 billion in 2020.

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Meanwhile, the integration of AI with SaaS platforms looks set to propel an additional market expansion, as more and more enterprises seize the opportunities on offer to cost-effectively automate internal operations, boost productivity, and speed up delivery of personalized services.

SaaS Growth Statistics - Statista
Image Source: Statista

This could sound good to the entrepreneurs who are considering to enter the As-A-Service (AAS), as well as the existing vendors preparing to update and evolve their SaaS offering

Standing Out In A Crowded Marketplace

More than two-thirds of companies operating in the SaaS space today were formed in this last decade. And the number of new entrants also continues to increase.

With a growing number of organizations looking to benefit from the reduced costs, scalability, and convenience offered by SaaS, it’s no surprise that new market entrants are keen to capitalize on the burgeoning opportunities.

Building a strong customer relationship can be leveraged for standing out from the crowd. It will identify value-added transactions and unroll service offerings in line with changing business requirements.

This is especially relevant where private equity firms are acquiring multiple MSPs, rolling them up together, and then reducing pricing to capture market share.

This puts pricing pressure on independent MSPs, and suddenly it becomes a race to the bottom.

What’s needed is a laser-like focusing on differentiating with the best customer experience.

Actively communicate your feature changes and improvements through regular updates that ensure customers recognize you’re responsive to their evolving needs.

Staying close to customers through regular account reviews will also generate opportunities to deliver strategic consultancy and impart in-depth knowledge that improves their operations.

Finally, utilize BI and analytics to reinvent your pricing models. Tailoring pricing to individual customers will further demonstrate the truly collaborative nature of your relationship and discourage any temptation to consider switching providers.

Deliver Seamless Customer Experiences

“Every step of your customer’s journey, from first sales interaction to on-boarding and ongoing support, needs to be easy and seamless to navigate”.

Because

“if you’re not delivering a holistic service that is responsive, accurate, and timely, no customer will commit to a long term relationship”.

User Experience

An effective on-boarding process that is manageable, intuitive, and interactive should include actional walk-throughs of key features and functionality.

You will also need to provide a help center and additional resources, plus a checklist for users to work through.
Utilizing the professional service automation (PSA) and RMM (remote monitoring and management) tools will help ensure you’re able to gain complete visibility and control of your customers’ environments and can institute process improvements to serve them better.

From automating routine tasks to enabling accurate billing, the effective management of support issues, and keeping track of SLA performance, customer satisfaction depends upon your ability to deliver more than just promises.

Scalable Service For All Industries

Ensure your product can be easily integrated with the customer’s platform. It will make it easier for users to augment their internal processes with your services and products.

In recent years there’s been a growing trend towards SaaS companies moving away from delivering a broad range of business functions and focusing instead on the delivery of vertical-specific software solutions built for clear industry niches.

Focused on the concept of customer success, these solutions often incorporate industry-specific data governance capabilities and tailored features that can be easily adapted to the demands of the user base.

Providing opportunities to create new ecosystems, featuring partner organizations, moving into the delivery of vertical SaaS platforms opens the door to co-marketing opportunities and the incorporation of new technology features through the utilization of APIs.

Refresh Your Approach To Marketing

Delivering content that meets the needs of prospective and existing customers is the key to retaining your market position and becoming a recognized industry leader.

From content marketing that showcases your expertise and builds brand awareness to adopting good digital marketing tactics designed to boost audiences in a wider range of geographies, aligning your marketing activities and messages to specific buyer personas will yield positive outcomes for your business.

By keeping your finger on the pulse of the current challenges customers in your target market are facing, you will be able to refine your offering and educate current and potential customers on how your solutions solve their problem.

To build ‘stickiness’, initiate portals that enable customers to share successes and best practice with peers, gain access to subject matter experts, and acquire new knowledge.

Indeed, building a user-group community is once again becoming central to initiating stronger customer bonds and more informed relationship strategies that generate value-add for everyone involved.

You’re probably already familiar with the often-stated stat that acquiring a new customer is up to seven times more expensive than retaining an existing one. But there’s one instance where that isn’t true: customer referrals.

By creating a simple, rewarding referral program, you can turn your best customers into your most vocal and passionate fans.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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In doing so, you not only increase the return on investment from every customer, but you can grow your client base without increasing your marketing spend.

And since everyone involved gets something out of it, referrals can increase customer satisfaction, too.

Warping Words:

Today’s customers want to have personal relationships with the companies they do business with.

To thrive and survive in an increasingly competitive landscape, SaaS businesses must strive to cultivate strong, collaborative, and strategic relationships that are personalized to every client.

That means delivering clearer communications, one-to-one check-ins, and better, more timely, insights.

Ultimately, unifying personalized solutions with technological innovations and consistent service delivery that demonstrates you’re paying attention will be the key to maintaining your position in a market that’s characterized by constant disruption.

Want to evolve your SaaS product? Let’s discuss.

How To Achieve SaaS Growth Through Customer Acquisition Techniques

Posted on by Jay

An established SaaS company can achieve growth in many ways. They could retain more customers, increase prices, or reduce churn rate either. 

But as a startup, you just only have one option: “to acquire more customers“.

However, the problem is that you might not have a clear path of how to do it, right?

That is exactly what I have explained with some proven strategies.

Through this post, we will show you the top 5 customer acquisition strategies that will boost your SaaS growth.

Intrigued? Then let’s do it.

Defining Acquisition:

Before making a deep dive into the techniques, let’s make something clear;

“Customer acquisition has nothing to do with generating new users.“

But the acquisition is a process of bringing new visitors to your application and helping them to sign up. 

Without new signups, you’d have no one to try to convert into a user, and retaining them as a paying customer.

However, customer acquisition is the most important part of the SaaS growth process.

“To ensure that customers go through the funnel stages (to Revenue), you have to make sure that there are enough customers at the top of the funnel. Without those customers, there will be no customers at the end.”

Defining Acquisition

(Source – incisive-edge.com)

The above graph described this point quite well. TO generate the average conversion rates at each stage, you need to acquire a large number of incoming visitors to paying users.

Now, let’s take a look at some customer acquisition strategies or techniques to grow your SaaS business.

Verify Your Product & Its Market Fit:

Like other vendors, you also like to start acquiring the targeted users as early as possible, even if you don’t have a product ready.

And it is always crucial to acquire the first user for your application.

Acquiring the first users helps you validate your idea, and learn if you’re targeting the right customer pain point.

When you have a validated idea and achieved your product & its market fit, then you can switch you focus it to grow your SaaS application.

It refers to a situation of being “in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”

Verify Your Product & Its Market Fit

(Source – incisive-edge.com)

Pivoting a value proposition is relatively straightforward, and speaking in technical terms as well. 

So, before you launch any strategy to attract new customers, ensure that you have validated your idea.

Develop Customer Personas:

It helps you design your products & campaigns that your target audience connects with. Preparing a customer persona also gives you detailed insights into your target audience, their behavior, their needs, etc.

But without buyer personas, it’s hard to know who your potential users are, and how you could reach them online.

Or figure out the best ways to attract them, at that.

For example, how can you create lead magnets that will attract new users to your list, without knowing their pain points relating to your product first?

Or discover channels that drive the most targeted traffic?

You see, buyer personas make it easy to attract the right type of web visitors. And that, in turn, makes customer acquisition a much simpler task.

Develop Customer Personas

(Source – incisive-edge.com)

Identify The Most-Targeted Traffic Sources:

We admit this strategy requires experimentation to get it right. But the benefits of going through the process are immense.

Because you see:

Not every traffic channel will deliver visitors who can convert.

In fact, often, channels you might consider a certainty flop.

A couple of years ago, Dan Norris did an experiment to assess his traffic sources. And as it turns out, sources he banked on, like Adwords or email brought hardly any results.

However, strategies like guest posting, being active on forums, social media, and Twitter auto follower strategy, delivered actual conversions.

Identify The Most-Targeted Traffic Sources
(Source – incisive-edge.com)

Now, your best visitors might come from different channels. Perhaps SEO would work for you or maybe advertising your SaaS product on Facebook would drive the most signups.

It’s hard to tell without testing.

And so, to ensure that first, you get new customers, and secondly, acquire them at a relatively low cost, you have to identify your best channels.

Create Different Customer Acquisition Funnels:

Most of the time the website visitors do make the sign up on the homepage.

But many others will not even see it.

And yet, they could become users too. 

For the most part, however, SaaS founders focus on a simple acquisition funnel that looks more or less like this (via Google Analytics):

They calculate that visitors on the website will notice the Sign-Up call to action, act through it, signing up for the free or version. 

And then, through the onboarding and retention strategy, convert into paying customers.

And many do. However, a large group of your visitors may not yet be ready to create an account and start using your product.

As Elizabeth Yin points out in this article: (http://www.launchbit.com/blog/what-customer-acquisition-funnel-should-you-use-as-a-saas-company/)

“these days, the Saas market is becoming inundated with new Saas products. Nearly every Saas company has either a free trial or a free package, so free software no longer a unique factor that distinguishes your product from the competition. Professionals are no longer jumping at the opportunity to try every new free Saas tool that is on the market.”

And so, to acquire them, you’ll need to find another way to convince them to sign up.

For example, you could first target them with your lead generation strategies, then nurture them, and finally, entice to sign up at the time when they’re ready to do so.

Invest In Building Audience:

Nothing beats having an audience.

Just take a look at SaaS companies like Orangescrum, Wakeupsales CRM. They enjoy engaged audiences.

And although many of these people aren’t their customers (and maybe will never even sign up for a trial), they actively help them promote the app.

How? By sharing their content, for example, telling others about it, commenting on their blog posts, attending and promoting their webinars, and other events… The list goes on.

So, building a targeted audience for your SaaS application as early as possible. 

But when building your audience, go beyond from just posting blogs on your blogging portal:

  • Repost your content on other channels, like Medium or Linkedin. Many successful SaaS companies utilize this strategy to simultaneously initiate conversations with many audiences without having to produce original content for all of them.
  • Repurpose your content into lead magnets and content upgrades and build a lead generation engine to fuel your secondary funnel (the one we talked about in the previous point).
  • Target social media channels that you’d discount in B2B, like Pinterest, for example. You can hear Dustin Stout from Warfare Plugins sharing his experiences with less common social networks for B2B (and how they’ve become his top traffic sources) here.

Warping Words:

Last, not the least, be sure to always put your customer’s requirements first before applying the customer acquisition techniques. By focusing on the customer’s benefits and presenting the solutions to their queries would lead to more retention.

Keeping this in mind, and finding the best way to guide the visitors through the acquisition process with helpful involvement that comes at the right time and adds value to their experience. This will lead to much more success in the long term.

Have an awesome SaaS idea, but not sure about the techniques and developing the strategies? Let’s Discuss!

How To Overcome From B2B SaaS Marketing Challenges

Posted on by Jay

B2B SaaS marketing is always tougher than customer marketing. And we are not saying that marketing to consumers is easy, but it is more traditional.

Anyone who works in the B2B segment knows that the industry creates its own sets of constant challenges. However, in the B2C industry, the marketing takes place with the customer, the sales cycle is smaller whereas in the B2B SaaS marketing, the sales cycle is quite prolonged. Mostly if you target smaller groups with higher priced products.

The list of challenges for SaaS marketing is much longer and pretty complicated. You need to understand not only about your product and services but also about your customer industries. It is important to create a good rapport and empathy with your customers, without these two factors your business can surely fail.

Whether you’re racing to market with a brand new offering, gaining a foothold and trying to scale, or firmly established and trying to improve performance, there’s no shortage of challenges SaaS businesses inevitably face.

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Still, not selling a physical product already possesses its own challenge and this is not familiar to many people as well. Not to mention, SaaS marketing can be very demanding, where not only growth but also it is more required for a successful business.

What Is SaaS Marketing:

Let’s start with the theory of SaaS first. SaaS or Software as a Service provides users the ability to connect and use the cloud-based application via the internet.

Basically, users or business customers hire this kind of application for their business.

On the other hand, you can hire this kind of application for your business, so your user can get connected over the internet.

And SaaS marketing is simply the process to market this kind of application.

If your company offers software as a service to other businesses, there are several targeted marketing strategies you can use to achieve the highest conversion rates possible.

If you are a SaaS vendor, you must adopt the latest marketing strategies to archive more customers and high conversions.

So how do you get started with SaaS marketing?

Still, before getting started the SaaS Marketing process you may face several challenges.

Challenges Of SaaS Marketing:

SaaS is a logical product. And the mindset of its customers is always different than other targeted customers.

The decision of purchasing a SaaS product would be more logical than emotional, pricing and compatibility like factor must take some part as well.

And the purchasing decision does not lie on a single person.

So, having these facts the challenges become more complicated when it comes to SaaS marketing.

Logically, marketers may have dealt with many physical products but in SaaS is not having any physical presence.

Other Major Challenges In SaaS Marketing:

Demand and SaaS offerings are always changing. The constant update and release of new features can make your marketing strategies chaotic before your previous strategy would make any significant impact.

  • Customers are not aware of the use of your SaaS product. So, your marketing strategy and content needs to detail educational
  • You need to bring together the SaaS B2B customers and your sales cycle.
  • Standing Out from the Crowd
  • Build a loyal customer Database
  • Targeting your audience
  • Dealing with constant changes

SaaS Marketing Strategy:

Statista data shows – “the total size of the SaaS market has increased to $116 billion in 2019 from $105 billion in just one year. And it is expected to cross $135 billion in 2020.”

So, as a SaaS vendor, you must take a deep dive into marketing.

Before jumping into SaaS marketing, you need to learn about the customer journey first. And can prepare your marketing strategy by following the respected journey stages.

The customer journey may consist of the following stages:

  • Awareness
  • Consideration
  • Decision
  • Retention
  • Advocacy
SaaS Customer JourneyImage Source: Singlegrain[.]com

Actually, there are countless marketing strategies available to produce maximum results. With a mixed knowledge, I have listed some (would be) impactful SaaS marketing results.

  • Define Your Goals

The countless effort without the right directions is totally meaningless. To define a clear and achievable goal is the first step to do for successful SaaS marketing.

    • The goals must be specific and tractable by assigning KPIs and key metrics.
    • Figure your overall business
    • Figure how marketing and sales team can align to achieve the goals

The goal must be realistic. The bigger goal is always hard to achieve. So break down the bigger goals to smaller with realistic milestones.

  • Inbound Marketing

The inbound marketing methodology has four phases;

    • Backup your step
    • Evaluate how to create an inbound strategy
    • Define your buyers’ personas
    • Illustrating key traits of the buyers

And the very next step is to create content for them and address their issues and help them by solving those problems.

  • Content Marketing

Content marketing is an important strategy for any business including SaaS marketing as well. You may look at some of the biggest players of the SaaS market; strong content marketing is their key factor.

The content marketing methodology has encompassed two things:

    • Letting your audience know the use of your product
    • Establish your position at the related industry

You can extend your approach to social media platforms to provide the same information as well.

Existence, trust, and credibility are an important part of assets in the SaaS niche. And you can prove your existence by spreading the voluble information through content marketing.

  • Communicate Value Differentiators Of Their Product 

With the rise in the internet, the size of the market has enlarged. Many new and unique SaaS products were emerging daily, with at least ten competitors, who are launching similar products. This gives the customers a variety of options to choose, while purchasing any kind of products or services.

Therefore you need to demonstrate your product and marketise how your product is different from your customers.

You can handle this sales challenge by showing how your product is different and unique. The key is by doing some research on your customer’s industry and addressing their pain points of the future upgrades will be pretty much helpful for you. You need to communicate and concise about your product and how it will help the customers in solving their major issue.

  • Giving Users Free Trial

To encourage new customers and let them experience the actual benefits of your SaaS products, a free giving period is the best tactic to focus on.

And alternatively, it can be used for the lead generation as well!

This doesn’t mean you should go blindly without any strategy here;

“Optimizing the conversion rate within the free-trial period should be the focus of any SaaS marketer, and this will also mean one other thing: your product must be good.”

Through the free trial period, you would have the chance to showcase your customer service excellence.

Standing Out From The Crowd:

The shift from On-premises software to a cloud based SaaS took some additional time to get recognised in the market. B2b customers are pretty much apprehensive about their data security, location and many other things.

 Things might have taken some turn, however the last few years have noticed a significant development among various SaaS solutions.

However, the global cloud revenue is predicted to reach $ 474 billion by 2022, the ongoing pandemic has increased the demand for digital services and made the cloud a centerpiece for many new digital experiences.

  • User Engagement

And the last not the least Customer engagement is a goal that must stretch across teams and metrics.

It can be performed at a high level, as the knowledge and tap points of a customer for your product, company, or brand.

It is the relationship between your company and your customers and is closely related to customer loyalty and retention.

The better user experience can make a bold relationship between your SaaS product and customers and closely related to the customer success stories and retention.

Many biggest SaaS companies follow the strategy of building a loyal database for their customers. Under the SaaS subscription model, the costs are recovered along with time when the customers continue to renew the subscription.

New customer acquisition has become the top priority for many SaaS business.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

Customer retention becomes a key point in increasing profit for SaaS business. According to Salesforce desk, with 5% increase in the customer retention will drive profits up-to 125%

SaaS Product(Source: Unboundb2b)

The customer experience can be broken down into different stages and can be developed, and implemented separately. Like;

    • Short Signup process
    • Send the users through an onboarding sequence
    • In-App Chat Feature
    • Offer Free Training or Free Demo
    • Develop and link tutorial Videos to engage
    • Get Feedback for improvement

Warping Words

SaaS marketing is different from other product marketing. If you follow the right path and strategies then you can easily gain success for your SaaS product in a short period.

 For every business, becoming successful starts with attracting the right customers. It might take some longer for the SaaS company to grow, but it is achievable by following the right SaaS marketing strategy.

The strategy discussed above will work effectively in successfully growing your SaaS business.

And must make it a point to find regular feedback from your loyal customers and instantly try to improve the customer service.

Also, throughout the marketing methodology focus on retaining the customers as this can be a game-changer in your overall profits.

Thinking of building a SaaS product, let Andolasoft help you. Our Dedicated developers will build excellent SaaS products for your business, by following all the security major and latest features to grow your business.

Happy SaaS marketing!

Planning to launch your own SaaS product? Let’s discuss!