Archive for month: October, 2020

Virginity is like a soap bubble. One little prick and it’s gone forever.

A coarse bit of humour from my school days, but a sentiment nonetheless accurate.

Trust is very similar.

Once broken, getting it back is all but impossible, and if you’re a SaaS vendor, this is of paramount importance.

Your future quite literally depends on it.

Say you have a data breach.

Adverse publicity is one thing, but IBM reports an average $3.8M dollars cost and a massive 23% customer churn.

Those are business killing figures.

Of course, you have to land the customers first.

• 94% of Aussies think trust is more important than convenience

• 89% say they’d avoid doing business if they think their privacy isn’t protected

• AND 59% HAVE DONE EXACTLY THAT!

So you’d be wise to ensure you’ve got this covered.

There are 3 areas to focus on.

• Security protocols and practices ensure your infrastructure and team are up to snuff.

• Privacy policies protect data at rest and in flight, and ensure aggregation and anonimity for all shared data.

• Ethical standards, especially with regards to #AI, support your customers’ best interests AT ALL TIMES.

Yesterday such notions were seen as optional, but today they’re recommended.

Tomorrow, they’ll be mandatory, because your prospects and customers will demand them.

#MrSaaSSays

Did you know, a championship archery target is 122cm across.

And it’s 70m away!

The centre is just 12.2cm, one tenth of the width.

Just 1% of the entire target.

Only 1 in 100 arrows fired randomly would score a 10.

Yet Brady Ellison’s World record set in 2019 was a staggering 702 out of 720.

56 perfect 10s, 14 9s and a couple of 8s.

To achieve this he had –

• A top quality compound bow with sights.

• The right team behind him.

• Many years of professional coaching and training.

• And countless hours of practice under his belt.

Up and coming SaaS entrepreneurs would do well to take a leaf out of Brady’s book.

If they want to go for gold they too will need –

• A clear view of the problem they’re aiming at, and the right tools to solve it.

• A laser-like focus on just a tiny fraction of their potential market.

• A high quality team.

• Advisers and coaches to guide and educate them.

• And many, many hours of commitment to the cause.

But if they cut a few corners to save a few dollars, perhaps drift along without strategic advice, or reduce their quality, they won’t be breaking any records.

Their investment will be for nought when they lose in the early rounds.

Do you have all you need to go for SaaS gold?

#MrSaaSSays

Best practice #SaaS platforms satisfy user NEEDS to solve their problem, but to increase usability we also assess WANTS.

They drive a lot of UI functionality.

It’s why there’s often more than 1 way to do the same thing

For example, Copy and Paste.

Only 1 way is NEEDED, but you can use the keyboard or a mouse and menus.

Navigation around an application is much the same.

All we NEED is a menu of available actions and options, but we simplify things by making common activities easily accessible in situ.

Foe example, when we see a customer name or order number, a single click might show the details.

But how do you know if you’re doing enough for your users?

There’s no problem if it’s a bug.

You’re gonna hear about those!

But we rarely hear about stuff we’ve accidentally made difficult.

Why?

Because WE DON’T ASK!

Yes, feedback options are often available somewhere, but users are busy and apathetic

If you want their help so you can be better, you have to ask for it.

And all the time!

So make your feedback options easy to find, and don’t just ask for a random opinion.

Ask what you can do BETTER.

Make it contextual, and give them lists of options to simplify the process.

Remember, software is an exercise in empathy, so help them help you help them.

#MrSaaSSays