So you’re ready to build your SaaS. But how sure are you that customers will purchase your product?
This is a very valid and very important question, regardless of which platform you’re building your SaaS on.
If you don’t have an answer then you probably should stop what you’re doing and figure it out.
The easiest way to get an answer is to setup a landing page with a “Buy Now” button, drive traffic to it and then see how many folks push that button. (The “buy” button can simply be a redirect to a “We’re full but we’ll send you an email when we’ve expanded” type message.)
If you can get say, 20 – 30 users to push that button after reviewing your pricing table, then you can build with a reasonable degree of confidence.
If you can get half as many to provide their email address even after they’ve encountered your message, then you have a high level of confidence that you should go ahead and build the thing.
It doesn’t really matter what you think about your target market or how many folks have told you they would purchase if you built your thing-a-ma-jig. The best validation is when someone is willing to push that “Purchase Now” or “Buy Now” button. That is definite confirmation that your message appealed to them and that they found value in your offer – enough value that they were willing to consider purchasing.
It doesn’t mean that you can’t do some things on the build side while your test(s) are running. It just mean that you don’t have to spend too much time building yet. Maybe you can purchase software, setup some servers, maybe play with your tools.
But as far as spending all your time on it? Probably not yet – not until you have proof that a decent number of folks are ready for what you’re building and willing to part with their hard-earned cash to get it.
Even when you do have that validation, you still want to be careful that you don’t over-engineer your SaaS straight off the bat. Build out just enough to get the user to purchase and give them their app. Then, you might do most of the setup work for them manually.
Once you get to, say, 40 paying customers, then you can build more automation into your process.
By going through this sequence, you’re likely to save yourself a ton of headache and disappointment. You’ll end up building something you are sure folks want, with the features they most desire.
Until you validate your market, you’re really just guessing and gambling.
A really nice side-effect of this type of market validation approach is that you end up with a head-start on your marketing message.
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