Build a first trial experience
What does SaaSified mean and what makes an app a good app? These are questions you should ask yourself. It is important that every app has clear user guidance. Everything a user would need should be easily accessible, but nothing more. So, when an app is used, you are not distracted by a bunch of other things that are going on at the same time. When you start using an app, you should be guided through the usage of that app, by way of the user experience.
There are ToolTips. Every control should speak for itself and ToolTips are those things that pop up when you hover over a control. For example, when there is a button, and you have your mouse over the button then the button will show you the ToolTip.
The Business Central user assistance model is based on the following principles.
Get started - Make it easy to start using Business Central with your own data, in-product videos give new users a quick introduction to how the product works, and Home pages give easy access to key tasks so each user can easily get started with their work every day.
Get unblocked - Embedded user assistance implemented as tooltips answers most immediate questions about what fields and actions do.
Learn more - The Help menu and the tooltips provide context-sensitive links to Help articles with more information.
Apps, extensions, and customizations are expected to follow the same model by applying tooltips to controls on page objects, and by providing links to Help for their functionality.
You might have media Links to short videos explaining handling in the background, so you can create some video content that provides five to ten-minute short videos on how to use your product.
There's demo data that can be downloaded, and industry data to choose from. Instead of having to enter industry standard lists of master data, you provide ways to import that data into your App. For instance, postcodes, or industry codes or things like that. User data that can be provided and automatically loaded when you start using a feature that needs those.
There is a just-in-time setup, so setup data is created when you need them, but not earlier. What this means is, instead of providing all the setup data at the start of using an App, you only have the User enter the setup data for the feature that they're about to use, which means that they don't spend a lot of time setting up data for features that they don't yet understand, or that they don't even need at that point.
Apps have a nice visualization, which means, you would have embedded Power BI and business charts in the app, which visualizes the data in the app. It has a visual appeal to it instead of just having lists of the things to click on. You should see a business chart, or a Power BI dashboard with things that you can click on.
An App looks and feels different from on-premises verticals or horizontal. What is underestimated is the time that it takes to prepare the user experience. Invest as much time and effort, if not more into the user experience, as you need to invest into the functionality itself. For many ISV partners, this is counter intuitive because you focus on functionality, what makes a great app, and what makes this good functionality.
Most people are not used to looking at an app, taking a user by the hand, and learning how to use that app. It's important that you pay attention to the user experience itself, as well. Less is more; simplicity is the key. It needs to be intuitive; it needs to be visual.
In an app world, you don't have the luxury of organizing a classroom training for a week, and taking users by the hand and explaining the whole system, before they start using a single feature. You need to be able to explain a feature to the user in easy to understand terms, in a visual and intuitive way.
So a SaaSified user experience is having a quick adoption, leading users to the features, taking them by the hand by showing them there's a way to set up the system for the feature that you're about to use. You need to take a step-by-step guidance through the setup of your app.
There are ways to provide contextual information, a notification to the user, that a certain piece of setup help is available for them to use and set up a feature that they are about to use. This means hiding irrelevant screen elements. So when a user is about to use a feature from a screen that also provides access to another feature, but this user hasn't set that feature up yet, you should probably hide that screen element, so that a user isn't distracted by a feature that they aren't about to use.
In summary, it's really a focus to simplify the user experience. So instead of providing a system that needs to be set up with help from a trainer and a consultant that's onsite to help you get started, the user experience is designed in such a way that the user can start using the system without that help by themselves.
A good SaaSified user experience meets the following criteria:
Quick adoption
Leads users to features
Step-by-step guidance through setup
Contextual information
Hides irrelevant screen elements
Simplifies the user experience
So, what is the customer journey? The customer journey has a goal, and the goal is getting the end user to subscribe to your product. One thing that is important to realize is that this is a delicate journey. A customer is doing research into a feature that they want to use, and you can lose potential customers at every single step of the way.
A prospect might not find your app is very easy to use once they've installed it. So, you have to think about a way to make it easy for them to understand key features and to give them a taste of some functionality of some key feature that you want to provide. You can show them that by providing simple, straightforward, easy to accomplish setup instructions, so they can start using a feature immediately. You need to gently draw your prospect deeper into your app until they make the decision to subscribe to it.
The next unit is about SaaSification techniques and how you can implement them.