14 User Behavior Trends For SaaS in 2024
Analyzing user behavior can help you understand how users perceive your product and brand. Since user preferences are always evolving, you need to be agile and swiftly adapt to new user behavior trends.
Product analytics can help you track changing user behavior for your app but here are some industry-wide changes that are influencing purchasing decisions in 2024.
Summary of user behavior trends
- User behavior trends are not the same as consumer behavior trends. The former tracks trends for software users, while a consumer behavior trend mainly refers to online shopping, such as buy-now-pay-later payment methods.
Here are the top trends to watch out for.
- Frictionless sign-ups and proactive support are now essential for winning over users.
- Predictive analytics are driving business decisions such as product and marketing strategy.
- Similarly, generative AI applications are helping speed up UX writing and enhance data analytics.
- No-code tools are making complex tasks simple, such as building in-app product tours.
- Accessibility features are making UX design more inclusive.
- Personalized experiences are becoming standard in the SaaS world.
- Users are demanding more cohesive experiences in the form of omnichannel experiences.
- More users are adopting micro-SaaS products for the specialized value and low cost that they offer.
- Data breaches in recent years are fuelling the demand for secure software experiences.
- Companies are going beyond product marketing and investing in content marketing to deliver value to users.
- Consumer habits are leaning more and more towards remote working. For this reason, the average consumer demands mobile-first and remote working tools to accomplish work tasks such as remote usability testing.
- Book a Userpilot demo to find out how you can enhance your in-app experiences to keep up with the behavior trends for 2024.
User behavior vs consumer behavior
While both these terms are used interchangeably, user behavior and consumer behavior refer to different things. User behavior is primarily focused on SaaS platforms and how users leverage them. In a nutshell, it analyzes software usage patterns.
On the other hand, consumer behavior trends are more related to how people interact with online shopping.
They analyze the behavioral changes and evolving trends in the preferences of online shoppers. Many consumer behavior trends, such as influencer marketing and social commerce, aren’t as popular in the SaaS industry.
14 user behavior trends for 2024
To keep your SaaS platform engaging and attractive for users, it’s important to meet user expectations. This can help ensure your app retains its product stickiness and user buying decisions stay in your favor.
Here are the trends to watch out for in 2024.
1. Users expect friction-less sign-up processes
Nothing puts users off more than seeing a long sign-up form. This significantly reduces form completion rates and results in lost leads.
Make sure your sign-up forms only contain the most essential fields. This is the best way to encourage customers to create an account and boost your form conversion rate.
Also, design your sign-up page to provide a smooth sign-up flow for users. Here are some examples of great sign-up pages.
2. Proactive support is now key to user satisfaction
In an era where users are spoilt for choice, great customer service quickly stands out. 60% of consumers say they’ve purchased from a particular brand solely based on its services.
Proactive support is the key to winning over customers. Here’s how to offer it:
- Use in-app guidance where users commonly face friction.
- Answer FAQs with self-service resource centers.
- Provide multiple ways of getting help, including via live chat in the app and even social media channels.
To analyze where you currently stand, you could run a funnel analysis report to identify drop-off points in the user journey. Add proactive support here in the form of tooltips, modals, and more.
Similarly, here’s a trend analysis report showing feature usage trends among users.
3. Predictive analytics are guiding strategy-making
Predictive analytics is a great way to estimate how users will engage with your product in the future. It involves extrapolating existing data to predict future trends through artificial intelligence.
Based on the insights, you can make data-driven decisions to adapt to future trends and improve your business prospects.
That said, predictive analytics needs a lot of accurate data. And that’s where a platform like Userpilot can come in handy. You can use feature tags to track key events and collect actionable data with ease.
4. No-code tools are gaining popularity
Gone are the days when non-tech teams would have to wait for weeks before their app requests get implemented by the dev team. No-code platforms are enabling non-tech users to do everything from building onboarding workflows to tracking product analytics without needing to code.
These tools speed up task completion, simplify iterative testing, and let many users boost productivity. Such no-code growth leads to more agile teams that can increase company profitability.
For instance, here’s a no-code in-app flow builder from Userpilot. This Notion example is only for representation.
5. Personalized experiences are becoming the industry standard
71% of consumers expect personalization from brands. Here are some advantages of delivering a personalized experience to your users.
- Personalized digital marketing campaigns bring potential users closer to your brand and make them more likely to convert.
- New users get access to tailored onboardings based on features of their interest. This lowers time to value and increases productivity. Here are some examples.
- There’s an increase in the overall user satisfaction and retention of existing customers.
But how do you collect data for personalization? In 2024, third-party cookies are being phased out.
This increases the importance of zero and first-party data. Zero-party data is data that users proactively share with you, and first-party data is data that you collect from them intentionally. These can be attained via welcome surveys.
With data from welcome surveys, you can segment users and trigger different onboarding tours for each user.
6. Users expect omnichannel experiences
Users access your SaaS software from multiple devices. But starting from scratch every time can be disruptive. What if they could pick up where they left off?
That’s exactly what an omnichannel customer experience can deliver. From Boomers to Gen Z consumers, users from all age groups expect a smooth transition between the various channels and devices they use. They expect to continue the same journey, no matter the channel they use to access it.
Google Chrome does this by ensuring you get the same experience across all your devices, including syncing passwords and saving history.
Be it customer engagement or user communication, craft comprehensive omnichannel experiences for your users and deliver memorable user experiences.
You can track your omnichannel strategy performance with cross-channel analytics. These reports help you analyze user behavior across multiple platforms and devices so you’re able to identify gaps in the experience and step in to fill them.
For instance, with Userpilot’s HubSpot integration, you can create customized emails within HubSpot based on data collected from Userpilot. These emails can be accessed from both your email ID inbox and your HubSpot inbox.
7. Customers expect faster answers to their queries
Priority support is quickly becoming a part of every company’s brand values.
Users want instant resolutions to their problems. 82% of SaaS users rate instant responses as important or very important.
Decrease problem resolution time with chatbots or knowledge bases. These reduce dependency on your customer support team, allowing them more time for priority tasks.
AI-powered chatbots resolve most queries in a matter of minutes without needing any help from support teams. You can integrate the chatbot into your app through help center software to provide comprehensive and quick support to your users.
Self-service resources shared through a help center can make it easy for users to discover solutions to their problems at their own pace.
8. There’s greater reliance on AI to speed up work
With generative AI becoming more mainstream, users are increasingly leveraging it to speed up processes. You can bring the power of artificial intelligence to your SaaS by leveraging AI tools such as ChatGPT to improve user experience.
An example is Userpilot’s AI-powered writing assistant that enables users to seamlessly craft compelling SaaS microcopy in seconds. This way, creating tooltips, modals, and banners is a breeze.
9. Micro SaaS is becoming more popular
SaaS users are leaning towards micro or vertical SaaS platforms. They offer specialized solutions at a low cost.
With an increase in the number of SaaS platforms, it’s become increasingly difficult to differentiate your product. But micro SaaS makes product differentiation easier as your audience and value proposition would be highly specific.
10. Companies are increasing investment in security
The average cost of a data breach in 2023 was $4.45 million. And SaaS platforms are vulnerable as 82% of breaches involved data stored in the cloud. Monetary losses aside, such attacks could dilute user trust in your SaaS platform.
That’s why security is among the major SaaS challenges for business owners. Here are some best practices you can implement.
- Zero trust architecture: Involves the principle of never trust, always verify. Nobody gets access to data without passing through authentication controls.
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA): Crosschecks if the person accessing the data is legitimate by having them authenticate the access from another source.
- Data encryption: Encodes your data into encrypted text that can’t be deciphered without the right encryption key. It helps safeguard the data.
- Regular security audit: Conducts security audits regularly to identify vulnerabilities and fix them to make your SaaS solution more resistant to cyber attacks.
11. Content marketing is helping educate users with valuable content
Users crave more insights than ever before and they’re willing to dive deep into your blog for it.
This is why companies are investing in product-led content marketing resources in 2024. These resources can showcase how to use your product to its full extent and range of applications.
You can also communicate your brand values through better content. This is essentially a subset of SaaS marketing and is a mix of content and product marketing, where you combine product experiences with educational material to deliver greater value to users.
12. Accessibility features are seeing greater adoption
The global market for web accessibility is expected to reach $893.7 million by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 11.3% between now and then.
Make your tool more inclusive by adopting an empathy-driven design approach. This enables users with disabilities to easily use your product and makes your tool more accessible for a wider audience.
Inclusive product design includes the following attributes:
- Provide keyboard accessibility so users don’t have to rely solely on the mouse to navigate.
- Make sure your SaaS software is compatible with screen readers.
- Add options for high contrast and color accessibility.
- Give users multiple accessible options for alternative input devices.
- Conduct regular usability testing to understand whether the platform will work as desired for accessibility-related features.
- Incorporate text-to-speech and speech recognition features.
- Comply with accessibility standards such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).
13. Preference for mobile-first applications is increasing
As remote and hybrid working becomes more prevalent, mobile-first applications have started becoming a necessity. Users want to access apps quickly without having to head to a laptop or desktop. And smartphone apps can help you deliver exactly that.
By adopting a mobile-first approach, you can design apps that deliver the same experience as your desktop apps. This can play a crucial role in driving user retention.
14. Collaboration and remote work tools are part of consumer expectations
With remote work still very popular, users seek more collaborative and remote work tools.
Consumers expect smooth collaboration features such as asynchronous communication, real-time messaging, project management integrations, and more. Building these capabilities into your tool can allow support for distributed teams and meet user expectations.
Conclusion
It’s important to keep up with changing user behavior trends and pivot your user experience strategies accordingly. Additionally, industry best practices can help deliver an unparalleled experience for your users.
A product growth platform such as Userpilot can help you discover valuable insights related to your user base. Get a Userpilot Demo and see how you can implement these upcoming user trends.
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