Technology advances accelerate the rate of software updates. Frequent releases have become the new norm, and quite often, they require a completely new tech stack to satisfy growing customer needs. This creates talent shortage challenges and gives rise to software product development outsourcing. Businesses often hire product development services companies to quickly meet their software development needs with highly skilled professionals. This allows them to update different branches of their operations quickly and stay prepared for market challenges. In this article, we will explore how businesses scale your software product with the help of software product development services companies and the key steps they need to take to successfully achieve their strategic goals.
1. Refine Product-Market Fit and Gather User Feedback to Scale Your Software Product
Even the most promising innovations can go off track when user preferences are not considered. Therefore, software product development companies focus on consumer-centric development, trying to hear and embed consumer voices at different stages of the development process.
In the opposite scenario, where software product developers keep the user demand off focus, a project might suffer from a biased perspective, like one where cost considerations and the lure of shorter development times conflict with the design team’s vision. As a result, the actual development times get longer, the team loses productivity, and overall product performance is under expectations.
To ensure there is a demand for the product, it is necessary to take several steps:
• Shape an audience of early adopters, i.e., people who are most likely to use your product with them
• Collect and analyze feedback on how they see a new product and its functionality
• Identify areas of implementing new features or improvement with the team responsible for software product development solutions
• Test the new features with users for repetitive rounds of feedback and continuous improvement
As the user vision of the product is clear, it is also necessary to ensure the technical infrastructure is ready to address upcoming challenges.
2. Strengthen Technical Infrastructure for Scalability to Scale Your Software Product
The Forrester prediction states that in 2025, slow-moving, un-updated tech infrastructures will face significant disruptions driven by accelerated user appetite for more profound technological features. The CrowdStrike outage in 2024 also hints at the need to be prepared for more sophisticated risks and implement modern security practices.
To address these challenges, businesses must assess their cloud infrastructure to identify points for improvement and ensure the infrastructure is scalable enough to sustain increased user loads and cyber-attacks and let you proactively mitigate performance disruptions.
If the infrastructure needs an update, which is often the case with businesses running on legacy software, the update is needed. Most often, companies do this with the help of an in-house team, involve consulting from a software product development agency, or hire specialized third-party services.
The robust, scalable architecture will ensure stable business development and provide a foundation for further feature expansion.
3. Develop a Roadmap for Feature Expansion to Scale Your Software Product
GenZers and GenXers, the leading consumer cohort of tomorrow and a considerable portion of today’s audience are less prone to brand loyalty than previous generations. In fact, they would easily abandon a brand for one that offers a technically more profound product.
Businesses use this fact for profit, luring competitors’ audiences away with feature advancement. Yet, those who innovate proactively win the most.
Regarding feature expansion, it is essential to establish the audience’s liking in advance: test assumptions and concentrate on the ones cited as most important. This is one of the most important stages in product development, defining the overall project direction.
Among the features in the discussion, some may be time-sensitive (e.g., a flexible discount system for an upcoming holiday season), while others may not be so urgent but will drive benefits in the future (e.g., enhanced site search, better page speed, new design, one-page checkout, etc.).
Therefore, when creating the roadmap for feature expansion, you should balance customer needs, long-term goals, and resources.
Generally, it is advised that you start with the most urgent features, especially if your competitors have implemented them, and gradually continue with overall system enhancement.
4. Invest in User Experience (UX) and Interface Design
The user experience tells the difference between a brand that keeps a loyal customer base and one that loses audiences.
The site’s speed, zero downtime, intuitive interface, and even the visually appealing and sustainable design boost brand recognition.
Yet, the most important thing is to identify user pains with your software product early and intervene timely.
Businesses use various techniques to mine user opinions on their products: using analytic tools, asking for customer feedback, running post-transaction surveys, installing social listening tools, etc. The findings are further transferred to product development services companies to be translated into technology updates.
As the feedback is achieved, it is important to implement improvements at all points of contact with your brand, whether it is a website, web application, mobile application, or other software product.
5. Set Up Metrics and KPIs to Track Progress as You Scale Your Software Product
Another essential part of a project is establishing KPIs and the process to track progress. Data-driven decisions, provided by enhanced metric tools, are more effective, and you’ll have a broader view of user behavior. This helps gauge what works right faster and scale back on less effective initiatives.
The key performance indicators to pay attention to from the start are user growth, user retention rate, lifetime value, and customer acquisition cost. They will be the quickest signals to mark the right path.
Also, it is important to track analytics in real-time, which is possible with most analytical tools on the market. This allows us to react quickly to disruptions and prevent disaster scenarios.
6. Optimize Sales and Distribution Channels to Scale Your Software Product
As audiences constantly migrate to new places, businesses should stay flexible in their choice of sales and distribution channels. For example, many brands established their presence on TikTok as user preferences shifted towards short videos. Trying different distribution channels helps reach new users and expand the market share.
If you plan to regularly review existing sales channels based on statistics, increase efforts on the most successful ones or cut less profitable ones, it is important to discuss this with the software development agency to make this technically possible.
Summing up
Although technology trends change rapidly, the core of all businesses remains the same: delivering value to users. Collecting customer feedback at every stage of product development and implementing necessary changes in line with market trends is crucial for scaling your software product successfully.
Scaling is an even more challenging task than bringing a new product to market. So, make sure you have your business and development teams synchronized around common goals. Also, ensure that your internal resources cover all the necessary expertise or enlist the support of outsourcing agencies to successfully scale your product.
