How to Build a SaaS with Webflow and Memberstack

Building a SaaS (Software as a Service) site with Webflow and Memberstack is a journey that combines strategic planning, technical expertise, and creative design. Let’s explore how you can develop a successful SaaS site.

Introduction to SaaS Sites

SaaS websites are at the forefront of the digital service industry, offering software solutions through a subscription model. Webflow's versatility and Memberstack's integration capabilities make them ideal for building SaaS sites. They provide the necessary tools for a seamless user experience, from user login to subscription management. When building a SaaS site, consider the user journey, the software's functionality, and how to effectively manage subscriptions and user accounts.

Before the Build

Selecting your niche and understanding the core features of your SaaS site is crucial. This includes identifying the type of software you're offering and the specific needs it addresses. Features like user account management, software access control, and payment processing are essential. Webflow and Memberstack offer functionalities that make building SaaS sites efficient and user-friendly.

Types of SaaS Companies

A SaaS website must succinctly showcase services and their benefits, ensure intuitive user onboarding and navigation, and offer responsive design for device compatibility. Clear pricing, a simple sign-up process, and accessible customer support are essential, alongside customer testimonials to establish credibility and trust.

Picking the specific niche of your SaaS site is critical. SaaS is an extremely popular form of online business, given the relatively low barrier to entry and the wide range of possible website types. Some of the most popular types (and most accessible to the no-code format) include: 

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software: Companies that offer cloud-based solutions to help businesses manage their customer interactions, sales tracking, and workflow automation.

2. Project Management Tools: Businesses that provide software to assist teams in planning, organizing, and tracking their work in a collaborative online environment.
3. E-commerce Platforms: Services that enable businesses to set up, manage, and scale online stores, complete with integrated payment processing, inventory tracking, and marketing tools.
4. Educational Technology (EdTech) Platforms: Companies that create SaaS offerings focused on online learning and teaching, including course creation, virtual classrooms, and student management systems.

5. Marketing Automation Software: Firms that develop platforms to automate marketing processes, such as email campaigns, social media posting, and lead generation activities.

Choosing a Platform

Webflow is an excellent choice for building SaaS sites due to its design flexibility and the ease with which it can be integrated with subscription management services. Because subscription services are by nature attached to some regular service offering, finding ways to display these services and the associated offerings is important. This can be accomplished very easily with the Webflow CMS. Managing subscription tiers also gives you the ability to gate levels of access, usage, or any other barriers you need to segment members. 

Building a SaaS Site with Webflow

• If you’re starting without a template read on!
• If you’re starting from a template skip to section 2

Without a Template

When building your SaaS website, there are critical elements that must be carefully considered. Utilizing the Webflow platform, you have the option to start from the ground up. However, to streamline the process, leveraging a pre-designed template is advised. This approach can fast-track routine aspects and still offers extensive options for tailoring the site to your unique specifications.

If you’d like to build from scratch, though, here are some important things to consider: 

Setting Up in Webflow

Start by laying the groundwork in Webflow. This involves structuring your site to accommodate different user interactions, from sign-ups to accessing whatever services you plan to offer. We recommend going through and creating a wireframe version of your site that includes all of the potential pages that you might want to include.

Some of the more universal ones would be:

• Landing Page/Home Page
• Sign Up/Create Account page
• Account Management
• Payment Page
• Dashboard (if pertinent to the service being offered)

Again, because SaaS is often focused on some kind of service that is embeddable in software, creating a site from scratch will almost certainly involve complex interactions either designed with code (and connected to Webflow via some kind of API connection) or through an automation platform like Make.com. It goes without saying that the latter is both our recommendation and a substantially more straightforward solution. 

Design Considerations

Because the focus of SaaS companies are the services themselves, the design should be intuitive, centering around what potential customers can expect to receive with their subscriptions. Focus on user experience, ensuring that the interface is not only visually appealing but also functional and easy to navigate. This can be achieved through a dedicated stylesheet or with “Variables” in the Webflow editor. You can read about this new feature here. 

Integrating Payments 

Depending on the service being offered you might need payments for:

• Tiered memberships (which are differentiated by service offerings)
• Usage caps based on memberships
• One-time fees

Because setting up payments can be especially challenging, we recommend that you use a third-party software for this. As an unbiased example, Memberstack integrates directly with Stripe in order to give members an easy way to set up these memberships and payments using Stripe – you can find a tutorial for this here.

SEO Optimization

Effective SEO optimization for your SaaS website involves tailored keyword research, seamless integration of keywords into content, a commitment to high-quality information, and adherence to technical best practices. Ensure your website is easily discoverable by search engines through proper indexing, optimal load times, and mobile compatibility. 

Continuous monitoring and adaptation to SEO trends and algorithm changes are crucial for maintaining and improving your website's search engine visibility, ultimately increasing its reach and potential conversions.

With a Template

If you plan to use a template to begin building your SaaS site (again, our strong recommendation), there are a couple of ways that you can approach it. Utilizing templates like the SaaS login or Client First SaaS template from Memberstack. These templates offer a comprehensive starting point with pre-designed pages and components that are tailored for SaaS sites.

Using a SaaS Template

Here are two templates that should help you get started regardless of the kind of website you plan to create: 

SaaS Login Template 

This template centers around getting users to sign up for your SaaS business, regardless of the exact services being offered. The example service it’s currently displaying is likely some kind of financial SaaS product, although practically speaking it could be applied to any kind of business. 

This page gives you the basics of a landing page and a login/signup page. Everything is customizable and can be redesigned to match the specific needs of your project. Because case studies and feature overviews are so critical, we’ve build templates for this as well.  

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Client First SaaS Template/UI Kit 

One of our favorite kinds of templates to create at Memberstack are UI kits that can give you extremely general design elements which you can apply to your website wherever needed. Again, because SaaS sites are so versatile, we’ve tried to give an extremely broad selection of possible UI elements. The focus is on getting customers to sign up for your site.  

These features include:

• Landing pages
• Sign up/create account pages
• Payment-related pages (pricing, payment successful)
• Content (blog) templates
• FAQ
• User information collection pages
• And more…

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We recommend going through both websites and trying to find what would be needed for the “minimum viable product” of the SaaS that you plan to offer. We recommend keeping track of any changes that are happening in the industry (especially with the recent popularization of AI-based B2B SaaS companies) so that your niche can survive in the new market. 

Conclusion

Whether starting from scratch or using a template, the goal is to create a SaaS site that provides a seamless user experience, effectively manages subscriptions, and aligns with your business model. Webflow and Memberstack offer the tools and flexibility needed to create a robust and engaging SaaS site.