Changelogs aren't just for technical updates!

Used correctly they can become a major marketing and communication tool for your business. Here's why we think changelogs matter for SaaS businesses now more than ever.

1. Updates are the core of a SaaS business

What's the main reason that SaaS products have become so popular in the last decade? It's all about iteration and improvement. Users no longer have to worry about purchasing a yearly release of your product but can have access to your latest features, fixes, and improvements straight away without any need to download, upgrade or otherwise take any action at all.

However, this can be a double-edged sword. It's one thing to make a new feature or fix an important bug, but it's quite another to get users engaged and using the elements of your service you've been working so hard on. That's where a SaaS changelog can come in! Putting a changelog onto your landing page can help you find a balance between establishing your core features and displaying what you've been working on most recently.

It lets users know that you understand the 'service' part of SaaS; that your business is constantly producing, adapting, and improving.

2. It can help lead generation and on-boarding

One of the most common ways SaaS companies will split thier content is to use a static landing page and a blog that produces updates. There's a few problems with this method though. Firstly, you've got to send potential conversions over to another page and hope they come back. Even if you open your blog in a new tab, you're still putting the work on your customer to direct themselves back to your landing page when they're finished.

Secondly, a blog and a SaaS changelog serve different purposes. While you may show off product updates on your blog, you might also be doing a lot of other posting not relevant to new users, forcing them to dig through categories to work the out the latest changes.

Now that's not to say that blogs don't have thier place - after all, we use the same method of a static landing page and a blog. However, we use our blog solely for content, and not for customer updates, because we wnat to make sure our prospective customers stay focused on our features, services and updates.

Using a Changelog for SaaS service like ChangeCrab you can instead set-up an embeddable widget that not only highlights when you've made updates and catches the eye far more than a blog ever could.

As these widgets don't load up a new page but instead just display the changelog over an exsiting part of your page, it's also far easier for a user to view, scan and still be exactly where you want them to be - on your landing page, ready to convert.

3. It shows you are going the extra mile

A SaaS changelog isn't just a tool for speaking to your customers, it's a way to show your are listening to them as well. However you decide to present your changelog, Nothing beats an active one to demonstrate that your company is on top of things, and they can open up a whole new channel of communication amongst your most engaged users.

Changelogs can work incredibly well in tandem with user suggestions and voting, as you can take an idea or update from inception to release all within the same area of your site, and without the need to take your customers away to a blog or, worse, social media, to show them that things are always being updated.

Only around 1/5 of SaaS companies feature a changelog or an easy to way to see product updates and new feature annnouncements. In a highly competetive market, a SaaS changelog is both an incredibly simple and yet highly effective tool to cut throught the noise and put the things you've been working on hardest front and center.