Whether it is a mobile application or a website, a lot of time and energy are humiliating the idea of an applicable product. But for many entrepreneurs, the worst part of the process is the lack of an idea if the future product will really attract real users.
These are the types of problems that the author and entrepreneur Eric Rice began to solve in his best -selling book “The Lean Startup”. Throughout the book, a methodology is designed to help startups to test and refine new ideas as soon as possible of the development process.
One of the basic steps of the process is the development of an applicable product (MVP). Join us to get an introduction about what is the minimum applicable product, and why it could be very useful, and how to build one for your next commercial idea.
What is the meaning of a MVP application?
MVP is an early phase version of a new product designed to give the first users an opportunity to test its basic features. The goal of developing a MVP application is to allow companies to measure the possibilities of the product’s success as much as possible of the development process.
To understand what the MVP concept is designed to do better, let’s take an example of the type of problems that it can solve. Imagine that the founders of a new software development company have an idea for a sure application that their target audience will love him.
In their enthusiasm, they draw a road map for the product, pay the costs of great development to create it, and to start promoting its release on social media. After an expensive and long development process, the application is finally released to potential customers.
But to astonished the participating founders, it turned out that the application has completely failed. At this stage, they find themselves with two options, and neither of them is especially effective.
The first is to reduce their losses and try to develop a more successful new product. The second method is to invest more time and resources in reformulating the application in the hope of creating a more persuasive value offer.
By release MVP in a very early development phase, the startup could have provided a large amount of time, money and disappointment. A successful MVP version can answer basic questions such as:
- Is there enough for the user to justify the development of a full product?
- Will the final product be able to better meet customer needs than its competitors?
- The target market you have chosen offers the best product for the market?
- Do the user notes indicate that your business model is correct or do you need to change your approach?
- What are the MVP features that have proven to be the most popular that can be improved?
- Do customer observations indicate that any new features should be added to increase the chances of the success of the product?
The process of developing a MVP application product
Are you interested in developing an applicable product in your next idea? Here’s a step -by -step guide to help you start.
1. Market research and the target audience identification
The first step to develop an applicable and successful product is to understand the problem it can solve. The second step is to identify the targeted users and know if they are interested enough to really buy it.
In 1999, an idea came to a man named Nick Swinmunne after visiting many stores in search of a specific pair of shoes. Will it not be appropriate, as you conclude, to be able to buy shoes online?
The problem was that at that time, online shoe sales were relatively unheard. So Nick decided to test his idea to ensure that it will be successful. He started publishing pictures of shoes from local stores on a site called “Shoesite.com”.
Whenever someone did a purchase, he would run to the shoe store, buy shoes, and send them by mail to the customer. The higher the number of works that he succeeded in mobilizing, it becomes easy for Nick to persuade investors that his idea deserves development. Today, Shoesite.com continues under the name Zapos.
2. Determine the basic functions and features
In order to build an applicable product, once you determine what your product can do and for any consumers, it is time to know the basic features that must be included in your applicable product. What is the set of lower features you will need to prove adequate users, how will the product address their weaknesses?
When Drew Houston first reached the idea of Dropbox in 2007, he began creating a series of short videos of the product’s illustration. Videos, which presented viewers an early preliminary model to solve cloud storage, was sufficient to earn thousands of the first subscribers at Dropbox before launching the product.
Videos have also been searched as a valuable way to collect customer comments about the features that must be included in the final product that should not be included. The key is to maintain your applicable product at an effective but functional cost enough to show the user experience it provides.
3. Develop the first version of the product
In order to build an applicable product, once the target market, the public and the basic features are determined, it is time for an application product design that users can try. The way you will follow to create your applicable product is largely dependent on the type of idea you test.
If you are planning to create a new iOS or Android application, you may consider working with an application development team or development company. Or you may prefer to use your skills set to build a simple version of your product.
For example, Airbnb started in 2007 when the company’s participating founders rented a room for three travelers looking for a place to stay. And because the founders were suspected that the home rental service may meet the market need, they launched a simple landing page in March 2008, which managed to secure two reservations.
In August of the same year, they launched an updated website called “Air Bed and Breakfast”, which increased their success rate to 80 reservations. The company’s name was changed to Airbnb until 2009, which has since turned into a company with billions of dollars. By starting a small scale, the company was able to grow alongside attention to its service instead of emptying its budget with a huge primary investment.
Validating product health
Once you make sure that the applicable product offers a strong basis for customer observations, it is time to put it for real users. It may be decided to release the applicable product for a selected experimental group or the public in general.
But as soon as it is released, it is time to convert your entire focus into the first users. In the end, the complete goal of building an applicable product is minimal is to know the greatest possible as much as it can succeed as quickly as possible.
Think about the minimum applicable product as an experiment that is performed to prove (or refute) hypothesis. But like any other experience, you will need to determine the scales that you will use to assess the extent of the minimum application capacity.
To ensure that you have the user notes on the standards you have chosen, consider creating customer satisfaction questionnaires using a platform like Surveymonkey or Qualtrics. Make it as easy as possible for the first adopters to provide customer comments by sending your questionnaire via e -mail, publishing it on your page on social media, or even running ads linked to its access page.
Iterits & Improvements
The main benefit of developing an applicable product is at least the ability to make enlightened decisions about the future of your product. The more user notes you collect, the better you have a better idea about whether or not your vision is on the right track.
Flexibility and response are the key when making a decision on the best strategy to move forward. If the response you receive is overwhelmingly, this is a good sign that your product is going in the right direction.
But resist the desire to ignore any consistent negative notes from the final users that could be useful in the next stage of development. In addition, look for the features that have proven to be the most popular and completely renewed or canceled.
What if your notes are not positive as you were hoping? Unfortunately, not every idea proves to be great as it looked on paper. As far as it may be painful, it may be aware that your applicable product is at least not applicable, imagine how bad perception is accompanied by huge development costs!
In some cases, it may be better to use what you have learned to develop a completely new product. In other cases, it may be useful to explore whether it is possible to fix your applicable product by adopting a different business model or attracting another targeted market.
Expanding the Applicable Product – Scaling
Even if your applicable product achieved tremendous success, resist the desire to spend the capital of your entirely emerging company over it overnight. The idea of developing the famous passenger application app was launched by the Uber Travis Calnnik and Garrett Camp in 2008. But he did not start testing the application, then known as “Uber Cap”, except in 2010 in New York City with only three cars.
The expansion of the emerging company is a form of art, and the lack of patience has caused many of the very enthusiastic startups. A recent study has discussed whether it is better for startups to expand early to reduce the risk of the tradition of the product or the slower expansion to help reduce the risks of commitment.
The researchers found that “companies that are expanding early are more likely to fail but are not likely to come out successfully.” Simply put, evidence indicates that the risk of expansion early exceeds the benefits of expansion at a slower rate.
Don’t be afraid to focus on your project and make sure that the final version is completely suitable for the market with the market. If your product continues to grow over time, you will start naturally in the appearance of more signs that indicate that your startup is ready to expand.
Challenges and best practices
Sometimes the only most valuable thing to know what you should do is to know what you should not do. Let’s take a look at many common mistakes that can hinder the MVP development process and how to avoid it:
- Sufficient market research. Failure to understand the market and the target audience is one of the fastest ways to failure. MVP applied product must be built to check the health of market research, not replacement.
- Neglect the user experience. Don’t be very busy with what your product can do to the point that you forget to evaluate things like ease of use. Remember to think as a customer, not just a developer
- Neglecting the product test. While MVP only needs to include the basic features, you will need to make sure they are all working. Make sure to test your MVP product before the release so that you can collect notes on a functional product.
- Not choosing the right team. One of the founders participating to the development teams, never reduce the strength of the people who share your vision and have skills to help implement them. Take enough time to choose the right people for your team, as you may work with each other for years.
- Exaggeration. Make sure not to exhaust the first users in your endeavor to assess the best features of your product. If you are having a problem in narrowing the scope of choices, think about ways such as A/B. B.B.
- Not to ask the correct questions. It is likely that the questionnaire, which is carefully formulated, is likely to inspire more ideas compared to simply requesting customer observations. Make sure to align your questions with the standards you have chosen and include a section for any additional comments.
- Neglecting the ability to expand. Don’t be very busy rapidly offering your product on the market that you forget to make sure it is ready to expand in the future. The more solid its foundation, the easiest to build on it with your audience grows.
MVP development for the success of startups
MVP can help reduce project costs by generating valuable notes from users in the early stages of development. It can also provide your team with the opportunity to end it while taking real users’ visions.
While building MVP can provide startups a large amount of time and effort, it also requires building the right team for your needs.
