Why is MVP necessary?
A clear understanding of the concept
Launching a new product can be exciting for any company. But when bringing a product to market, research and testing are vital steps in order to ensure you have a feasible product that people want to purchase.
The main definition:
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) represents a development technique in which a new product, app or website is developed with simply enough features to satisfy early adopters. The final product, with the complete set of features is actually designed and developed after considering feedback from the product’s initial users.
A lot of people misuse the term MVP.
This happens because this is such a broad term and generally, its interpretation is subjective.
We know that everyone tries to make him/her own sense out of it, but to be clear: having a set of minimum features in your web or mobile app (or whatever the product ) – IS NOT MVP. Also, building a few extra features and showing them to the users IS NOT MVP.
More accurate, even though for you the MVP represents a set of small experiments or a product development method, the main goal of the MVP is to find out the VIABILITY of the product you promote while giving equal importance to its features.
Keep in mind that the Minimum Viable Product is not a product, but rather a painstakingly process.
The MVP strategy is an ideal approach for startups. Bear in mind that the vast majority of the startups tend to make the wrong assumption that people will be interested in their product. Don’t do like everyone else! Before this, try to figure out what will your product constitute; create an initial version, get feedback from the early adopters, make corrections if needed, go back to your early adopters and so on. Do this continuously until your product stabilizes and until you are perfectly sure that the product has the minimum set of features your users need to solve a particular need and be satisfied.
Simple steps to create a Minimum Viable Product:
- Define the challenge to solve
- Find the appropriate solution
- Analyze competitors
- Build the priority of features
- Build, measure and learn!
How to build an MVP that is: Viable, Marketable, Desirable, Delightful?
The answer is simple: focus on WHY instead of WHAT and ask questions to yourself like:
- Who will be the target?
- Why should people care?
- What do you want users to do?
Also, it’s very important to prioritize the features you think are most critical to have and you wish to be implemented in your MVP. The easier way is to make a list, set categories as “must-have”, “nice-to-have” and “don’t care” — then ask your development team to act on it. This will definitely reduce the chance of your MVP to fail.
Make sure you choose the best development team for your project – this is often crucial to your product’s success!
Besides this, competitor analysis is necessary or else your MVP is not going to have the impact you wish to have.
Top 3 most important characteristics of the MVP:
- has enough value that users are willing to use it or buy it initially.
- demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopters.
- provides a feedback loop to guide future development.
Simple look at the benefits of a MVP approach
The main benefits of using an MVP process.
You can:
- evaluate your understanding of whether the product is needed without having to use a huge amount of assets to develop the full version of the product.
- stimulate your team’s learning regarding what the user actually wishes whilst using rapid iteration to deliver that.
- diminish the amount of wasted hours spent by the development team by focusing specific features for launch.
- make your entry on the market faster and, just like that, you will start to raise sales earnings faster than if you develop the fully final product for launch.
- benefit a competitive advantage in case other companies are considering entering the market you are focusing on.
The advantage of developing an MVP is proven by prosperous companies as Uber, Dropbox or Zappos. They all started as MVPs and gained power and influence.
Metrics to consider when you measure your MVP success:
- Feedback
- User engagement
- Number of downloads
- Percentage of active users
- Percentage of paying users
- Customer lifetime value
To conclude
Your goal on a Minimum Viable Product is to get your product into the hands of the marketplace for as little money and time as possible. Always be prepared to change and adjust things in order to meet market requirements and keep in mind that there will always be more to the process than you believed, more work than you predicted and more challenges than you anticipated.
Trust your feelings, follow some simple steps (mentioned above) and don’t let negative feedback to affect you! Work until you reach the first milestone of positive feedback and until you have confidence in your vision. This is the only way to get the desired product, the product of your dreams.