In the late 90s, a young man went to the shopping mall to buy a pair of Airwalk Desert Chuka boots. The found the shoes but either the size didn’t fit or if it did, it wasn’t in the color he desired. Unable to find the right size and color combination, he came home frustrated.
An idea popped in his head and he created a rough prototype to sell shoes online at shoesite.com.
That’s the story of Nick Swinmurn, the founder of Zappos.
Instead of doing extensive market research, he developed a core website first. After that, he purchased shoes and placed them on his website. At first, he made no profits on every sale, but still, it was the best way to test the business idea. He decided to expand his business online once customers are ready to purchase the shoes.
While Nick Swinmurn’s Zappos was later acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion, this story is a remarkable example of how the MVP-first approach can give you a headstart on your product idea and build your brand without burning your pocket. Launching your product faster, in weeks rather than in months, depends on how smartly you implemented the MVP development process.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP), is simply the product in its minimal form, least featured with core functionalities.
Eric Ries defines it in the following way:
“Minimum Viable Product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”
MVP development is a process of building a new product with basic functionalities and minimal features, to analyze how the target audience would react. This can either be done by hiring developers or joining hands with a product development company to assist you throughout the process.
To stay ahead in today’s modern digital business era, launching a product faster and within a budget in a market is all you need for successful product development. Here are the following MVP benefits:
An MVP app works on one single idea and follows that throughout the process. The core idea behind the lean startup is to develop a product with minimum features and minimum budget and too in less time. The minimum features can reduce the mobile app development cost. And if you have an MVP Development company onboard to build the product, you can have a prototype that reflects your core functionality in the best way possible.
The MVP development process helps you to find out your targeted audience’s opinion and feedback about the product. It also enables you to know how they want to see the product look like.
Getting MVP development services from a trusted company also facilitates you with a team for marketing your product right. By building in iterations, you can be assured whether your product satisfies your targeted audience’s needs and if it’s right for them. It should represent your product well to the users making them understand that it is better than others.
Less development time leads to low app development costs. You will definitely receive a faster response if your product launch time is fast in the market. This will help you to work on the improvement of your product fast, and release an updated version in no time.
One of the essential advantages of choosing MVP approach as your product development strategy is that it eliminates investing all your resources on things that may not work.
“What if we found ourselves building something that nobody wanted? In that case, what did it matter if we did it on time and on a budget?” by Eric Ries
Here is the list of steps involved in the MVP development process that needs to be performed smartly to develop the product faster and launch it into the market in no time.
It might be possible a few times that your ideas do not fit into the market needs. Before initiating any idea process, ensure that it satisfies the targeted audience’s needs.
Do watch what your competitors are offering to the customers, and how you can stay ahead of them. Make sure if you are availing product development solutions, you have ensured that they started with market research first to add-on to your data.
Is your product worth buying? Does it add value to your customers? How is it going to benefit them? As MVP states, providing value to the people, first, outline them and create your MVP based on that.
To define user flow, you need to describe the process stages and the explanation of the steps to reach the destination. Laid more focus on core tasks such as searching and buying products, and managing and receiving orders.
Make a list of all the core features you want to incorporate into your product and then start developing the MVP. If you are taking MVP development solutions from a trusted vendor, you can discuss the scope with them and let them know the features you want to get implement first. As soon as the development is completed, cross-check with the MVP features list. After that prioritise the MVP features present in the list.
After setting the priority, define the scope of the software MVP and start building it.
Now, it’s time to launch MVP in the market and see the audience’s reaction to the product. As we all know, MVP is never less than a final product. It is a glance of a final product.
After launching the product in the market, it’s time to check and analyse the customer response. You can now easily determine whether your product is acceptable to the market and the customers by analyzing the feedback of the targeted audience.
Here are the most useful tips for the businesses to get started with building an MVP.
Before getting product development services and kickstarting your MVP process, make sure you have the answers to the following questions.
List down the core features and functionalities that you want to incorporate into your product and deliver to your customers. The big brand MNC Uber is a great example of this. The core functionality they work on is ordering cars around different places.
MVP is not just the minimal featured product. You also need to consider 3 other areas:
MVP is not just a product, rather it’s a whole process of end-to-end product development that is executed iterativelyr. It is implemented in your workflow and then repeats by adding modifications infinitely.
Don’t reach out to a large group of customers first. It’s better to have limited engaged users, rather than a crowd who are only interested in your product.