You must be thinking, MVP? I thought that was just a term for the most valuable player in sports. This is true, however MVP meaning Minimum Viable Product began when one man couldn’t find a pair of shoes he was looking for in the store, so his solution was online shopping. MVP was born in 1990.
Instead of investigating the market, he dove right in and created a website from scratch. His approach to an online store was looking at a shoe store, clicking on the images of shoes then posting them on his site. When he received an order, he would purchase the shoes from the one website and then ship them.
There’s no doubt that he lost a lot of money on each sale, but regardless it was a method to test a business idea. Once he had inquired that customers were actually interested in purchasing shoes online, he turned it into a fully functional legal business.
Nick Swinmurn is the master behind the company Zappos, it was eventually attained by Amazon for $1.2 Billion.
The approach to create Zappos, by Swinmurn, is known today as MVP Development.
Now, what is the MVP Development process?
Minimum Viable Product, otherwise known in short as MVP, means that the smallest product, with the least features, just includes the basics and those functions that demonstrate your product.
Within mobile app development, MVP is a basic interpretation of a mobile application. MVP is the action of creating a new product with base function and important minimal features to test how the main audience will respond. Once that’s developed the full version of the product will take place.
MVP assists with testing, designing, and delivering the final product. MVP development holds a crucial task of web development and designing. A countless number of businesses have run into major drawbacks when trying to launch a Minimum Viable Product for mobile app or web. This is why it is crucial to understand the question: How to develop a minimum viable product?
But, what’s the purpose of an MVP?
The purpose of creating an MVP is to release a product in an efficient time frame, that is based on your idea with a limited budget. This method enables the business owner to collect users’ feedback for the main product and include it in future iterations. Using MVP will help you find the right audience while looking for ideas that are only based on experience which saves time.
Creating an MVP means ensuring you have a balance between what you’re offering and what your customers actually need. An MVP also helps minimize the number of errors that may occur.
Here are the top Benefits of MVP Product Development
1. Focus on Building the Core
Using an MVP directs the attention onto one idea. The concept that MVP belongs to is similar to a lean start-up, such that you can build a product with a limited budget in a specific time frame. There are some tasks that could be higher priority, but with having limited features it can reduce the time and cost.
2. Early Testing Opportunity
This provides us the chance to investigate if an idea will work from step one, without having to invest your entire budget to testing.
3. User Intelligence and Gathering Feedback
The MVP provides you with the opportunity to get the prospective users’ opinions on how they want to see the final product.
4. Allows Market Validation
Utilizing an MVP helps you develop an understanding of if your app is in the correct target market. It should be able to demonstrate your brand well to the users, and allow them to visualize how unique your product is, in comparison to others on the market.
5. Takes Less Time to Develop your App
Having the ability to develop an app efficiently in less time than previously means lower development costs. As well, the quicker your app can be launched the faster there will be feedback.
6. Budget Friendly
Another crucial advantage to using MVP, as it minimizes spending all of the resources immediately, especially on components that may or may not work.
Surprisingly enough, but very few apps were actually downloaded out of all that are available on iOS and Android, and this is because of problems with the user interface or overall poor performance.
It is recommended to create an MVP as it is an efficient method to boost your mobile development strategy.
If you’ve launched a new product or business, it’s more than likely you’ve thought about the amount of time invested through the initial idea approval. If the answer is yes, then the MVP development process is the perfect solution for your idea.
Stats Emphasizing the Need to Build an MVP
29% of start-ups fail due to running out of cash
Start-ups that scale properly will grow 20x faster than those that scale prematurely
These stats precisely demonstrate the requirement to create an MVP, however, here are the more specific reasons to build a Minimum Viable Product.
Creating an initial model
Conducting initial idea approval
Preparing to start your journey
The whole concept of building a mobile app has been broken into two major sections:
Business and Marketing, because of the MVP you’ll have the ability to create a survey to gather feedback for the best approaches. The surveys will also improve the advertising platforms.
Proof of Concept, the technical aspect. With an MVP you’ll be able to efficiently execute the crucial programming and designing the minimum features, which will eventually make your app unique.
Now, How Do You Build a Minimum Viable Product?
1. Start with Market Research
Understand the market you are getting yourself into, before you initiate an idea and start the MVP process. A good way to gather market research is to conduct many surveys. The more the merrier, or in this case the more you have the better chance of success.
2. Ideate on Value Addition
Ask yourself: What value does your product offer to its users? How can it be beneficial? and Why would they purchase your product?
These questions will help you get a clear understanding of the mandatory predictions of your product. MVP encourages you to introduce the value to consumers when it’s just an idea, because it will help create a better MVP.
3. Plan out the User Flow
This is the Design Process stage, and it is very important. This stage is crucial to make sure that your app is convenient, while also designing it around the consumer’s perspective.
User flow is also a crucial aspect when designing because it ensures that you won’t leave anything important out.
4. Prioritize the MVP features
It’s inevitable, but it is important to ensure all the MVP features are included, since this is an MVP.
5. Launch the MVP
Once you’ve established the main features and have knowledge on the market needs, you can develop your MVP. You need to understand that the MVP is not a lower quality to the final product, it still needs to satisfy your customer’s needs.
6. Exercise and Utilize – Build, Measure, Learn
Everything is a part of a process: define the scope of work, work with the product in the development stage, and then quality assurance.
Review the feedback after the product has launched so you know how to grow and do better on future products.
5 Developer Mistakes to Avoid When Building an MVP
1. Solving the wrong problem
Before getting started on an idea you need to make sure that your product is worth it or not and it won’t waste time or resources.
You can ask yourself: Who is this for? What problem do I want to solve? Is my proposal an effective solution to the problem?
If your goal is to target every market, there’s a chance you won’t get anywhere. Once you’ve established the correct audience, the second question should have an excellent solution and the third a confirmed yes.
2. Bypassing the prototype phase
Think of if you submit an assignment without proofreading it, then get it back and have a bunch of grammar mistakes.
If you launch an MVP without testing it, more likely than not the feedback is going to come back with several flagged problems.
Learn your lesson and don’t bypass the prototype phase, you’ll thank yourself later.
3. Targeting the wrong segment group
Once you have a ready MVP prototype, it’s time to go test it out and gather feedback from your chosen target audience.
This is the stage where you could learn if you chose the right audience, or if you’ve made a mistake and need to make adjustments. Don’t ask relatives because their feedback could be biased, or just provide you the wrong feedback.
4. Wrong development method
If you dive right into the process of MVP development without knowing the right method, that’s calling for a lot of mistakes. This is one of the reasons why start-ups will start giving up in the middle, because they rush into things even if it’s wrong.
5. Confusion between qualitative and quantitative feedback
Qualitative Feedback provides you with feedback that corresponds with the user-friendliness of features in the product or service. It is a direct assessment of usability, that helps developers to analyze specific problems that may arise.
Quantitative Feedback provides the metrics that point out whether a task was easy or difficult to pursue. It is an indirect approach to the usability of the design.
Top tips for how to target the correct market when building an MVP
1. Analyze the competition
2. Geographically map out the customer base
3. Find new motivation behind a purchase
How to measure the success of your MVP
1. Word of Mouth
2. Engagement
3. Sign-up
4. Thorough Client Appraisals from the feedback
5. Percentage of active users
6. Client acquisition cost
7. Number of paying users
8. Client Lifetime value
9. Churn Rate
4 tips for the transition between Minimum Viable Product to Full Scale
1. Gather Feedback
2. Prepare to scale
3. Perfect your pricing
4. Don’t shy away from marketing
Wow, that was a lot of information to consume, but now you are ready to endure a journey of your first MVP development. A key to remember is that you don’t need to be perfect, and if you have any questions, reach out to one of our experts at ISU Corp!
