9 out of 10 startups fail because they create a product that the market doesn’t need. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate your business idea thoroughly. Creating an MVP might help in that. How to build an MVP? Read our article and find out.
What is an MVP? It stands for Minimum Viable Product and means the first working version of a product that has enough features (they define its value proposition) to satisfy the needs of potential customers. An MVP allows you to gather and analyze feedback on the product with minimal resources and costs. This lets you validate your business idea effectively and check whether there is a market for it. This approach is referred to as MVP Development.
What are the greatest benefits of building an MVP? One of them is being able to test an idea and a product hypothesis with a minimum budget. A huge advantage is that your team can gain invaluable experience creating it. Building an MVP, you don’t have to allocate as much time as if you were making a final product, which, after all, may not be necessary.
The most important thing, however, is that you can test consumer trends in the real market. With an MVP, you can get in touch with potential customers and co-create the final product with them. What is more, at this early stage, you can build a base of potential users and attract your first investors.
Before developing an MVP and launching it to test a business idea, it is important to pay attention to several important issues. First of all, it’s not worth spending a lot of money or a huge amount of work on an MVP immediately. It is, after all, only needed to test your business concept quickly.
Secondly, it’s a good idea to inform potential customers about the product already at the stage of creating an MVP. Also, think about organizing a pre-sale. This will show you whether people are ready to pay for your product. Remember to advertise an MVP on social media and create a website for it.
To build an MVP, you need to take several steps. Think about why you’re developing a product and what problem it is supposed to solve. Then, you need to focus on various possibilities for product development. A good solution is to prepare the so-called customer journey map, where you need to identify potential customers and determine the actions that the user will perform to achieve the goal.
Many experts also advise preparing a pain-gain map. What is it all about? You need to identify the actions that will be performed when using the product and identify the pain points and benefits for each of them. The next step is to determine what functionalities need to be implemented in the MVP and prioritize them. It is also worth preparing a product roadmap. All these steps will allow you to start preparing your MVP.
In fact, you can prepare various types of MVPs. It all depends on how accurately your idea is to be mapped in your MVP. The differences can be in visual design, features, and interactivity. The fastest and easiest solution is a low-fidelity MVP.
When creating a low-fidelity MVP, you should mainly concentrate on testing its functionality. Since it is only a backbone of your final product, it is good for verifying whether a problem is worth solving and what features would be best for your customers.
A high-fidelity MVP, in turn, is very similar to the final product. It is realistic, detailed, and highly interactive. Such an MVP lets you check how much customers will be able to pay for the product makes it easier to prepare a development strategy and helps you find your first users.
When it comes to low-fidelity MVPs, it’s worth conducting surveys and interviews with customers. You can present the idea on social media and blogs, as well as create a dedicated landing page. You may also conduct the so-called fake door test to measure how many customers are trying to access the product. A/B testing is also a good solution.
In the case of high-fidelity MVPs, you can use crowdfunding to help you raise money for the project. Other options include providing a product that looks automated from the outside, but processes are done manually. You can also launch one functionality at a time.
Once your MVP is released, it is necessary to get feedback from the potential customer about the product and measure user engagement. Then, all this information requires a thorough analysis to help you assess whether the business idea has any market potential.
You’ve just learned how to build an MVP. Other resources: Differences between high fidelity and low fidelity prototyping.
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Author: Andy Nichols
A problem solver with 5 different degrees and endless reserves of motivation. This makes him a perfect Business Owner & Manager. When searching for employees and partners, openness and curiosity of the world are qualities he values the most.
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