If you are working on creating a digital product, it’s primordial to think about how to answer the user’s needs. An MVP (Minimum viable product) will allow you to learn if your product’s idea is successful and matches with the user’s expectations. It will help collect valuable feedback and confirm your business approach.
Before starting to design and develop your entire product, your business can benefit from launching an MVP first. Here are a few benefits:
Successful projects don’t happen by chance. They are built to bring solutions to a specific problem. That’s why you have to sit around the table, and define your business needs and talk with potential users to know about their expectations.
The probability that your product already exists on the market, is fairly high. Having competitors on the market is a good indicator. This means customers are demanding this kind of solution. So don’t give up your project but instead, research and learn from the market and try to improve your solution.
By now, you should have a good view of the feature that should be developed to meet users’ needs. But your MVP can’t contain all of them. That’s why you’ll have to divide your features into categories.
Then try to assign your features to those categories depending on their importance and value. When doing this, think about users. Put yourself in their shoes and try to understand if a certain feature can be a real added value while using your product.
In the end, you’ll have a clear view of which features should be developed for your MVP and even have some sort of phases for upcoming versions.
You must define how you’re going to measure the success of your MVP.
Here are a few examples:
Gather all this information and try to understand how it reflects your MVP’s success and how can you go forward.
Yes, MVP stands for “Minimum viable product”. However, the minimum doesn’t mean garbage.
While creating an MVP, you should focus on the core features of your product. Those features should always bring relevant solutions to users. But it’s crucial for your MVP to be properly designed and developed. Don’t try to spare time by avoiding design phases. Make sure your app is performing and fast enough and avoid sloppy bugs.
In the end, your MVP must attract your end-users and potential investors. Your MVP is like a first date where it’s all about the first good impression.
You might be tempted to add fancy features or postpone your MVP’s launch but that’s just not the objective. That would be counter-productive. You must stick to the line and launch your high-end MVP as expected. You’ll have enough time afterward to think about later phases and additional features, but your first mission is to test the core of your app and perfect it.
Don’t try to run before you can walk. That’s just the purpose of an MVP - Quickly launch a product based on your concept and test its success on the market.
An MVP will be the best way to test your product on a specific market. You will find out if your product is able to solve the user’s problems.
Your MVP is the first step of a long-term vision. It’s the foundation of your product so make sure it is future-proof, solid, and scalable.
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