Everything You Need to Know About Minimum Viable Product
Nowadays, many products offer amazing solutions. Think of apps like Twitter, Facebook, Airbnb, and other similar apps. They have revolutionized the way people relate. But did you know that these apps developed gradually? Not only apps but there are also many other products and services which have become essential for everyday life.
What you might not know is that most of these products and services started as prototypes. Or, in other words, as a Minimum Viable Product. Do you want to know everything about a Minimum Viable Product? Great, please read on!
What is MVP?
A Minimum Viable Product is the most basic functional product a company introduces to the market. It contains the essential features of the product. The main purpose of building MVPs is:
- To test the product’s viability in the market.
- To help the product developers receive customer feedback on the product.
- Identify any areas of the product that needs improvement
- Incorporate the changes suggested by the users in the final product.
Companies That Used MVP to Grow Their Brand
Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world today. But in its initial days, the app was used as an alternative SMS platform. Nowadays, apart from sending tweets, you can send videos and photos through the platform. These features have made the platform a powerhouse.
Although the platform started with only basic functionalities, the developers continuously added other features to the app. The trick was to promise the initial users that the app will provide more features as it developed. The app developers continuously add features to the MVP per the feedback they received from the customers.
- Airbnb
Another excellent example of a company that used MVP to become a powerhouse is Airbnb. The founders started the company from their apartment. They had a concept where a person could hire a room for a short period. They built a simple app and offered their apartment as the first Airbnb apartment. The concept worked, and they have since improved their product, and it has become a great company. There are thousands of products that have used the MVP model to grow into powerhouses.
What Are Some Of The Uses Of MVP?
An MVP is critical as it helps your company develop a viable final product. It also ensures your product meets customer expectations. Through the minimum viable product, you receive valuable feedback from the customers. Through MVP, you know which features to improve and which ones do away with.
At this stage, the process of changing or improving the product is easier. It, therefore, costs less to implement these improvements and also takes less time. Other uses of MVP include:
- Through MVP, the developers learn more about the product.
- It saves a lot of time by helping you incorporate more beneficial features
- It helps to establish your brand in a shorter time
How Do You Build MVPs?
An MVP is critical for any company that wants to launch its product successfully. But what’s the process of building MVPs? One of the most common approaches is “release early, release often.” With this approach, you release your product with its most basic features and gauge the market’s reception of your product. If the reception is promising, you iterate the MVP by adding more features and release the improved version to the market.
The “release early, release often” approach works perfectly with products with a high market acceptance rate at their initial release.
1. Ask Yourself Why Should The Market Accept Your Product
To build an MVP that will be acceptable in the market, you have to ask yourself some pertinent questions. Some of the factors to consider include:
- What will make your product stand out?
- What problem is your product going to solve?
- How significant is the problem your product aims to solve?
- What feature sets your product apart from other similar products in the market?
The main purpose of a prototype or a minimum viable product is to help you gather feedback about your product. If you don’t get feedback, you will not know what works and what doesn’t work. To receive this feedback, you should engage the services of professionals who will track user activities on your behalf. They also gather feedback on how your product is performing in the market.
2. Select Target Customers
Before you go big with your MVP, select a micro-market. What this means is that you can release your product to a small demographic, say a state. Monitor the demographic’s reaction to your product to gauge how well your product will perform on the broader market. Although buyer patterns and behavior might differ between different demographics, releasing the MVP will give you an idea of the market’s reception to your product.
3. Don’t Assume Your Mvp Will Automatically Work.
The purpose of a minimum viable product is to check the viability of your idea. Don’t release your product and assume it will work. Be very keen on the feedback you receive from your MVP. Eliminate what isn’t working from your product. Enhance the features that are working and continuously improve on your product per the feedback you receive.
How Do You Test Your MVP?
An MVP has immense benefits. But you also want to know if your product is working as it’s supposed to work. So, how do you test your MVP?
- Conducting Customer Interviews
A customer interview is a great way to gauge the performance of your app. Ask the customers the features which they find most useful and the ones they find less useful or irritating. You can do so by asking the customers to rate the product.
- Use Landing Pages
Before you launch any product, you should have a website to market and explain what your product is all about. You explain your product on your website’s landing page. Make sure your landing page is engaging to kindle interest in your MVP.
A minimum viable product is very crucial for any company. Through an MVP, your company gauges the performance of your product in the market. An MVP or a prototype is the most basic functioning model of your product. Once you release your MVP in the market, you have to monitor customer’s feedback.
At times, the customers will like and accept your product from the word go. At other times, they will suggest changes you have to make to your product. You continually add more features to your product until it’s fully developed.
