What is MVP?
MVP is the basic version of the product with its core functionalities.
It is further introduced to the customers to gather the feedback. After
receiving the information about the product and analyzing its performance,
the company can add new features or enhance the existing ones and start
developing the final version.
Why does MVP matter for business?
The dedicated team has many undeniable benefits, however, there are still
some drawbacks. Let’s take a closer look at the positive and negative sides
of this model to understand it better.
MVP will help you to understand whether your idea is appealing to potential
customers. If it attracts users and gets positive feedback you can be sure
that idea is worth implementing. Moreover, the early adopters will become
part of the community that can be interested in the fully-developed version.
By using an early version of your product, the target audience can help
you define whether your development assumptions correlate with realities.
Enjoyable user experience plays a vital role in the successful product
performance, MVP-based data allows detecting key issues with using the
product and ensure that the product is easy to use once the final version
is released. In addition, MVP feedback allows businesses to understand
what monetization methods will work best. For example, are users ready
to pay a monthly subscription?
Since MVP is an initial version of a product with limited number of features,
it is easier and quicker to developm than full product. Moreover, once
customers provide feedback, the company can proceed with implementation
of features based on customer input. The improvement of the features usually
takes less time than building the product from scratch.
The development time and the budget are often co-dependent, because the
longer it takes to develop the product the more resources you’ll need.
Thi preliminary stage allows optimal management of resources. Without MVP
you might spend time on a feature that users will not like.
Four key steps to MVP development
There are few important things to consider before starting MVP development,
here are top of them:
Step 1
Define whether your product solves any problem
Describe what value your product will bring to users, including what problems
it can solve, how it can be useful for the audience and why they might
be interested in using your product rather than any other. Thi basic understanding
will help you to come up with a unique value proposition and avoid spending
time and resources on the idea that is not worth implementing.
Step 2
Conduct market research
Once you have a validated product idea, start with analyzing the market.
First of all, it will help you to understand your target audience and tailor
your product accordingly to their needs. Further the information about
your target audience can be used in the MVP advertising campaigns.
In addition, market analysis will help you to identify your competitors.
Study what they offer and whether your product can offer something better.
If not you’ll have a clear vision of what features you can improve to leave
the competition behind. In addition, you can analyse how your competitors
perform and whether your idea will be profitable.
Step 3
Choose basic features
With clear understanding of what problems your product will solve and
thorough market research, you will be able to identify the set of features
that are most appealing to your target audience. Based on the gathered
information you can divide all the features into three main categories,
for example, necessary to implement, nice to have and other. Such prioritization
will help you to start with features that are the most important.
Step 4
Start with MVP deployment
After defining key features you can move to the development stage. Here
you have a few options to choose from: you can hire in-house developers
or hire a vendor to help you with the technical part. Hiring in-house teams
may sound more appealing due to the fact that you will have control over
the development process but at the same time it is a funds and time-consuming
process. Hiring a service provider, or dedicated team, offers you the same
amount of control over the deployment process and reduces the expenses.
For more information about why a dedicated team is one of the top outsourcing
models check out our article: Key
Things
You Need to Know When Choosing Dedicated Team.
Final thoughts
MVP is the best way to validate your business idea and make sure that
the final version of the product will be appealing to the customers and
have a competitive edge in the market. It helps you to stay cost-efficient
and use your resources on the features that users really like. If you have
some additional questions or would like to start a MVP development, contact
us and we will gladly help you.
