Any startup starts with an idea, but it’s important to understand that there are a lot of ideas in the world and you have to weed out the unviable ones. If you believe in the necessity of your idea for users — great, but it is logical to check before starting a large-scale work, whether users need it and are they ready to pay for it?
This approach is safer, by checking the demand for your idea, you will save yourself and your company from a wasted effort in developing a product which will bankrupt the company. MVP, on the other hand, is a guarantee that allows you to say with more confidence that your product will be used.
Definition of MVP
MVP development is the creation of a product which has the minimum required set of features. It allows you to get some initial feedback from your users and decide whether to spend more money on its development. Sometimes it helps to understand that the idea is not interesting to the users and either to refuse development or to reconsider the main idea of the product. You can order the creation of MVP in Purrweb — MVP development company.
MVP scheme for startups
MVP can be considered as an alternative or as an addition to the research, which is important to do before you start MVP development. Researching the preferences of your target audience can be very different and is a topic for a separate article.
The purpose of MVP and the research is the same — to get confidence in the necessity of creating a product at the minimum cost, or in the viability of a unique feature if you are developing in an area where there is competition.
How to implement the project?
It’s important to understand that an MVP doesn’t mean a crude and unfinished prototype of your product. It should be quite the independent and full-fledged product, but it should have the minimal set of the necessary functions, allowing your users to satisfy their need for such a product.
Steps of MVP development:
- Define and articulate the main purpose of the product (or the main advantages over peers; there shouldn’t be many of them) to be realized during MVP development. In fact, the product can have more benefits and features, but in MVP we check only the core of our product.
- Determine how you will measure the effectiveness of the MVP (engagement metrics, numerical metrics, direct user surveys, etc.).
- Develop MVPs for specific capabilities and prepare ways to calculate effectiveness.
- Determine the effectiveness of MVP development, draw conclusions.
These steps may vary slightly for each product, the main thing is to understand the main purpose of the MVP, and in some cases you may need to iterate through several MVPs before you reach your goal and decide what the product should look like.
The conclusions may also vary. I wouldn’t advise you to drop the idea right away; if the MVP results don’t satisfy you, but it may be worth thinking about what to improve and how.
What are the benefits of MVP development
Based on the main purpose of creating an MVP, you can define the benefits:
- Gain confidence in the viability of your idea in a real environment and on real users.
- Saving money and effort by not putting it all into a failed project.
- Identify the most important features of your product that are important to users.
- Get the first real users who will be interested in the product.
With each new iteration, we need to improve the result. That is, the interval from the birth of the idea to its validation, should be reduced. It is clear that everything depends on the complexity of the idea, but the typical tasks and key processes should be minimized in time.
The peculiarity of MVP development
The peculiarity is to put one main value into one prototype. Remember what you need an MVP for? That’s right, to test an idea. One idea/single value. There is no sense in testing several ideas in a prototype at once, so you won’t get reliable data and will only spoil the whole experiment.
You need to test an idea, but how do you do that?
- Create 2-3 single-page (one-page site) where we make your idea of service.
- In the center put the “order” button.
- Determine the test budget for the campaign and the time for measuring the results.
- Set up advertising (context, social networks, or something else) for a pre-selected target audience.
- We start the flow on the webpage.
- See how many people click on the button and draw a conclusion.
If you are satisfied with the results, then take the service and make it nice, beautiful, convenient. If not, then just throw out the idea and move on to the next one. This is just one example of an MVP. To test a new feature on an existing product, you can simply hang a banner or a burning button, measure the clicks, and estimate the general interest of users in the new idea.
In practice, it also happens that while doing hypothesis testing, you might not make a prototype at all. You will find the answer in already existing sources of information.
MVP principles to remember
Below is a list of principles without which your MVP is not an MVP.
- Don’t do it if you can’t do it. Look for ready-made solutions.
- Cut down. Get rid of everything unnecessary in your prototype; leave only the main value for the user.
- No beauty. Don’t delve into design, make a working prototype, and don’t waste resources.
- Accelerate.
- Know your MVP users. Gather as much information as you can about those who will interact with the MVP.
- MVP is about to see if you can make money from the idea.
- Cut back on MVP development, time, and design. Leave only the main thing that will help test the idea.
- The MVP should work and carry one, core value.
- No backend. To create an MVP, look for options without heavy and long MVP development.
- Get it up and running as early as possible. Even if it fails, we’ll have the advantage of first. If the chip is new, the user will be more loyal.
Where do we get users for MVPs?
There’s a checklist for that, too:
- You can be the first users yourself.
- Relatives, friends, acquaintances.
- We write to everyone, visit them, make phone calls.
- Social networks. We ask for feedback from everyone who responds.
- Newsletters.
- Opinion leaders. Those who are listened to by many people.
- Cold calls.
- The press.
Do not forget about feedback channels; leave your contacts (mail, phones, messengers, and social networks). Information from first users should come to you freely. The man has already spent his time testing your product.
Feedback
Do not make him look for ways to share his opinion. That’s what we need. Well, about metrics. All the gestures with users, prototypes and so on are used for a purpose. If you have read to this point, you know that this purpose is hypothesis testing. And to test it, you have to actively watch the metrics.
Watching the Metrics
Don’t forget to set up all the necessary counters. Get the data and draw conclusions about where you need to go.
MVP development: let’s sum up
What is MVP development? It is hypothesis testing. It is about speed. It is about the economy of resources. And what is more important, you need to work with it, and you have everything you need.