Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a development technique in which a new product or website is developed with sufficient features to satisfy early adopters. The final and complete set of features are only designed and developed after considering the feedback from the product’s initial users according to Techopedia.
As an entrepreneur or founder, there are a lot of risks you face in business, it is therefore your responsibility to ensure that you have a Minimum Viable Product that won’t fail when it’s introduced to your prospective audience. This is one of the most difficult tasks of an entrepreneur because your Minimum Viable Product can determine if you will continue or halt your entrepreneurial journey, depending on your attitude and disposition.
The question now is how can you create a Minimum Viable Product that will interest customers? We share some helpful tips.
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Identify an actual problem
Any innovative, viable and scalable idea or product must be aimed at solving a particular societal problem. This will ensure that the idea won’t hit the rocks from the initial phase. No matter how fantastic your idea or product maybe, if it does not tackle a human problem; it will definitely fail. Before going further, ask three questions to figure out whether the path you’re heading down is a useful one:
- What problem is being solved?
- How is this product’s solution better than the competition?
- Is this an issue that occurs frequently enough to keep customers coming back?
These questions are critical to a development process that will result in more than something that just seemed like a good idea at the time.
Identify how the product will fit into users’ daily lives
While it isn’t possible to check out every single use case for a product before it’s released, there are ways to get an idea of what typical use might look like. Develop representations of a variety of users with their own stories surrounding when and how they use the product. Knowing what the user is doing with your product helps bring a project into focus and indicates which features will be useful in the final product, and which can be scrapped or delayed for future versions.
Perform frequent A/B tests
Just because a product works well for developers doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to do the same for real-world users. To avoid succumbing to unseen biases, perform A/B testing when possible to better capture customer preferences. A/B testing is a significant part of the Minimum Viable Product. It will help decide on which features, approach, design, and branding to be modified throughout multiple prototypes to best drive user behaviour and increase audience buy-in.
Consider the design process & user flow
Design the product in a way that is convenient for users. You need to look at the product from the user’s perspective, starting from opening the product to the final process, such as making a purchase or delivery. In addition, user flow is an important aspect as it ensures you do not miss anything while keeping the future product, and its user satisfaction in mind. To define your user flow, it is necessary to define the process stages; and, for that, you need to explain the steps needed to reach the main objective.
Build your MVP
Once you have decided upon the main features and have learned about the market needs, you can create your MVP. Keep in mind that a prototype is not lower quality than a final product, and still needs to fulfill your customer’s needs. Therefore, it must be easy to use, engaging, and suitable for your users.
