To begin with, you should determine whether the product is needed by the consumer because if the product will not be in demand in the market and will not be interesting to your customers, then in the end it will not bring you profit and you should not waste time and resources in vain. Here is MVP is comes to the rescue, but first, let's figure out what it is in general?
So, what is MVP and why is it so important?
Let’s start with MVP definition. Minimum Viable Product is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and to provide feedback for future development. Its main purpose is to gather insights, test your concept and connect with audience spending less time and money.
Creating MVP is a fairly common practice, which helped to save resources, money and time in the early stages of startup development. But you need to remember that what works for one does not necessarily work for others. You need to be aware that without a clear understanding of the purpose of MVP, you can lose all and not achieve the expected result!
What is the effectiveness of the MVP concept? Here, everything is simple - you do not need to spend a budget on secondary product improvements if the main key function is inoperative.
There are three main options that you may encounter after starting MVP:
- If the hypothesis is completely correct and people need the product, development continues.
- If the hypothesis is only partially true, customer feedback helps to change and refine the startup idea.
- If the hypothesis is refuted — well, at least, the company retained 90% of the funds allocated for the full implementation.
The goals of MVP are to test the premise of a product, test hypotheses about market needs, and make adjustments to the vision of a product. MVP can be defined as an effective approach to finding a product in the market. Your MVP is the minimum investment you need to see if someone will pay for what you plan to sell.
How MVP can help you with a product
Evaluating your business idea may be the first step in successfully developing a minimally viable product. Ask yourself from a customer perspective: Why do I need this product? How can this help me? What will be the benefits of this product? After these answers you can determine the main goal of the product and understand the needs of your future customers.
The MVP concept mitigates entrepreneurs’ and investors’ risks. The Lean Startup bestseller author described the minimum viable product concept as a tool of sustainable custom software development. However, he also gave an impetus to the conceptual innovations in marketing and manufacturing.
MVP principles in product design
Working with the minimum viable product strategy requires constant development of new versions of the product, each cycle includes prototyping. Product design development includes the following stages: prototyping and framework development, user interface optimization and prototyping. While preparing the following iterations, designers work with the data obtained from actual users of the previous product version.
The task of the MVP development team is to turn the minuses of the product into advantages, make the product functions more understandable and convenient to use.
MVP principles and Agile
Today, most software is developed using the Agile methodology, which involves splitting a project into sprints. This helps reduce risks and respond to necessary changes. Creating a minimum viable product (MVP) helps entrepreneurs get the message across to first-time users and also get feedback that helps them avoid making the wrong decisions.
The Agile method is hard to imagine without the MVP component. Agile approaches are aimed at improving the efficiency of software development through the work of small self-organizing teams.
MVP and marketing
A manufacturing company can create a simple landing page under any site designer and pay for its contextual advertising. This can be done in order to test the marketing hypothesis. The main idea is that the visitor should know that the company will soon introduce a new product.
Successful Minimum Viable Products
If we look at the list of technology giants, we’ll definitely think about how they started their way to success? Most of the successful Apps entered the market in small applications that did not look like what we can see today.
There are very few examples of the first success of MVP. Let's look at these companies:
Dropbox
If you looked at Dropbox MVP from the very beginning, it was a simple video. A two-minute video talked about the full functionality of the future product and its purpose. Houston (founder) introduced this video in 2007 at Hacker News. After the landing page was created and early users got access to Dropbox, the number of interested people increased to 70,000. All of these people gave Drew Houston their email addresses. After the release of the full-fledged product, Dropbox has already received more than $ 1 million in investments. Today, Dropbox collects more than 500 million active users.
In this case, the video was a minimally viable product. MVP has confirmed that customers are interested in a future product because they are actually registered.
Airbnb
History of Airbnb can be called a classic example of how MVP was used at a time when this approach was not as popular as it is today. This MVP startup has evolved into a worldwide service with 3,000 full time employees. Add to that 150 million users, according to 2019 statistics. It is fantastic number!
Based on the history of Airbnb, you can define minimum viable product as an important part that provides only one of the most important services (its main functionality). After launching this product, you have the opportunity to test it on real users, after that you can continue to improve your product and make it better so that it is convenient for users. after all this process, this MVP will become a full-fledged product.
Buffer
You probably heard about Buffer. This is an application that allows you to schedule publications on social networks. Starting Joel Gascoigne, the founder of Buffer, did not want to focus on creating something that no one wanted to use. So, he started with a simple test and that was the right decision!
Buffer's first minimally viable product was a simple landing page. People registered and showed their interest in this product. Zero-risk MVP helped Buffer identify the market and shape its product profile for future development.
Conclusion
To save your time, money, and resources, an MVP is highly recommended. The MVP approach allows you to save money by abandoning viable startup ideas. MVP is aimed at solving the main problems of users with the application. The best way to create a minimally viable product is to use a manual approach with landing pages and email lists. This is not difficult to do, you just need right planning, development, design, testing and advertising of the future product.
