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How to create
a successful MVP
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Your MVP simply means your minimum viable product, and is the version of a product or solution that has just enough features to enable customers to use it, but which leaves lots of room for feedback, development and improvement.

It may seem like a simple task to create your MVP and use it as a starting point for your product, but there are many common mistakes that development teams make that result in a poor MVP, and therefore insufficient feedback on how to improve the product.

The importance of an impactful MVP

When you develop your MVP, you want it to have as positive an impact on your target market as possible. Your MVP is essentially your first launch into the market, and you want it to strike a chord with your audience - if you can get a solid foothold with your customers, the MVP will most likely end up being a big success for you. However, there are lots of factors that you first need to consider.
Many elements can affect the impact of your MVP. These include questions such as:

  • How well does my solution solve the problem it's intended for?
  • Is there demand for my product in the market?
  • How can I successfully engage my customers with the product?

Extensive prior research and the use of data will help you to answer these questions, and much more. Planning out your development cycle and coming up with a sound acquisition strategy are two essential stages of your product development that will ensure that your MVP is successful in the market and a useful tool for you moving forward.
Key considerations when developing your MVP

The first thing that you should be doing is setting the right goal for your MVP so that you have a target to aim for. The main goal of your MVP should be to test out various hypotheses to make sure that your product will satisfy customer demand as powerfully as possible. Two key hypotheses to test out are firstly how popular and successful the product is in satisfying customer needs, and secondly how much customers are willing to pay for the product. If your product is met with poor reviews and low sales numbers, then you know that you need to shake things up and make some changes.

Weighing up functionality and simplicity is essential in developing the perfect MVP. By its very nature, an MVP is the simplest version of your product that you can make with it still being functional, but you still want to pack in enough functionality to help show the true nature of the product, and collect valuable feedback about the product. To achieve this, you should sort the functions by priority, and then choose the essential functions that you feel you need to include in the MVP. If you try to add too many functions, customers may find the MVP too complicated and get overwhelmed, however if it is too simple they won't see the value in the product. It is very important to find the right balance between functionality and simplicity.

Another major challenge is determining how to make your product unique but not alien.

It's difficult to create a product that completely stands out from the crowd, because first and foremost you need a product that consumers are prepared to put their trust in and part with their money for. However, you don't want to produce the same old thing that has been on the market for ages. With your MVP it is vital that you strike the perfect balance between uniqueness and familiarity.
When you undergo the development process it is important to prioritise the quality of the product over development speed. Sure, you want your product to be created quickly and reduce your time to market, but if you sacrifice its quality then you will suffer in the long run. For example, if there are glitches in your app, or it frequently crashes, then your users won't be able to experience the product and you won't get the insight you're after. Your UX should be a top priority in the development of your MVP.

Having said that, you don't need to strive for perfection in your MVP, as creating the very best version of your product could take much longer than what is cost and time effective. You should conduct a thorough analysis of what you need to get the results you desire, and focus your product on that end goal. This could be very basic code, simple app aesthetics or a fundamental landing page that gives the customers a flavour of the final product, and helps you conduct the research you need.
How to come up with a launch strategy

When launching it is a good idea to focus on just one platform at a time. Trying to reach multiple platforms (Web, iOS and Android for example) at once with your MVP isn't necessary to test out your hypotheses and gain the insight that you need. Any attempt to develop a cross-platform product at this stage of development could complicate things, and could very well be wasteful of time and money. You should work within the capabilities of your team. For example, if your team specializes in Android development, you should start here. Of course, you can still have plans to release your product across multiple platforms in the future, but at the MVP stage this might not be the best idea.

Defining key goals and metrics for your product plays an essential role in your strategy when launching your MVP. The only way that you will be able to find out whether your initial hypotheses are correct is by setting the right criteria to determine success. This could include a number of factors, including revenue, number of downloads, time spent on your platform … The indicators will determine your next steps in product development should be made clear before you launch the MVP. You also need to ensure that you have an accurate and helpful way of collecting, analysing and interpreting the results so that you can get maximum benefit from your MVP.
Although it may be tempting to try and target as many types of customer as possible at this stage, it is probably best to limit the customers with access to your MVP. You will get much more insight by finding a more niche consumer group and getting targeted and specific feedback. Precision is essential in choosing who will be the first to use your product, and you should select customers who you think will have the most relevant and useful opinions. Of course, you will eventually look to widen your customer base in order to drive growth and increase profitability, but when starting out it is much more valuable to use a customer group that you have a deep understanding of.

It is essential to form a strong user acquisition strategy that will come into play and be a big part of your post-launch activity. It would be extremely frustrating if, after launching your product, very few people knew about it and chose to access it. This would mean that you'd lose out on the valuable insight you need to improve the product, and would be a huge blow to your confidence as a business! Make sure that you work hard to understand exactly where your customers are going to come from, and how you can best get through to them and convince them that they need to try your product out. You should do a thorough analysis of all the classic marketing channels - including B2B events, social media advertising, influencers and strategic partnerships - to make sure that your launch can be as impactful as possible.
How to collect and analyse feedback

There are many different ways that businesses can acquire feedback from their customers, so it is very important that you work out the best way to get insight from your users. It probably isn't the best idea to ask direct questions to your customers about your product and where it can be improved, because they will end up feeling like guinea pigs in a lab rather than like valued customers. When you launch your MVP you need to come up with novel and subtle ways of collecting data and opinions to help you to improve the product. This can be through making the best use of data analytics, or inviting customers to take part in questionnaires or surveys to earn loyalty points or bonuses.
When you've collected the data you should always analyse your findings with an open mind. This will help you to push any preconceptions you have out of your mind, and empathise with the customers in a way that will help you to get inside their heads and experience your product in the same way that they are experiencing it. This is the only way that you will be able to move forward and improve your solution.

Finally, you need to make sure that you pay attention to user feedback and use it to your advantage. The whole exercise of obtaining user feedback through an MVP can be made useless and expensive unless you take the time to properly assess the feedback and form meaningful conclusions from it. However, by collecting and processing as much data as possible, you can be sure that you will develop many key insights that will help you in the next stage of your product development.

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