A Minimum Viable Product is a business approach to measure where your product strategy stands in the market and what customers think about it with minimal investment and time. Building an MVP is important, especially in this era where new ideas pop up every day.
However, most entrepreneurs, especially startups, seem to rush up the Minimum Viable Product development and achieve nothing. Today we will give you thorough insight into what is MVP and why you should use it in your business.
What is Minimum Viable Product development?
Businesses come up with new ideas every day. While some ideas appear to be great in the eyes of the team, it holds more value for customers and might flop in the market. To avoid this, businesses need to verify their product before officially the MVP launch in the market; however, building a product and then testing it requires a lot of investment and time.
And this is exactly where MVP comes in. It is a product with a limited set of features that is enough to gather customer response and further amendments. An MVP is fully functional but less than the final product.
MVP Development is a development process in which you create a product with enough new features to reflect its main purpose. The final product is created after receiving the user feedback on the MVP, and that final product contains a complete set of all the features.
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Why Do You Need to Build MVP for Startups?
If you are a startup and think you will be able to succeed without the MVP development process, then we hate to break it to you, but you are in for some real trouble. Every startup needs a base for MVP launch properly, and that base is a minimum marketable product with a basic set of new features.
Even big and successful companies like Google and Amazon started by creating an MVP. Building an MVP helps startups pave their way by providing a clear view of what amendments they need to make and strategies to enhance.
MVP vs Prototype
Most entrepreneurs have this misconception that a prototype is the same as an MVP. But it is not. An MVP means a minimum version of your product with essential features, whereas a prototype is simply a draft or a plan of your full-scale product.
Let’s say you are building a website. So its MVP would be a single landing page with approximately 4 to 5 features of your actual website, whereas a prototype would be a rough sketch of everything your Website would contain from the start to bottom. An MVP is handed to customers to receive the user feedback, whereas a prototype is tested by the development team and discarded.
Types of MVP Models
Now that we have understood what MVP means, let’s break it down into its variants. An MVP has three types called Piecemeal, Concierge, and the Wizard of Oz. Each type has a distinctive strategy to be followed.
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Let’s take a deeper look at it:
1) Piecemeal
Piecemeal is a kind of an MVP model that is built from various sources. These piecemeal MVPs usually collect items from different stores and add them to their platform. These MVPs are affiliated most of the time, meaning they earn some percentage of commission whenever a sale is made. They are preferred for startups that have a limited budget.
2) Wizard Of Oz
A Wizard Of Oz MVP model is an MVP that is not fully automated but is portrayed as one. This is usually used by entrepreneurs who don’t have enough time. In a wizard of Oz MVP, human resources are used to carry out the command. However, it appears to the user like any other MVP, so the customer feedback does not differ much.
3) Concierge MVP
Concierge MVP is similar to Wizard of Oz MVP because it is not fully automated and uses human resources. The only difference is that in Concierge MVP, things are not concealed. They are portrayed as they are. A good example of Concierge MVP is a website that asks you a couple of questions before providing you with a solution, e.g., food websites.
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Purpose of an MVP
The Purpose of an MVP is pretty simple. All it does is verify your thesis and show whether people are willing to pay for it or not.
As Patrick Collison puts it: You are trying to figure out in the early days of starting a product: are we wrong, or is the world wrong?
An MVP does not demand much time or money and could provide valuable results that can further help prevent spending money developing something that the world does not need. At times it also helps you discover the diverse uses of your products because the consumer operates the MVP.
The MVP also helps strengthen the idea behind the product. It allows you to understand where you fall short and the strengths of your product.
Whether it be a successful full-fledged business or just a startup, MVPs are important to identify the future users of your product!.
Business Benefits of MVP Product Development
Believe it or not, MVP Development has helped many startups succeed like AirBnB and Uber. Yes, their journey started with creating an effective MVP. Here is why you need to have MVP in your business.
1- Testing UX functionality.
Considering User Experience is crucial for any startup or business. Most of the time, the target audience abandons an MVP app because they find it difficult to operate it. So even if the core functionality of your website or application is incredible. Many target users won’t return to it because of the Unpleasant user experience.
An MVP lets you test the UX functionality of your product since real-time customers test it. The initial feedback or behavior response you get further lets you realize where a user might encounter an issue. They collect feedback that increases the chances of your final product being flawless.
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2- Analyzing Market Demand.
We have already said this before, but we will emphasize this again. In today’s life, new websites and applications are introduced daily. Before launching your product, you need to know what the market demands. You need to identify the gap that no one else is filing. Honestly, who would switch to a completely new application when they already have other reliable sources offering the same.
42% of startups fail just because they could not fit the market’s current needs. Your MVP development team might think their ideology would be able to satisfy many needs, but sometimes the needs they aim to satisfy do not even exist.
An MVP helps you avoid this. It helps you identify whether the market needs your product or not with lesser investment.
3- Enticing Early Adopters.
An MVP is also a great way to excite early adopters. The MVP is just a beta version of your product with a limited set of features, so it does not require much effort; however, you need to make sure that your MVP reflects the core functionality of your product.
The MVP will help you build a customer base before the official launch so that your product is not a complete loner in the market. The initial adopters may also spread the word about your product, thus attracting more prospects.
4- Verifying Monetization Strategy
Having a fail-proof monetization strategy is the dream of every business. There are different monetization strategies you can add to your product. You can either make it completely paid, offer a free trial, or a free version with ads and some in-app purchases.
Determining which monetization strategy would be best for your product is the key to success. You can test different kinds of monetization techniques on your product. The customer behavior will allow you to identify whether they are willing to cough money for the features you have monetized.
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How do You Prioritize Features in the MVP Development Process?
A very common mistake most entrepreneurs and startups make in the MVP development process is to overload the MVP with features. Remember, it is a minimum viable product. You do not need to include everything in it. A limited and minimum feature set is more than enough!
To prioritize the features, ask yourself which features are essential for the product’s core functionality. Which features address the pain points of the customer? Once you have this sorted out. Prioritizing features will be a piece of cake.
Tips to Move from Minimum Viable Product to Full-Scale Product
Suppose you have developed your MVP. Now, what’s next? It’s time to start moving towards your final and full-scale product. Here are four effective tips to successfully transition from an MVP to a final product.
1- Building out for scalability
Once you are ready to start developing your full-scale product, take a few minutes to identify its primary uses and the industry it best belongs to. Defining the basic features will help you realize which needs you must satisfy. You can gradually increase your feature set and provide solutions to other problems as you gain more experience in that industry.
Doing this will help bring out a more customer-oriented product. The final product would be much more beneficial to the user than the MVP, and the developers will have a clear vision of what they need to focus on.
2- Specialist in a few use cases
Gaining practical experience in a few use cases has a lot of impacts. It is useful to do such instead of building various functionalities for a more extensive market in the beginning phases, and specializing in A few use cases in the beginning phase permits you to set guidelines.
At a later stage, you can foster new use cases for different enterprises. You can move from one solidarity to another instead of quickly extending while at the same time keeping the issues at the root level perplexing.
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3- Solving Urgent and Important Pain Points
This approach helps tackle the most earnest and basic problem areas for the clients afterward. This is a superior methodology instead of building a bunch of optimistic elements in nature. The item then gets taken on step by step by a rising arrangement of clients. The new clients sort out that their trouble spots are getting addressed.
4- The transition from a Particular Pain Point into a Long Term Goal
An MVP infers tackling a particular trouble spot of a client. An MVP goes on to tackle something greater for clients. You start with a more modest use case for a more modest market and continuously travel through the four phases into a greater trouble spot for a bigger market.
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What Are The Examples Of The Minimum Viable Product?
Now that we have looked over all that goes behind MVP development. Let’s throw some light on successful MVPs’ now profitable full-scale products.
AdWords Express.
AdWords Express is the beta version of Ad words. It is a basic website for creating ad copies for customers. It is a wizard of Oz MVP since there were a group of students behind the software quickly generating ad copies.
The customers were satisfied with the copies being generated, and thus the product was fully automated.
Air BnB.
Soon after moving to San Francisco in October 2007, two roommates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia couldn’t bear the lease cost for their space loft. Chesky and Gebbia concocted, placing a pneumatic bed in their front room and transforming it into an overnight boarding house.
The objective at first was simply “to make a couple of bucks.” However, at that point, they understood that coordinating overnight boarding houses with clients could be a goldmine. They set up a site.
However, they continued to battle to track down individuals to utilize their foundation.
Thus, the San Francisco organization decided to focus on the crowd of Craigslist. By giving a choice to mortgage holders to naturally post to Craigslist, Airbnb came to endlessly heaps of imminent customers.
Today, Airbnb has a yearly pay of $2.6 billion (2017).
Amazon
At some point at the start of the 1990s, Jeff Bezos read a report about the fate of the web that projected yearly web business development at 2,300%.
Bezos made a rundown of twenty items that could be showcased on the web. He limited the rundown to what he felt were the five most encouraging items: smaller plates, PC equipment, PC programming, recordings, and books.
Bezos at long last concluded that his new business would sell books on the web because of the enormous overall interest for writing, the low sticker costs for books, and the enormous number of titles accessible on paper.
Thus, Amazon was established in the carport of Bezos’ leased home in Bellevue, Washington. The site was exceptionally straightforward: simply an index of books. On the off chance that a client requested one, Amazon got it directly from the merchant and sent it. A large number of emphases followed.
Amazon began to sell more items, purchased stockrooms, and customized its site for every guest throughout the long term. As per Forbes, Amazon is currently the world’s third-biggest retailer.
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Conclusion
MVP Development has undoubtedly helped pave the way for many successful enterprises. It is a crucial element in deciding the future of your product. Building an effective Minimum Viable Product is important to ensure market validation learning for your final product.
We hope this article helped you understand the science behind MVP Development. Don’t forget to reach Hapy if you need help with MVP development.
FAQs
How do you create a Minimum Viable Product in agile?
The agile methodology for developing a Minimum Viable Product is divided into three phases that are BUILD_ MEASURE_ and LEARN.Â
What is the difference between a solution demo and a Minimum Viable Product?
A Minimum Viable Product is a fully functional beta version of your product, whereas a solution demo is simply the first draft.
