Top 5 Pre-requisites you should consider before building your MVP

Quick summary:

Developing a new product is like going on a voyage with just a compass and no map. You might know what direction to follow, but you need to see how the consumers will receive the product. Bringing a new product to the market is a thrilling experience that involves a lot of effort, investment, and time. Forty-two percent of businesses fail because the market doesn’t see their needs

What if you get to test the product before the hefty amount of effort is put in, wouldn’t that be a strategic masterstroke? 

This is where MVP development (Minimum Viable Product development) comes in. The MVP development helps save time, money, energy, and resources. A lot of start-ups have used MVP development in favor of their business to pre-determine the acceptance of the idea of the original product. Today, we shall learn about some essential factors around which the initial development of MVP revolves. 

First things first, let us understand the concept of MVP. 

As defined by various platforms, Minimum Viable Product is a modular product designed to implement only the significant features and launched amongst the clients that are exclusively selected. This helps in the collection of maximum possible real-time feedback on the product by putting in minimum effort. 

MVP development is the best way to kick-start a new project and introduce the concept in the market. 

MVP development can be widely categorized into two major categories.

These categories are:

1. Low fidelity MVP
2. High fidelity MVP

Low-fidelity MVP is a fundamental product that is demonstrated without spending any resources. The end goal of this type of product is to convey the idea to the stakeholders. A presentation or a hand-drawn sketch of how the final product is supposed to turn out are excellent examples of low-fidelity MVP development.

On the contrary, a High Fidelity MVP is developed using a few resources. It is more of an advanced form of the product to check the actual readiness and acceptability amongst the consumers. Basic applications with minimum features, such as online messaging or food ordering applications that allow access to only one service at a time, are the best examples of a High fidelity MVP.

The primary goal of low-fidelity MVP development is to identify a problem and ideate a solution. In contrast, high-fidelity MVP development focuses on analyzing the customer response to the product tested. Low-fidelity MVP development requires no tools to minimum tools, while high-fidelity MVP development uses complex coding to deploy the application. Landing pages, marketing campaigns, and email campaigns are a few examples of low-fidelity MVPs. Single-feature MVPs and concierge MVPs are the best examples of high-fidelity MVPs.

Recently, Zomato (A food delivery application) launched its gold feature that is accessible to only a selected audience, probably the top one percent of food lovers in India. It is an invite-only feature built within the application that is being used as a marketing feature to attract more consumers, but it is trial based. It can indeed be considered an example of MVP. 

But, even though MVP development happens for experimental purposes, it is exceptionally crucial to plan the development properly so that the experiment brings in the correct results. Some prerequisites need to be considered when the development of a Minimum Viable Product is happening.

5 Pre-requisites you should consider before building your MVP:

We have researched and curated a list of some prerequisites that are necessary while drafting the development plan of MVP.

1. Market Research and understanding your target audience:

As a first step, market research plays an important role in the development of a minimum viable product. By performing thorough market research, you get a chance to understand clients’ problems and their needs. Based on that, an opportunity can be created, and a product can be developed to solve their problem. 

Through this research, a problem statement can be defined, and a survey can be conducted. This survey helps you draw in-depth insight into consumer requirements and also helps with the analysis of the competition and their products. 

You can use this data to develop features that make your products stand out. 

2. Defining the problem statement:

This step generally happens in parallel to the first step. Once the data is collected, the correct problem statement can be drafted as the app test solution to the consumer’s needs. Now, it will lead to the ideation of the solution. 

All the resources required to add value to a product are at your disposal. All you need to do is identify these resources, match them with problems, and initiate the design of solutions. 

3. Evaluation of business model and defining user flow:

This stage revolves around the users. Once you start developing, you must ensure that it is easy and handy for any user. Studying your immediate target audience and their behavior can help you chart the best flow to make the most suitable minimum viable product. 

To achieve the end goal of your business, it is extremely important to break user flow into small milestones and study them. This helps you ensure that the flow is enabled with detailed features that will allow the product’s user-friendliness. 

4. Listing the features & Designing the MVP:

It is time to deploy resources and begin development. Firstly, it is important to list down all the features that MVP is required to support. Various questions like what is the user expecting out of the product? How will it benefit them? What will be the impact of the product on their lives? You can be asked to list the priority features. 

Once the list of features is ready, segregation is required. Features can be differentiated based on their priority, post which these features are to be arranged in a sequence called as feature backlog. Once these features are assembled, a product prototype will be ready for a demo. 

5. Analyzing the cost and Launching the MVP:

Once the flow is in place, it becomes important to plan the launch of MVP at the right time amongst the right audience. Before launching the application, it is important to have a quality analyst check the application. It must be noted that MVP should be user friendly, less buggy and most importantly it should not have deviated from the original problem statement.

MVP development is an integral stage of any business, whether a start-up or an industry leader. As per a study by Statista, about 17 percent of products fail due to poor business models. Business models are generally developed in this stage. 

The feedback received during the initial launch helps you understand your customers more deeply. It lets you know how they perceive the product and what changes you can introduce to make it stand out. 

Conclusion:

We hope that the above could only help you in your product development journey. You can connect with various firms that help you through the process of your product or application development. 

At Creole Studios, we would be delighted to offer our expertise and provide suitable web and mobile application development services for you. Please feel free to contact us for a consultation.