Developing a mobile product is always a challenge and even if you’ve got a great business idea, the fate of your app is uncertain once you finally launch it. Fortunately, there’s one thing you can do to efficiently test your concept and see whether it resonates with your target audience. By building a minimum viable product (MVP) you can gain lots of valuable insights to help you in optimizing your product and making better-informed design decisions. Here are 6 good reasons why you should start building your app with an MVP.
What is an MVP?
An MVP is basically an early version of your product that has enough features to test whether it’s viable in the market. Strip away all unnecessary features and leave the very core of the product – that’s your MVP. Still, it should be viable, so have enough features to offer value to consumers and get traction.
Why MVP?
Here are 6 good reasons why you should consider an MVP for starting your product launch process.
1. It helps to define your value proposition
When defining an MVP, you’re inevitably forced to also define your value proposition. You need to examine your vision in detail and identify that core value you want to provide to your ideal customer. This helps in setting clear your targets, helping you to spend your resources where you’re sure to get best ROI.
2. It allows to test key business functions
Bringing a product to market helps to test your marketing and sales early on – and check whether they help your product get traction. Testing these basic functions is an excellent opportunity to test your business model assumptions about customer lifetime value and acquisition cost as well. This way, you stand a chance at improving the weakest functions before they become problematic for your full-scale product.
3. You can make a stronger case
Minimum Viable Products work great for demonstrating the marketing validity of your product – they create a strong business case which can be easily shown to investors interested to learn whether it’s worth to invest more into its development. If you’re looking for funding, an MVP which has been tested on the market will definitely strengthen your position.
4. It reduces rework
Even if you conduct a thorough market research and put in a lot of resources into efficient design, you still risk all that development effort to be wasted on a product that was founded only on assumptions. Until you release the product to the public, you’ll have no idea whether consumers like it or not. With MVP, you can offer just enough to validate your assumptions and significantly reduce the cost of rework if you find that it’s necessary. Keeping your Minimum Viable Product minimal and future releases incremental, you’ll be more flexible and responsive to the market.
5. It helps to forge a relationship with consumers early on
Target your MVP at early adopters and you’ll already start building customer relationships. They’ll provide you with feedback, helping you to validate your value proposition and apply changes to your product. Early adopters are excellent evangelists, so targeting them will seriously help you to build a strong community around your product.
6. It powers product evolution
An MVP is released to market exclusively with core features and functionalities, it allows you to build that first user base that will offer you lots of insights about what could be the most valuable additions. You can use this data to develop your product and learn where to best allocate your resources.
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