Importance of MVP Product Development for a Startup

Have you heard these proverbs – “No pain, no gain!” or “Great things come out of patience”?

Well, think of the MVP product development approach as a similar concept. Admittedly, you need to be taking action around what mistakes to avoid – how to surpass the initial inevitable failures. After all, it is the inception of your project, and there are no success stories made without a few rounds of failures. It would help you eliminate errors in your initial phase of development.

So, by adopting the MVP product development approach, you can at least de-risk to a certain extent. Any new product is like a baby: you need to build a wireframe for its prototype with minimal steps first to help it grow. Then, help it handle more customer demands step by step.

MVP approach on Facebook and Twitter

Do you know many big players in the market initially came up with an MVP approach?

For instance, do you know the history behind Twitter? It was formerly known as twttr. Odeo’s four board members initiated an idea in 2006 and decided to build an internal SMS service for their podcasting company. Back then, it was only available to the company users where they could communicate via this facility with a small group.

Thus, the Twitter MVC prototype was initially designed to be used as a communication app internally at Odeo by its employees. After a few rounds of real-time testing were conducted for feedback, it was released to the public with its initial basic features.

But Twitter’s real success came in 2007. Yes, the same social media network with trending polls is also famous for its crisp 140-character posts and the advent of the revolutionary invention of the #hashtag.

It was after the Southwest Interactive conference that Twitter got its popularity, even getting a boom in its user base, which is currently above 284 million monthly active users. This second-most popular social networking platform saw a tremendous and startling increase in its Tweets from 20k to 60k a day during that event. Also, it got eight rounds of investments from 2007 to 2009.

Another example is Facebook. It came up with significant initiatives and ideas to build a social community. In its early phase, it was restricted to a specific audience. In their case, it was Harvard students. As its popularity increased in a few years, what was once called FaceMash and (later) TheFacebook, grew. After 13+ years since its inception, it got its more popular name in 2005 and evolved to what we call Facebook today.

You can see how many features are incorporated into Facebook and Twitter today. But, you are also aware that they did not exist in their first phase. Facebook and Twitter released one feature at a time, rolled it out to certain users, tested it, and made it stay only if it was profitable. Facebook and Twitter know how to benefit from an MVP approach and solve a challenge for their targeted users.

Similarly, other creative brands such as Instagram, Dropbox, Uber, Ola, Airbnb, Gaana, and Healthify are a few names to mention. Did they follow the MVP approach? Yes! It has immensely benefitted these big startup players in getting established in the market.

Your product can only withstand the market pressure and ever-changing customer needs by going through various levels of challenges. We are here to tell you everything that you might be currently researching – about ‘Minimal Viable Product’ or MVP product development.

In this article, get a deep dive into the best recommendations for beginning your startup ideation to the first phase of development through the MVP approach. This article will articulate all the points related to building products with the proper ideation that easily fits into the market and the audience waiting patiently for your product launch.

What is MVP?

MVP development is an approach that works on the “develop-measure-understand” principle. MVP simply means a product with minimum specifications or functionalities. It is a software development technique where only one or two essential features are built and tested. These sufficient features help the product owner understand whether they are making the right product for their targeted audience.

It becomes a base to scale the product with more feature enhancements, cost, budget, and resource allotment. Also, MVP saves your time and effort by building the right product, not something that might look good to you but does not attract your audience. It’s the first version of your product that you release to your trusted audience.

This helps you ponder over various aspects that will clarify whether your base idea has the validation you were seeking. If yes, proceed with further development. If not, address concerns and alter and modify features to verify whether the updated version does the job. This MVP helps you research in the right direction to scale your product. That saves a lot of costs, time, and budget.

Moreover, be ready to conquer a loyal and new audience who will be the main stakeholders of your product development stages. They will most definitely help you get started by consuming your product and showing their best interest to boost your confidence. These audiences, who are early adopters of your MVP, will also act as an advocate for your brand building. Let’s get started on the best practices to build an MVP!

Best practices to build a minimum viable product (MVP)

Although, as its name suggests, a minimum viable product is already a minimum feature-based product, you must reconsider a development process in its building stage to make it the best consumable product for its targeted audience. Here, we have a step-by-step approach to building a successful MVP version of your product.

1. Identify your business and know market needs

It is crucial to know whether the product you are building has that value proposition that the market currently needs. It is also essential to understand what your competitors are doing to grab customers’ attention. Know whether you get the holistic picture of what is necessary for the short term and long term. Additionally, what is the success criteria for your product to thrive in the market?

1. Identify your business and know market needs

It is crucial to know whether the product you are building has that value proposition that the market currently needs. It is also essential to understand what your competitors are doing to grab customers’ attention. Know whether you get the holistic picture of what is necessary for the short term and long term. Additionally, what is the success criteria for your product to thrive in the market?

2. Get clarity on your idea

It is crucial to know whether the product you are building has that value proposition that the market currently needs. It is also essential to understand what your competitors are doing to grab customers’ attention. Know whether you get the holistic picture of what is necessary for the short term and long term. Additionally, what is the success criteria for your product to thrive in the market?

3. Select the right MVP approach

There are various forms of MVP product development. It is a concept on which you are going to build your product. No-code MVP is that form in which you are just formulating your product without coding or building. So, you should select what form of MVP product development best serves your business needs. Here are some of them to choose from.

A. Visualizing your business idea:

A most effective way to build your product viability is through ad strategies. It includes ad campaigns, videos demonstrations, polls, surveys, product pages, smoke tests, landing pages, etc. This gives you a complete understanding of the demand and process.

B. Start selling first but build later on:

This pre-sales strategy works for many businesses. You can create a mockup of your product and start selling it. This gives you a comprehensive idea of your product’s demand in the market.

C. MVP with a single or two features:

With this approach, businesses build the minimum underlying business idea. This epic product with 1–2 features allows a business to calculate its effectiveness in resolving half of the challenge it intends to resolve. Building a basic model helps a startup decide the main feature-set of the product.

D. Design process:

This is the most basic but the most important. Why? Because it sets the complete concentration of an entrepreneur on the user experience. And we know that has to be handy at all stages of the process building. So, consider the end-user viewpoint and draft the design after that. If you make it user-friendly, you tend to grab more customer engagement. It should be simple and usable.

4. List your MVP’s features:

Once you have identified the key feature, you should roadmap the list of features that strike most of your audience’s attention. Get the list, understand the feature’s scope, set priorities, create a draft of what comes after/under the feature, and create that final prototype. It will help you be ready with all your ideas, and you can experiment more with your product ideation.

5. Start building your product:

After you get the key features out of your complete feature list, it’s time to work on them and complete your ideation and visualization into a real-time product. Make sure it has the most customer engagement, is user-friendly, and fits your customer demand. Also, you must consider the pricing point and other market parameters, as we mentioned previously in this article.

The five steps that we discussed above complete your MVP product development. But you need to measure all the parameters through a quality check before releasing it in the market. After assurance from your teams, you should release it and then put all your efforts into understanding the consumer’s reaction through a proper feedback plan. The reiterations would help you build a quality product.

Through this complete journey, you will know how an MVP product development approach will help you validate your initial product and prepare you for the final release of your product.

Five Benefits of MVP product development

Various benefits help an organization reap the most from its MVP product development approach. Some top MVP development companies curate a product’s validation with their first version release. There are many benefits, but here, we have jotted down the five key benefits of an MVP product development approach.

1. Early testing and credibility check:

Through the MVP approach, you can testify to the product’s credibility with the help of your early adopters. You get to know about their needs, reactions, and emotional connection (if it fits that category) and understand what they have gained from your product. Overall, you get a comprehensive idea of whether your product has solved a current challenge for your targeted user.

2. Feedback collections and audience engagement:

You can also understand main pointers like whether your product is making sense to your early adopters by conducting various review sessions, holding polls or surveys, asking for their feedback through forums, emailing them, and engaging them in several other ways. This would help you get quality feedback and insights into your initial audience’s engagement rate too.

3. Key changes and product revisions:

After that, you need to be receptive and get a complete picture of the changes that need to be incorporated into your product. These changes should reflect that you are interested in revising your product per your customer’s demands.

4. Understanding scalability with further insights:

Review your customers again and get feedback on changes you incorporated in your revised product. It will help you scale your product in the right direction.

5. Right product building:

With all of the above key points, you know where to lead now, as you are sufficiently prepared around your key product development areas. You also have audience insights and market validation. These help you build the right product with the right audience segment with a low investment.

Moreover, you save a tremendous amount of time and effort building and scaling that product that already had the validation from its prospective audience.

De-risk your startup with an MVP approach

Business in itself is a risk. You are a startup owner, and you know your product very well. But, yes, there are a lot of other factors that arrive without knocking on the door – be it an opportunity or a risk. It is essential to know how to mitigate the risks and grab the opportunities to grow your startup business exponentially.

There are three principal risk areas in every business, whether for a digital or a physical product. These risks are customer risk, market risk, and product risk. Let’s talk about them one by one.

1. Customer risk:

Customer segmentation is a very significant step. You must understand your customers well, which can be done by building an MVP for your business. The customer feedback will help you enhance your product features and help you identify which feature is working best for your customers and which flashy features are not worth it. After all, reviews and recommendations help you build your product further.

2. Market risk:

Learning about competitors who can also become your alternatives. Keep track of your competition and work on your cost structures. That way, you can avoid losing your best customers for their expectations and right price point. Keep your cost plan optimized through the MVP approach.

3. Product risk:

Your MVP product development should deliver the right intent to your audience. Customers are always looking for the right product. By defining an MVP approach, you will know whether your product solves your customer’s challenges. After that, build it to scale it. Starting with an MVP approach makes you put in considerable investment initially, which won’t harm your product success or your overall efforts.

A quick wrap up

With the MVP, you get complete modeling of your product development and all other business areas that may hamper your product growth in the long run. Therefore, it is always best to keep experimenting with your product development with a smaller instance. Developing it on a smaller scale and then launching after surpassing the big challenges from your early adopters will help you stay consistent. So why not build the next MVP for more exciting ideas that your brain might be currently processing?

We hope that this article offers you some new learnings on how to develop an MVP and de-risk your next big project with an MVP product development approach. We wish you all the best with your constant and dynamic product evolution process through the MVP approach. Stay inventive!