Minimum Viable Product (MVP) — It’s Importance & Pitfalls
Minimum Viable Product: Explained in detail
Did you know that approximately 90% of the startups in the world fail? Start-ups mostly containing entrepreneurs often face the problem of limited resources in their pursuit to advertise their new technology. This blog on Minimum Viable Product (MVP) presents the replica of a startup, which can be applied to any startup/organization despite their size or the environment they work in. The startup/organization policy states the proper use of their resources by introducing an (MVP) Minimum Viable Product to the market as soon as possible in order to maintain and test their values and growth statistics. This testing is done by the locals or by the public in order to know their initial growth. This kind of experiments helps the organization to bring about learning which helps them to reduce the uncertainty of project failure, thereby bringing the resulting technology to market faster and better.
Introduction:
“The minimum viable product is that version of the new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about the customer with the least efforts” — Eric Ries.
Structure of an (MVP) Minimum Viable Product is a tactic for avoiding the development of products that customers do not want. This basically presents an idea where any organization rapidly build a minimum set of features that is enough to set up the product and test the main assumptions about public’s interactions with the particular product. Imagine that you’re starting an idea and nothing of that product is built, your primary goal must be to prove that people will benefit from what you’re planning to build. An (MVP) Minimum Viable Product would be that you can build at a minimum to prove that your perspective.
It is very much palpable. But in reality, there are thousands of products that are made and no one cares about them. A creation may have many great characteristics but building characteristics don’t help a creation in search of a problem. Building an (MVP) Minimum Viable Product can save you both time and money up to a very large extent, but it’s not an excuse to build a bad product. Manufacturing an MVP means thinking about all the possibilities that your product could attain — each feature, each potential page — and only doing the things most essential to prove people want it.
In short “Beta Version of any product-Minimal Viable Product”
Importance of MVP (Minimal Viable Product):
The true benefit of a Minimal Viable Product is that we are able to construct something that will address the initial concern of your public in a timely matter. The concept of MVP can be safely used while building a product. It is important because your whole product requires days or months to be completed, determine what are the minimum requirements that will work for your user base and release that, then move forward with another process that will enhance your product. MVP is not only for improvement of our product but can be used to save a huge amount of workload.
With appropriate knowledge and use of MVP will avoid the excuse of “there is not a time for that” but it will produce the need of understanding that it won’t be out completely until the needs of the customers are fully satisfied. MVP will be a pitiful target just like your product, but it has its profit and it also provides an answer to constructing a feature in a timely matter while adjusting for the customer needs.
One of the major advantages of building an MVP is that it helps you legalize your product, ideas or services which quickly helps us to decide whether to continue to go after your product idea and if so, whether and how to modify it. MVPs are only effective when you listen to the market feedback you receive. Its control is matched only by the amount of perplexity that it causes because it’s actually quite hard to do.
In most cases, organization/startups are based on an idea that revolves around a new product or service, one that is so-called to be embraced by a current problem in the market and it can be solved accordingly. For example, many established organization/startups opt to create a full product based on their preliminary vision and subsequently make it available to the target market. It almost works every time, but it is often the case that there isn’t quite as much traction as we thought. This kind of behavior is possible if the market was not chosen carefully or the product was not compelling enough.
Helps in testing the product in real market
Even if we have the internal testing for apps/products, the real market involves different factors including growth of market, trending technologies, and economy. Best way to evaluate these factors is to put the product in the market and then evaluate its performance. The (MVP) Minimum Viable Product also aims to build a responsive process for any certain product where it is tested, released, and enhanced in further development and bug fixtures.
It mainly focuses on the determining features of the product
While the project is in its development phase, the team should always focus on the target i.e. the consumer needs, this may need up with a compound product that loses its interior value. Adding certain redundant features to the products is one of the major issues that contribute reaching the product to a mess. The (MVP) Minimum Viable Product allows the group to focus on the interior value of the product and the description that the consumer only needs. This helps the team which is developing the product to understand what is needed and what is not. So one should always focus first on the key features that contribute to the product success in the market, instead of wasting resources in a feature that no one would use.
Helps in reduction of resources, cost and time
By mainly focusing on the major features of the product during the creation, this saves the company/organization cost, time, resources and efforts needed to initiate the product. The members of the team speed the process by developing a minimized version of the product to the market, instead of spending a long time in the development of a product that may or may not achieves success in the market. If in case the product has achieved success, then the return of investment will be used in the development of a steadier product which will be more viable to the customers and their needs. And If in case there are issues in the product, the organization/company has to make a decision to try to advance the product or execute it without any further loss of resources, time and cost.
Speed up the process of learning
The major lesson when releasing your initial product is to learn about the experiences that a real user must face. These kinds of lessons can’t be achieved through in-house research or testing. Therefore, landing the product on the market with (MVP) Minimum Viable Product helps the members of the group/team to learn more about the product and then uses the consumer feedback to improve the upcoming version of the product.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Developing Your Minimum Viable Product
Inexperienced Team
Do you really think that lack of your development skills leads to the failure of your project MVP???
If yes, then you are totally wrong about your assumptions because the construction of an MVP is just like building another piece of software, which experienced requires services from departments like designers, developers, software testers and project/product managers.
You can’t just build product MVP just by handful developers or simply a designer. To build an Exquisite MVP you will need an experienced team.
A good and experienced team is what many startups lack. This is the major reason why many startup/organization careers come to an end before it even gets started.
Building a Perfect Product
There are many customers who hate the concept of sketches of the product. They just want to perceive something that looks finished and perfect. But, have you thought what will happen if the product gets rejected by the audience? Then all your time, resources and money you have put in building a product will be wasted. The idea building your product MVP is to provide your audience with the common understanding of how your product will work or look like, with a precise feature. You don’t need to build a product having all certain features just to attract your audience. Always try to remember that your product MVP is all about implementing the accurate and least features of the product but, not the complete product.
Skipping the Archetype/Prototype Phase
In MVP, building a dummy or prototype an important part, as this part cannot be skipped. By creating a dummy, you can present your project idea to the audience and reduce the risk of getting a failed product.
Ignoring Customers Feedbacks
Always listen carefully to the feedbacks given by your potential users, this step is crucial as you are building a product for users to make their life easier. If they try to give you any feedback about the particular characteristics of the product which they do not like, then try to ask them what is wrong in it and then try to bring a product to precision.
Do not forget to execute analytics into your product’s website and in your app. Here are some metrics one should always keep in mind while building a product MVP and to measure the success of your MVP.
- Daily active users (DAU)
- Maintenance rate
- Average time spent within the app or website.
Next step of MVP
While building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), you should always talk to potential users and then for a further step get their feedbacks and start incorporating their informational feedbacks into your MVP and open your product to some more customer as every feedback counts. After having certain feedbacks starts tracking a metrics you received and then focus on growing your product and fixing it time to time, say by releasing a better and newer version of it every month.
Case Study: Airbnb
Around 2007, two friends wanted to start their own business but they couldn’t afford the rent of their apartment. So, they both came up with an idea of renting their apartment as a cheap accommodation for conference attendees who can’t get a hotel nearby. Finally, they took some pictures of their apartment and put it up on a simple website and soon enough they got 3 attendees, a lady from Boston and two men originally from India and Utah. Their interaction with attendees gave them an insight of what audiences want and how their needs can be fulfilled. This MVP is mainly a concierge MVP which helps them to validate a point that people will be willing to buy experiences.
In the case of Airbnb, there have been various problems that required to be fastened or self-addressed that would probably improve client retention and acquisition. as an example, maybe the founders might have targeted on building their inventory one town at a time so as to achieve important mass, or maybe they ought to are a lot of diligent concerning auditing their inventory to create certain they were maintaining rigid quality standards. might they improve the web site to boost the user expertise, or did they merely ought to facilitate individuals get snug with the construct of staying in different people’s homes? Ultimately, Airbnb full-fledged the very best repeat bookings in listings that had professionally-shot photos on the location. By requiring this feature for all listings, they full-fledged a large leap in new and repeat business, demonstrating however they were able to leverage the “good”, instead of fix the “bad”, to attain the expansion they desired.
With their initial doubts getting clear, that people would be willing to be pay to stay in someone else’s apartment rather than any hotel. Airbnb is now a peer-to-peer nightly room rental network • People can put their spare bedrooms or entire apartments online and rent them out. Since the founders were designers themselves, the product has been made with a very clean and simple user experience and user interface. The iterations in design with every beta testing has been their USP now.
The aim of this article is to educate people with the common pitfalls to avoid during the planning and development of their startup’s product and hopefully decrease the number of failures startup ecosystem experiences.
#Miniumviableproduct #Mvp
