Steps to Consider When Validating Your Product Idea
You may have tons of product ideas in your mind. And you may share them with friends or family in hopes of receiving feedback. Or you may skip sharing ideas with anyone in order not to get distracted or not to have the brilliant idea stolen. Whatever the case, product ideas are easy to born but hard to get validated.
Usually, a lot of products fail because of the lack of proper market research. So, whenever I have an idea or a broader hypothesis, I follow these steps to get more validated answers. My algorithm for product validation is easy. It’s just a series of steps that one should take before jumping to assumptions.
Secondary Market Research
Call it general research or secondary research, it is something you will have to carry out at the very beginning of your product validation journey. Secondary market research is pretty much the research that has been compiled for you. Examples of it include studies and reports by government agencies, media sources, labor unions, chambers of commerce etc.
Where to find these? They are everywhere from newsletters and newspapers to trade publications. You can easily access them online without the need to pay for anything. Though there are paid sources as well. But overall, you or your company won’t have to spend resources on the design and implementation or a research study since it has been done by someone else already.
So, basically, secondary market research can provide you with data samples that are going to help you make preliminary predictions.
Primary Market Research
Unlike secondary research, primary market research is more targeted. Roughly put, it gives you the information that comes directly from your potential customers. And you can gather that information on your own or you can hire someone to do that for you.
Once you have your primary market research data at hand, you can use it in marketing, messaging, positions, branding, and pricing decisions.
Note that there are a few solid methods of doing primary market research such as interviews, surveys, focus groups etc. And, of course, you can rely on your own observations and experiences, too. But make sure not to get carried away too much.
Primary market research allows gathering two main types of data: exploratory or specific. The first one allows getting a high-level understanding of your key hypothesis. A small focus group interview with detailed unstructured questions can help you gather the needed info. Specific research might be a bit costly since it is about getting concrete information about a targeted score. Interviews or surveys (usually larger in scope than focus group interviews) can help you out.
There are a lot of techniques as to how you can conduct an interview, what questions you should ask, how you should ask them, how long the questionnaire should be. If you are really seriously into doing primary market research on your own, then make sure you read about the different methods of conducting it. You can find plenty of useful stuff by surfing the web.
User Research
This one is often taken for primary market research which can lead to serious product problems later on. Unlike market research, user research focuses on understanding the user’s behavioral aspects. Mike Kuniaysky notes that it is “the process of understanding the impact of design on an audience.”
Why do user research? Well, in order to better identify user’s needs and to offer a better product, of course.
Some of the methods of user research include user interviews, contextual interviews, parallel design, prototyping, usability testing, use cases and more. Also, note that observational research can be much more objective and can provide better results than interviews and in-person conversations.
User research comes in when you have an MVP. An MVP might be good but it might not be the best. So, you conduct user research to see what they like and what they hate about the MVP. Note that an MVP can be a new feature or a completely new product. And nearly all user research methods can work for both.
Product Evaluation Research (gathering customer feedback)
This one is by far the last step in the product validation journey. And one of the most interesting things to do ever. Because it’s always so exciting to learn what users/ customers have to say about something you have created.
There is a rule of thumb though: usually paying customers are more serious about your product and their feedback is thus more objective. If you have both free and paying users, make sure you do not get overexcited by the feedback of the first group. Instead, focus on learning as much as possible from those who pay you money.
There are various ways of gathering customer feedback. For example, you can provide proactive live chat support. Live chat can address a lot of issues real-time. And customers value this a lot. Email surveys are another way to learn what your customers think about your product. In addition, you can monitor your social channels to see what kind of reviews your customers write about you and what kind of jargon they use to talk about you. If your niche is something where users do not usually like leaving feedback, you can offer prizes of gifts in return for a review.
At the end
Product validation is by no means based on blind guesses. Do your research. Do some research again and again and again. It’s never enough! And then go talk to your users to find out what they really want. Please take this literally! Use the chance to meet them either in a coffee shop or on a bus or online. Don’t go broad, be as specific as possible. Do not get carried away by positive feedback: instead, make them tell something they hate about your product or feature. Then go talk to your team and start improving!
Did I miss anything? If yes, make sure to hit a comment below. I’ll be happy to answer!
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