Minimum viable product (MVP) is the simplest product edition that is brought to market only to know the reaction and feedback of customers on that product. This helps a company to learn how to build a final product for the market.
MVP collects the maximum amount of analysis of the customer’s wants and needs to provide a customer with efficient service with minimum effort.
What is not MVP?
Top Figure – The customer ordered a car and he gets the first iteration of the car that is a wheel. Customers remain unsatisfied. With more iteration, he gets a car finally.
Bottom Figure – The customer ordered a car and he gets the smallest thing which can make him go faster from A to B. With iteration, more things are developed which are good alternative for car.
| What is MVP? | What is not MVP? |
| It is designed to change the world and try new ideas. | It is not about only getting the profit. |
| It is supposed to solve a real problem. | It is not designed to increase the user or rather its focus on problem-solving. |
| It is better to learn the user feedback and try to improve that project by providing a small investment. | It is not supposed to be an end product. |
Purpose of MVP
- Product hypothesis with minimal resources
A company that is new in the market mostly uses MVP it is a common process to launch a new product with having minimum or small budget. It can fail but can we use in different situations rectifier problems errors weaknesses and mistakes without having a big loss. most of the companies launch MVP just to verify its value market.
- Accelerate learning and minimize errors
From MVP many things can be learned to make a better end product. MVP is done to test the product hypothesis which will eliminate the errors. It minimizes the risk and increases the speed of product development in any condition.
- Collect quality feedback
Getting customer feedback is an essential need for any business especially when it is a new one. Getting positive feedback from a customer is impossible. Getting negative feedback is also a challenge so companies plan MVP and get their quality feedback and response.
- Reduce wasted engineering work
Engineers design a product for a company and then it is launch in a market, but it can happen that it is not satisfying customer needs and wants. So, all the work done by the engineer, cost involved in that all go waste.
Here MVP helps us, it is motivating the company to launch a product such that it satisfies the needs and wants of the customer. It can be done by improving the product or entirely launching a new product.
How to Build a Minimum Viable Product?
- Clear business purpose
Once the survey was done in which 101 startups participated and 42% of startups failed due to lack of market need.
The company is not aware of the needs and wants of targeted groups then the company will not satisfy customers. The company must consider analyzing the product hypothesis not only about the customer needs but also love what your competitors are doing in the market. It will clear what is the purpose of your company and what product you want to offer to customers.
- Clear Idea
Having a clear idea of what the company is offering to the customer human find a better solution. They can ask questions like
What meaning is our company offering to the customers? How will customers with the least effort purchase your variable product? Why will customers buy only your product? When we have and source for all these questions then a better picture can be created via MVP.
- MVP approach
There are four ways to get your MVP done.
1. No product MVP
It is done to validate an idea. To get feedback from customers without doing the actual coding. Ad strategies we will use to do this.
2. Product Mockup MVP
In this approach new offer, a portion of your potential product features by mockups. In this, you direct the customer statement manually to ask questions and solving them. Airbnb is one of the greatest use cases of this approach.
3. Single Feature MVP
In this approach, the core functionality is to figure out and solve at least more than half of the problems of customers with less than half of the efforts.
4. Minimum Lovable Product (MLP)
This approach gives delight to the customer. It gives a first-time experience to its user. Its basic principle is to boost viable product quality with an enhanced user enterprise.
- Design process and MVP features
When we complete selecting the appropriate approach, founders need to consider the next step that is to decide the design for an app or website. When it comes to the design path standpoint of the customer is very essential. Customer needs app or website which is handly and user friendly. Sign up process should be easy.
We have to create MVP features list which contains prioritizing each feature according to customer needs and wants, categorize them based on the priorities, define the scope of these features according to the target audience, create a rough MVP prototype, and finalize one.
- Learn
As the product is ready to offer, the first checking stage is done by a quality assurance engineer, they increase product consistency before the product is released. After the new product is released you can analyze and improve the product according to the customer feedback and then test again. Quality control is not one time process, it is a constant process of improving a product. This all processes are done to reach a much better final product.
Why MVP?
- Early testing
When MVP app developing early testing is of great benefit. It allows you to make assumptions, how your plan will succeed in the future, without spending the whole money.
- Market Validation
MVP helps to find out the product performance will satisfy the target group or not. It also introduces the user to your brand and proves how exclusive your app and services are from the other company in the same segment.
- Less Costly
Fewer features are developed so it costs less. As it is less costly we can do multiple MVPs at a time.
MVP Examples
- Airbnb
The founder of Airbnb uses his apartment to validate his idea due to a lack of resources. They created a minimalist website. Photos and information about the property were published there, and they found customers quite fast. Now, it is one of the largest vacation rental companies.
- Amazon
Originally the focus of Amazon was on selling online books. They provided online books at a low price to users. Now, the largest e-commerce site in the world.
- Dropbox
They used no product MVP that is they created a video to explain how it functions. And they got around 75k signup the same day. Now it is one of the largest cloud storage companies.
