From Idea to Reality: Your Essential Guide for Building an MVP

Minimum viable products are an essential part of creating a successful product. No one wants to make a product searching for problems to solve and a market to sell. Hence it is always advisable to build an MVP. However building proper MVPs can be confusing. Here is a comprehensive guide on MVPs and building proper MVPs for your business. 

Let us go back to the ’90s, the dawn of the internet. Back in those days, everything was not possible and the internet wasn’t as reliable as it is today. But Bezos had a dream to build the everything store. He read a report that stated that the annual growth of web commerce shortly would be 2,300 percent upwards.  But it would be a very bad decision to directly launch an everything online store where there is no current market for it. It would be too much when not a lot of people had email addresses, to begin with. 

Hence he started with a good minimum viable product. He streamlined the 20 most marketable products and then narrowed them to five. Finally, he stumbled upon the fact that books are the most marketable product because it is  Easy to buy, easy to ship, and not a big investment for the consumer. And boom Amazon was born.

And then they made sure that on the day they launched, they listed tons and tons of books. They would buy books from the distributor and ship them to the customer while charging some extra for the delivery. 

One of the reasons why Amazon is so successful is because they had an amazing MVP. 

And for any new product, an MVP is a crucial part to learn more about the market and how much demand your product has. And a lot of businesses are focussing on building an MVP because we learn a lot of things while being cost-effective. But MVPs are not that easy to nail. They have to have the minimum amount of functionalities. It is very difficult to distinguish between a prototype and an MVP. There can be a lot of doubts about an MVP. Hence we present you a complete guide for building a good MVP

 

So what exactly is an MVP?  An MVP or a minimum viable product or in simpler words, it is the basic launchable product that can support the minimum but required functionalities of the final product. It is that version of your product that has the basic features to satisfy your end user. This is where the word Viable comes from. These basic features must provide some kind of value to the end user. Let’s take the aforementioned example. In the initial days, Amazon was an online book store. It had the basic functionalities, a simple website and it provided value to end users because customers could buy books online from their own homes. 

When you are building an MVP, it is important to note that you cannot forget the V in the MVP. therefore it is necessary to chalk out the steps of building an MVP and following all of them. 

But why build an MVP and not directly launch the final version?

The purpose of building an MVP is to launch a product quickly in the market. It is also a key way to find an established user base and find out feedback from real end users. It is easy to find the target audience and take the ideas from their experience and use it in future iterations thereby saving time and money. But it is mainly an initial model that creates a  proper starting point for references and further discussions. 

Also, businesses build MVPs because it is motivating to flesh out the actual product after dedicating a long time to improving and refining the idea. 

But how to build an MVP?

Ensuring that your product has minimal features and is also viable is very difficult. Many startup founders in their initial phases end up creating an MVP completely ignoring the viability of the product. It is very easy to go astray while delivering an MVP of your product. So it is important to follow all steps without fail. 

Steps for building an MVP

1. Have market research

Not all ideas have a market need. A good business person always analyses the market demands before starting the MVP development process. It is always a good idea to conduct surveys. The more information you have the better your chances are towards success. It is also crucial to analyze your competitors and how you can be different from them. A CB Insights survey found that the number one reason for startups to fail is a lack of market need. 

https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/startup-failure-reasons-top/

If your product is finding for a problem to solve then you will not find any consumers.  

2. Have a clear idea of value addition

For defining the value proposition of your MVP, it is important to have clear answers to the following questions. 

1.  What value can my product provide to the end users?
2. How can my product benefit them? 
3. And why would consumers buy my product?

These answers will be important for defining the value that your MVP provides. But yes these should be in their initial stages. An MVP provides some value to its consumers in its basic state. 

3. Chalk out user flow

This is a vital step in building an MVP. you must design your MVP in such a way that it is user-friendly. Your MVP must be considerate of every stage that a user will be facing. 

It is crucial to put yourself in the users’ shoes while creating a user flow. Create and define a user flow that is basic and easy to navigate. 

At this step, it is important to focus on basic tasks than on features

4. Prioritize the features 

Prioritize all the features that your MVP will support 

Ask questions like

1. What do users want?
2. Is my product providing something beneficial?

It is crucial to chalk out all your features and put them in various levels of priority like this  priority matrix as shown below and go ahead with crucial features with your initial MVP.

A business can always check its future product by building a prototype of the MVP to check and correct its priority of features. But for the safe side, any MVP must contain at least features 

5. Launch your MVP

Now that you have prioritized all the main features and checked the market, you can start building the MVP. Remember your MVP should not be of lower quality and needs to satisfy the end user. It must be a complete product in itself that can have a base number of users and can target an audience 

https://snov.io/glossary/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/What-is-Minimum-Viable-Product-MVP-Definition-and-examples-1024×533.png

6. Exercise  BML. Build measure learn 

Go over your MVP again and again. Obtain feedback and metrics from real users because sometimes, your research information may be different that end-user feedback. Use these feedback experiences to build a better MVP promising a better user experience. You must make sure that your MVP must be of the desired quality of the end user. 

Mistakes to avoid. 

1. Choosing a wrong problem statement

Have a defined problem statement to solve. You must define your end user, your problem, and if your problem is solved by your proposed solution. 

2. Skip on prototype

Skipping on prototypes is a very risky step to take because prototypes ensure that you are going in the right direction because prototype act as a bridge from an idea to a complete product or service. Take the feedback from users and implement them in further iterations

3. Wrong target audience

Everybody is not your target audience and you have to remember that. Only involve the target audience and take their feedback. 

4. Wrong development style 

When we are developing something, rather than using the traditional development style, it is advisable to use an agile development style to make sure that your product is launched quickly and is flexible to change

5. Quantitative vs qualitative feedback. 

These are two methods of collecting metrics and feedback from end users. 

1. Quantitative feedback= would be feedback in form of metrics that check whether the tasks were easy or difficult to perform. Indirectly it can access the useability of the design. these would be checking the user performance of each task. 
2. qualitative= this is feedback concentrating on the quality of the MVP. It helps developers analyze the specific problematic UI elements.

While building an MVP it is crucial to take into account all of these factors. The end goal of building an MVP is to test the marketability of a product before launching the full-fledged product. That is what makes building MVPs a little complicated. 

Hence, We at Assystant can make it easier to build an MVP just right for your business . With expert team members at your side at all times, we will help you build an MVP that follows all these steps and is market ready so that you can focus on the more important tasks; like devising plans and strategies for your business.  

References – https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/how-to-build-an-mvp-minimum-viable-product-a-step-by-step-guide/#frequently-asked-questions

https://www.fatbit.com/fab/top-mvp-examples/

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/amazon-is-huge-because-it-started-with-a-great-mvp/308707

https://easternpeak.com/blog/top-methods-to-prioritize-features-for-your-mvp/

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