Every enterprise starts its journey with an idea of a product. Some of them work, some are not. But few of them enter the market in such a way that they last for longer and mark their presence in people’s minds forever.

The most famous and commonly used products or apps you use today didn’t have a pleasing start. They too have faced huge and enormous hurdles to raise profits.

It’s tragic to know that how much money and time it takes to develop and release a successful software product is often underestimated. Skilled Developers set out to create the top-notch product that will make them the next Bill Gates.

However, sometimes they fear losing sight of their original product goal, or delay release dates and waste time on expensive bug fixes.

This is where the minimum viable product (MVP) becomes essential to implement. MVP is a process that allows developers to test, optimize and grow their robust solutions over time.

Here, we provide you with complete exposure to the benefits of building an MVP and easy steps to get started.

Introducing MVP

Before we dive into the necessity and benefits of building an MVP, let’s get to the nitty-gritty of what we’re actually referring to. An MVP – contrary to some opinions – is not a wireframe or an early proof of concept or a technique. In a true sense, it’s a release that’s fit for customers: but one that’s stripped right back to the core if required.

Simply saying, Your MVP is a product without extras or can say a minimal product. It's the minimum amount of features it takes for the core functionality of your product to be met.

It helps you gain popularity in the market at the earliest too with investing a little amount of time and cost.

You can imagine bread with butter on it as your MVP product whereas, bread with cheese, sauce and vegetables on it is your final product.

Considering MVP as a mindset, MVP is basically a scientific approach to product launch. This methodology is based on the build-measure-learn concept. The core features that create viability for your product equals your Minimal Viable Product.

Business Goals You Can Achieve With MVP

‘Doing extended development of an unreleased software product is building a tower of hope on a foundation of assumptions.’ – Shawn Crowley

Listed down below some business goals that companies can achieve while implementing MVP.

Faster Release Time

It is often assumed that the people give their prime attention to the product that has entered the market first. At times, it doesn’t matter whether your product provides a solution or satisfies customer demands, the sooner you bring your product to the user- the better.

MVP development takes only a few months to roll out your product faster which ultimately increases its chances to succeed in the changing market.

The benefits of MVP development provides you with a clean, simple and fully functional product that will get launched soon.

Your Product Performs Exactly What It Showcases

Beginning with a minimum viable product keeps the team focus on the core functions and value of your software. Mainly, MVP provides businesses with clear indications about the product regarding what is working and what is not working, what can be added, and above all - what can be upgraded.

Building an MVP helps prevent your initial product from unwanted and unneeded features. This means that your new customers will get a simple product that exactly performs what it is showcased to the audience.

The faster release of your software provides you with the opportunity to test the market at first. 

More Economical

Cost-effective product development is considered one of the most significant benefits of MVP. Developing the initial versions of your product with minimized features makes it an easy and safe approach in relation to cost. Moreover, investing less in the initial phase helps you keep a space for some additional upgrades in the future.

Million-dollar companies including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Spotify, Airbnb, Uber, Zappos, Dropbox, etc were developed as MVPs first in their initial phase.

As businesses begin to gain more users and gather more information, they can now invest more, and more smartly.

Test Market Demands

Before launching product, it is important to understand that whether the product would work in the market or not. MVP helps to test the market demand at the initial phase to ensure its idea success. You need to ensure that if there is a need for your product exists in your targeted market.  As you cannot invest your entire amount based on an assumption. 

However, an MVP can help you test the same in the market and continue with the idea, upgrade it, or completely pivot based on the findings by measuring the MVP performance.

MVP development helps businesses entering into the real market faster so that you can field-test your ideas and get user responses to the overall product.

Increases The Learning Curve Of Teams

When you release the first version of your MVP, you clearly understand the customer behaviour and pattern. However, placing your product in the market in its MVP version gives your development team myriad opportunities to get in-depth learning of your product. Thus, utilize the customer feedback received by the users in improving and enhancing the upcoming releases of the product.

The MVP process is more of an iterative process. MVP development provides your team with a platform to learn and adopt iterative development processes like Agile, which can add more value to your product during its development.

Why Make MVP The Earliest Step? A Quick Checklist

Starting businesses keeping MVP development idea in mind is one of the best decision taken up by many business enterprises today. Let's see why it matters a lot:

1.   Helps you create an early buzz in the market and attract customers' attention at first.

2.   Helps test market demands and delight, early adopters.

3.   Helps resolve risks and test product idea in the market.

4.   Helps define & pivot monetization strategy.

5.   Helps you get loyal and trusted users.

6.   Helps you embrace user’s feedback.

7.   Helps you get clear indications about the product regarding what is actually working and what is not.

6 Simple Steps To Construct An MVP SetUp

You can consider MVP as a product prototyping model. The most viable product evolves out of this system. Let’s examine the MVP development process in just 6 simple steps so that you have a clear vision.

Define Your Product Idea

First of all, you should have a clear idea in your mind concerning the primary values you want your product to have. MVP product development is all about introducing people to the core product to get their real and genuine responses. You must consider them, and then develop a viable MVP based on them. 

Thoroughly Research Market and Analyze Competitors

Before diving into the MVP development process and creating prototypes, first, you should ensure that your targeted audience will be interested in your product or not. You could conduct surveys or questionnaires on social media platforms at this stage. The more real customer feedback you have collected, the better you have chances to succeed.

Consider Design Process and User Flow

It’s time you need to decide on your product design process and user flow. In simple words, think about how the client will use the app, assuming that is what you created. How will they launch it?

Also, check out the steps of how the user will interact with it. MVP technology always accelerates your growth in this area.

Moreover, thinking about user flow is a bit complex. It permits you not to skip anything, and ensuring that your customer is fully satisfied. Identify your users and their real-time actions to get succeed at first.

Make A List Of Project Features And Prioritize Them

At this stage, you prepare a list of all the features that you want to see in your product. Now, before starting with the MVP process, take a quick look at the list again and eliminate all the features that are not important. MVP system provides you with the right number of product features to test. 

Sort all the remaining features. Once you’ve prioritized all the features, you can now define their scope for the initial version of the product and start developing MVP. 

Read also: MVP Development 101: Step-By-Step Guide To Build Minimum Viable Product

 

Build Your MVP

Once you have determined the key features and learned about market demands, you can first create an MVP prototype and gather customer feedback using that. Whether or not you will choose to hire an MVP company or use your own team to determine.

However, the prototype you create should not be of low quality. Also, it should satisfy the user requirements, even if certain features are not there.

The product should be easy to use, visually appealing, and should satisfy the main “pain point” that justifies its existence.

Collect User's Feedback, Analyze It And Repeat

After launching your MVP and run it on a trial basis, you’ll need to analyze everything. MVP development helps to learn customers’ needs, feedback and risks of launching the entire product into the market.

Initial user responses and feedback from your potential customers provide effectiveness to the product itself. You might ask them if they would deny buying that product over one of your competitors, or what else they would like to see from it when it hits the market.

Big Successes With MVPs

You will come across a myriad of examples using MVP as their development strategy in their initial phase when you make a quick search on Google.

There are enough success stories to prove that MVP development has turned down many businesses into a million-dollar company ruling the industry. So, here we go with some good examples of MVP development.

Amazon

Amazon was originally designed in the year 1994 to focus on books at a low price, with an easy web design based on the minimum viable product, that’s all they needed to develop and establish their business in the retail market.

Twitter

A widely popular social media platform, Twitter, incorporates a unique approach. It was initially known by the name“twttr” and used for internal purposes only. However, the team made a huge investment in the SMS feature to post to the platform and to test it among users. Twitter was then finally released to the public in the year 2006.  It was a hit then. At present, Twitter has increased its user base and became the most popular social networking site.

Groupon

Groupon used the old concept of selling vouchers and discounts with the idea of sharing and socializing. It has achieved new heights and raise huge profits. In the initial phase, Groupon came into existence using the WordPress platform, where regular PDFs were emailed to users that were already subscribed. Therefore, Groupon built its voucher system and backend and boost its business.

Airbnb

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, founders of Airbnb launched airbreadandbreakast.com in 2008 as a single web page. The website didn’t have that many features. It could only provide feasible renting spaces in your desired location.

Over the years, it took feedback from the users and improved its customer experience. At present, the site caters their customers with best stay packages, seamless online experience and much more.

Facebook

Today, Facebook is considered one of the best and popular social media platforms that connects around 1.69 million users worldwide. Their MVP was all about connecting students based on their classes and colleges. People loved this connecting app and started sharing it with each other.

In their initial stage, the popular app Facebook didn’t have all the features and functionalities. It is tested on a small group of people tested the application. 

But now you see an entirely different version of Facebook what it was earlier.

Ending Note

Not only these but there are also so many more success stories you can check that define MVP as their kick-starter element. Starting with an MVP is the best way to go ahead especially for product companies and startups.

We can be your MVP development partner that turn down your product idea into reality. You can easily hire developers and entire development team depending on your business requirements.