Every successful business or startup with amazing and revolutionary products made those products through a series of learnings and changes. The products you absolutely love to use in your daily life looked very different at the time of their launch. All great products are great because they were improved again and again with time and customer feedback. In this post, I will explain the definition of a minimum viable product, its importance, and some key steps to build one.
What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
Every successful business or startup that has built great products, started with a very basic product, which in most cases looked very different from the product they have now. This basic version of a product is called a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
A Minimum Viable Product or an MVP is the most basic version of a product that has basic functionality and usability and provides the value that a customer needs. Although an MVP has some basic functionality only, an MVP should be usable enough to let customers try it and give feedback.
To better understand the meaning of MVP, let us take an example of a rough sketch of a fruit basket made with the help of a pencil. This sketch does not have any colour or detailing for now, but IT SHOWS A FRUIT BASKET! It validates the idea of a picture of a fruit basket. It is an MVP.
Thus, an MVP is a basic functional product made from a vision or idea a business has. This idea or vision can be huge, and an MVP is just a small first step.
Understanding MVP with the example of YouTube:
As you may already know, YouTube started as a dating site where people could post their videos explaining about themselves and what they are looking for in a partner. As you can imagine that idea did not work out because people were not willing to post videos to find a date.
But YouTube was serving a very interesting function which was to be able to post and share videos online. So, the idea changed from a dating site to a site where one can post anything they want. And that made YouTube revolutionary.
In this example, the first launch of YouTube is an MVP. Where it is not perfect yet, but it perfectly validates the business idea of being able to post and share videos online.
Why is an MVP important?
Building and launching a minimum viable product is one of the key steps necessary for the growth of your business.
Let’s say you have a great idea, and you want it to come to reality but how do you know that this product will be a great hit? As we learned in the previous example of YouTube, what its founder thought was a great idea, was not desired in the market. But after launching their MVP in the market they quickly realized what was needed to be done. They analyzed and learned what users wanted out of their product and continuously improved their idea as well as their product.
Some reasons why an MVP is important are:
Collecting user feedback and refining the product
Having an MVP is extremely useful as it helps businesses collect valuable customer feedback and implement it to improve their products and services.
Reduce the risk of financial loss
Having an MVP can save you from investing a huge capital upfront and risk losses due to failure.
Building Strong User Base
By launching an MVP, you can connect with your potential customers, and by the time your product gets really good, you will already have a significant volume of users.
Opportunity to attract investors
Businesses and startups with the right kind of MVP can help attract investors and build trust in the product.
How to build an MVP?
Now to the final section: how to build a minimum viable product(MVP) for your business that will scale into a successful business. A few steps of which are explained in the following sections:
1. Identify your Product Idea and vision:
The first step to building a successful MVP is to clearly define your vision. What problem are you solving and how are you going to solve it? Analyzing industry trends and your target customers is also necessary. Knowing the pain points and behavior of your target customers will help you gain a better understanding of what your MVP should be like.
2. Identify your core features:
After identifying and clearly defining what your product vision is, identify what should be the core features of this MVP. Add all the necessary features that will help you make your vision come to life. Avoid extra features for now that can be added later.
3. Launch in a short time:
Don’t overthink and do not try to make it a perfect product. A product with just enough features that validate your idea is good to go. Launching quickly will give you valuable customer feedback which is very important to make a product that is needed by your customers or users.
5. Test:
Testing your product in the real world with real users will provide you with invaluable insights. So put your product to the test and carefully analyze the results.
6. Iterate:
After analyzing the results through user testing, it is time to iterate. As per the user demand and data analysis, make relevant changes. Implement new features, change older features, improve functionality, and so on.
Conclusion:
Building an MVP and putting it to the test in the real world is an essential step toward building a great business or startup. Launching a minimum viable product is a great way to test and validate your business idea. It helps businesses to gradually improve their product and gain customers. Also, It builds trust among user when a business improves its product with customer feedback.
Now that you know how to build an MVP, also read: How to write a business plan that gets you funded.
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