A Comprehensive Guide on How to Build a Minimum Viable Product

There are certain risks associated with building a full-fledged product, such as whether the product will be liked by the target users or not, whether it will deliver performance as expected or not, and many other concerns that could stop you from building that product. In such cases, when you have a product idea but are unsure whether it would be successful in the market or not, leading to you to think whether you should build it or not, it is ideal to build a minimum viable product (MVP) to reduce the involved risks.

Today, we will learn what a minimum viable product is, the business benefits of an MVP, and how to build an MVP.

What is a Minimum Viable Product?

As the term itself suggests, a minimum viable product or an MVP is a product with minimal features and functionalities. It’s the smallest avatar of the actual product to be developed and contains only some basic features and limited functions that demonstrate the product. By building an MVP, you can collect feedback on your product and get to know your target audience (their needs and preferences) much better, with the least amount of effort. This allows you to make necessary adjustments to the product for future releases.

Likewise, in mobile app development, an MVP is the basic version of the application having some core functionalities but minimum features, developed to test how the target audience would respond or interact with it if such an app exists. The feedback from the early adopters pushes a series of iterations and then finally the development of the product with complete features takes place. It helps in testing, designing, and delivering the final product efficiently and effectively.

What’s the idea and purpose behind developing an MVP?

While developing a minimum viable product, the idea is to release a basic or simplified version of the product in front of the ideal end-users and then obtain validated learning by observing their interactions with the product. This practical approach is way more insightful than just asking the target customers about their opinion had such a product existed. Having an MVP helps you validate your product idea without having to invest your full time and money in developing the complete product.

That’s also the purpose behind MVP development- you can launch your product quickly with a minimum budget. This allows you to collect users’ feedback and implement it in future iterations for a rich and flawless final product. You can find the ideal audience, gain ideas based on experience, and save time on building a product that could have otherwise taken more time and effort. It assists you with creating the right balance between what the product offers and what the target users actually need. Simply put, its purpose is to test the hypothesis by minimizing errors.

Business advantages of a Minimum Viable Product

The market is highly competitive these days with hundreds of companies competing against one another. To come into the scene and build a product that your ideal customers desire, it’s imperative to catch the product-market fit as early as possible, and that’s where MVP steps in. Here’s what MVP in business offers.

1. Early Testing Opportunity

Building a minimum viable product allows you to test a simple version of the app or the product and find out early if your idea will work before investing a large budget in full-fledged product development. Moreover, it allows the app to be tested with minimum risk.

2. Reduces Cost

Developing an MVP saves you cost since it focuses on one idea primarily and doesn’t involve any other function. The approach is to build a product with minimal features and minimal budget in a given time which helps reduce the cost of MVP.

3. Invaluable User Feedback

MVP in business allows you to acquire the opinions of your potential customers about their experience with the product, whether it could deliver what they expected of it, and what changes would they like to see in the final product. This user feedback helps you build a much better product.

4. Quick time-to-market

As discussed earlier, building an MVP allows you to quickly release your product to the market. The sooner it is launched to the users, the quicker you will gather feedback. Then you can work on the improvements and release an updated version later.

5. Awareness of Market Trends

By releasing an MVP among your target audience, you get aware of the market trends that would provide the best direction for full product development and will help position your product for success.

6. Helps build a user base

Another benefit of distributing an early version of your product to the market is that it helps you acquire an initial user base who can later become your brand ambassadors and spread the word about your product among their network.

How to build a Minimum Viable Product?

MVP development is about eliminating features and functionalities that aren’t necessary at the early stage with a focus on the core product value. While it may seem pretty straightforward, the process comes with a set of challenges. That is why businesses seek an experienced software development company that possesses the skills and know-how of a minimum viable product. Some crucial steps involved in building an MVP are-

1. Market Research

It can often happen that your ideas do not match the market needs. So before you begin with the MVP development process based on your idea, make sure that it meets the needs of your target customers. Conduct surveys and public interviews. Learn about their needs, their actual problems, and what do they seek in a product. Collect as much information as you can. The more information you have, the more are the chances of developing an ideal customer-centric product. During your market research, do keep an eye on your competitors to see what they are offering and how you can make your product stand out in front of them.

2. Ideate

Post the market research when you are done conducting surveys and interviews and have enough information with you, analyze their opinions and find out how your product can be of value to them, how it can benefit them and why should they be interested in it. These questions will give a fair idea of the essentials required for your product that can add value to the users.

3. Create a User Journey Map

The next step on how to build an MVP is to prepare a user journey map that reflects how the users will navigate throughout the application. It visualizes the user flow step by step. Mobile app designers use it as the foundation for creating wireframes and prototypes of applications.

Look at your product from the users’ point of view. Design in a way that is convenient for the users right from the moment they enter the app till the final step. User flow is an integral aspect as it ensures that you do not miss out on anything while keeping the future product in mind. To define the user journey map on an MVP, focus on the basic tasks rather than making it feature-rich. 

4. Prioritize MVP Features

At this stage, prepare a list of all the features that you want to include in your app before you begin with the MVP development process.

When you have the list ready for each MVP stage, it’s time to prioritize the features based on their importance and complexity. Prioritization helps to provide users with a set of features that they can test and share their feedback with you for future improvements. Do that by asking questions such as- what do the users want? How can they be benefited from the product? This should be followed by categorizing the features based on priority (high to low). When you have arranged them as per the priority, define the scope for the initial version and move on to build an MVP. Make only the must-have features a part of your MVP development process.

5. Launch

Once you have decided the key features you want to incorporate into your MVP and are aware of the market needs, the road is clear for you to build your minimum viable product. One important point to remember is that an MVP is not the low-quality version of your final version. Yes, it will have fewer features but it should be able to serve the primary purpose of meeting your target users’ needs. It should be user-friendly, uncomplicated, and engaging at the same time.

Once the ideal MVP is in place, release it to the market, gather user feedback and start working on further iterations. Feedback from the end-users will help you determine the acceptability and competitiveness of your product in the market.

The Bottom Line

We hope by now you have got sufficient insights into how to build an MVP. It need not be absolutely perfect, just follow the above-mentioned steps and you will have a well-made MVP for your product. A minimum viable product makes it possible to test your business idea in the market. You can discover a lot about your target audience, adjust your product according to their needs and preferences before investing a lot of time, funds, and resources into it. If you still have some questions related to building an MVP, you can get in touch with us. Dew possesses high experience in MVP development and knows what it takes to build a successful MVP.