When developing a product in any sector, high levels of uncertainty have to be faced. Sometimes, it is necessary to make multiple versions of the product in order to refine it according to the needs of each client. This is where MVP (Minimum Viable Product) comes in, a key strategy to help companies build their product.
What is Minimum Viable Product or MVP?
The MVP is the minimum version of a new product, which includes only the most basic features to meet the customer’s needs, thus reducing the risk for a start-up company.
The creator of this concept was Eric Ries, and he considers the MVP to be one of the main requirements for a company to reduce process risk. It also offers the possibility to improve a project during its creation.
In order to do this successfully, you need to consider functionality, reliability, usability and design. In this way, you will be able to meet the needs of your first potential customers.
MVP features
It is important to know the characteristics of the Minimum Viable Product to help product developers not to waste time and resources in its creation. Key features are as follows:
- Design: The right design must be achieved for a positive customer experience, satisfying both the visual aspect and the interaction with the product.
- Usability:it has to have minimum standards of usability in order to attract the attention of users and be useful to them.
- Reliability:reliability in MVP involves customers trusting the product and helps build a reputation.
- Functionality: it has the necessary functions to be able to solve the specific problem for the consumers and helps to satisfy the demand.
Why is Why is MVP (Minimum Viable Product) important?
As mentioned above, it is a process focused on developing prototypes and allows for multiple versions to be created and shown to customers, which can be translated into the following:
It allows to learn about the clients
MVP refers to a version of a product that allows valuable customer information to be obtained. It is used to quickly test how the market responds to a product qualitatively and quantitatively.
The main objective of this method is to avoid developing products that customers do not really want and to maximise the information obtained based on the cost and effort invested.
It is a strategy and process focused on creating a product and selling it to a specific group of customers through idea generation, prototyping, data collection and continuous learning.
An MVP needs extra effort in talking to the various customers, establishing metrics and then analysing the results obtained.
Focused on Early Adopters
An MVP is focused on customers with a high level of tolerance, who are willing to give feedback and have a high capacity to understand the vision of the product.
Learning curve
The Minimum Viable Product depends on the context of the product and seeks to verify that the product effectively solves a market need before investing too many resources in its development.
To this end, prototypes are created that can be corrected without having to invest extra effort, thanks to customer feedback.
How to build an MVP
The cycle is based on Build – Measure – Learn through the different ideas, codes and data, minimising the time for each step.
The process is repeated until the customer’s needs are met or until the product is finally determined not to be viable.
Build your ideas
First establish your metrics and what you want to achieve. This will help you establish what you need to measure, learn about your hypothesis and help you to know your Minimum Viable Product.
Make sure that the product version has the necessary features to solve the problem for which it was created. It must also have real interaction with the public.
Conduct A/B tests to help you choose which product features work best.
Measures performance
Conduct small tests to verify your hypotheses. Establish metrics to evaluate results and analyse these key indicators on which the success of the launch will depend.
Metrics should measure the direct relationship between cause and effect, for example: conversion, transactions, downloads, scores, traffic…
Learn from the data collected
The results obtained in the previous step will allow you to build your MVP and support you in making the necessary adjustments. If the results have been favourable according to your hypothesis, continue along the indicated path. On the contrary, if not, modify what is not working.
At Yapiko, we help you in the creation of your software product, advising and developing it and previously implementing your MVP if it applies to your specific business case.
