The IT industry is growing at a really fast pace and only the strongest will survive. As per the latest report by Statista in February 2022, 81 thousand mobile apps were released through the Google Play Store. But according to Gartner, only 0.01% of apps became financially successful. So if you want to be a part of this successful percentage then MVP development is the best way. It will help you to understand the needs of customers with minimum financial and time losses. Further, it helps the developers to improve the product as per user feedback.
In this blog, we will discuss step by step guide to MVP development. But first, let's get a basic idea about MVP and the benefits of MVP development. So stay tuned.
What is an MVP?
MVP stands for a minimum viable product. It is a product with enough features to validate the product idea. It helps the developers to get quick feedback and improve the product. Eric Ries introduced the concept of MVP as a part of his Lean Startup Methodology. He describes MVP as the basic version that allows testing idea validation with minimum effort.
MVP has three distinct features. One it contains the essence of the business idea. Secondly, it has a low production cost, and finally, it provides feedback for future development. So till now, you must have a clear idea about what MVP is. Now let's move forward and learn what is an MVP development process.
What is an MVP development process?
The MVP development process refers to the process of building a new product with important features to test how the target audience will respond. MVP helps in designing, testing, developing, and delivering the final product. Some of the popular examples of MVP include Spotify, Facebook, and Groupon. MVP development offers a lot of benefits let's discuss more in the next section.
Benefits of building an MVP
MVP is a product management concept whose main aim is to deliver products that meet the essential needs of users. MVP development services offer a lot of benefits like cost efficiency, product clarity, and others which are mentioned below.
Testing market demand
A lot of startups fail because their idea has no need in the market. They try to bring an innovative idea without testing its market demand. This is the point where MVP comes to play. It allows you to test the idea without investing complete funds. This approach helps in testing the market demand early and saves a lot of effort, money, and time.
Develop an early relationship with customers
Time plays a major role in the success of a business. Developing an MVP helps to engage new customers and stakeholders at an initial stage. The early adopters will spread the word about your business. Further, their feedback will help to improve your product.
Testing UX functionality
As per the latest reports by Statista 25% of mobile apps were accessed only once after download. So designing a product with an engaging user experience is crucial for overall success. MVP allows you to test the UX functionality at an early stage and improve user experience.
Easy to update and add new features
After the MVP is released, developers can easily add new features and updates based on users' feedback. Adding and updating new features in MVP is also budget-friendly. Further, when developers add new functionality to an MVP there are very less chances of bugs appearing.
How to build an MVP?
An MVP is a great way to test what your product offers and what users need. Incorporating MVP has helped a lot of organizations to save a lot of money, effort, and time. Now we will discuss the entire process of converting your idea into an MVP.
Identify the problem
The first and foremost step in MVP app development is to identify the real problem that your product will solve. You must devote most of your time to searching for a real problem. This will help you to identify your target audience and understand their mindset. After all this research you will get an idea of whether the problem you are solving is a challenge for your customers and are they willing to pay for the solution.
Analyze the market
It is extremely important to analyze the market and study your competitors. It is important to ensure that you are not launching something that already exists in the market. This will help you to find the unique selling proposition for your product. Further, it will help you to ensure that your marketing campaigns are better than your competitors.
Prioritize the important features
So till now you must have identified the problem and analyzed the market, now is the time to prioritize the important features of MVP. The whole point of adding important features is to minimize the cost and provide the most basic version. Create a priority list of features based on the value they provide to customers and ensure to add only the important ones.
Develop an MVP
Now you have decided everything it's time to start an iterative development approach for building an MVP. The prototype must be engaging and user-friendly as it is the representation of your final product. Ensure to maximize the quality standards and focus on main features.
Gathering user feedback and updating
MVP development does not end with just launching the product, gathering user feedback and updating it is the final step. Since it is built with minimum features for early adopters hence their feedback is essential for its further development. This will help you to understand the needs of the customer in a better way. So constantly gather user feedback and adjust your product as per market needs.
Mistakes to avoid while building MVP
Now you have identified the benefits and process of building an MVP, let's look at the most common mistakes to avoid while building an MVP.
Feature overloading
This is one of the most common mistakes to avoid while building an MVP. Feature overloading will result in delaying the delivery of the product and you will eventually run out of budget. Further reworking product modules will also require a lot of time. So build MVP with minimal and important features.
Inadequate product strategy
Your product strategy is the soul of your business. Inadequate product strategy will hamper the MVP development process and degrade the quality of the final product. It will keep your employees busy rather than being productive and affect your budget.
Large development team
You may think that having a lot of developers on board will help you to develop your product quicker. But this is just a myth. Having too large a team may seriously hamper the success of your project. A large development team will increase the budget, decrease performance and slow down the development process.
Conclusion
So till now, you just got a step-by-step understanding of the MVP development process. The MVP development experiment helps the organizations validate the idea and enhance the development process. It also helps to build better products as per market demands and maximize the return on investment. So if you need help converting your idea into an MVP get in touch now.
FAQ
It generally takes around 3 to 4 months to develop an MVP. But the time duration may vary as per the complexity, features, and design.
The key characteristics of a successful MVP are it is fast, cheap, and small in scale.
Some perks of choosing Citrusbug for MVP development are:
- Continuous improvement
- 24/7 support
- Maintaining transparency and integrity
- Enhanced security
- Highly affordable
Developing an MVP helps to engage new customers and stakeholders at an initial stage. The early adopters will spread the word about your business. Their feedback will help to improve your final product.
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