It doesn’t matter how substantially you plan and research your product or service before launching it to the competitive market, there are always unexpected surprises. In today’s time, it is important for start-up owners to be familiar with the concept of Minimum Viable Products or also known as MVPs. An MVP enables start-ups to test different parts of its product before developing a final design. It is a plan that speeds up the process of experimenting with a product or the feature it offers in a particular market. It gives you the opportunity to test the product in the existing market conditions and with the daily customers to evaluate its performance.
The issues that most start-ups face while thinking about MVPs are, What is it that they are going to test? What’s the purpose of this test? & What time is best for them to test the product? An answer to these questions will provide for a strong and practical approach to a final product launch using an MVP. On the contrary, there exist people that believe that MVPs require a lot of upfront effort in order to get honest customer feedback. There might be a lot of development efforts required for several product releases, which require updates based on the feedback.
Overlooking the thoughts of this group of people, there are myriad benefits that are worth taking a look at. Though it requires a lot of efforts it greatly decreases the potential risks down the road, which can result in high costs and wasted efforts.
How Can You Benefit From Developing An Mvp?
What lessons can be learned from the points mentioned above? The answer is quite simple: it’s always better to build a minimum viable product for your startup rather than not. Why? Check out our top 5 reasons to create an MVP for startups!
1. Launch early to market for validation
One of the greatest benefits of building an MVP is that it helps you in validating your product, service, or concept instantly to determine whether to continue pursuing your product idea or not. With an MVP, an entrepreneur can begin to determine a product’s viability before he or she spends the number of total hours and money that an accomplished, shelf-ready product needs. Alternatively, with a fixed number of hours and a little budget, it’s possible to learn enough about the product and the market to determine if the project deserves further time and money. Think of it as a means to decrease costs and prevent disappointment.
2. Test your theories
One of the greatest dilemmas faced by startups is that any startup is usually based on two key theories, specifically the value of the product and its underlying hypothesis. By releasing early in the market and testing their product, the founders of a startup can test both of their theories and can put themselves in a better place to overcome the challenges that people in their target market face. We have even seen founders pivot during this phase if their hypothesis are wrong.
3. Reduce product cost and time
By centering on the main features of the product throughout the development, saves the company a lot of money, time, and labor needed to launch the product. So, rather than spending a lot of time building a product that may or may not gain profit in the market, the company can speed up the process by launching a minimized version of the product in the market. If the product achieves the desired success, the ROI will be worthwhile and will encourage the startups to finance in developing the product.
4. Receive feedback
One of the foremost reasons why even established software companies recommend building an MVP for a startup is feedback. It’s critically vital to certainly know the customer’s opinions about your product. The best means to find out how successful your product copes is to get this data directly from your customer. From their feedback, you can understand what features are the most wanted and demanded, and which ones are unwanted.
5. Don’t waste your efforts
And last but not least. Enough has been said about an MVP development cost, time, and its advantages, but what you also save is your efforts. An MVP is a crucial step, which will assist you to plan your startup carefully and scale your business accurately. If you launch an entire product before realizing the needs of your customers you will definitely end up spending a lot of effort in dealing with the risks later. So why not choose the easiest way at the first point?
