In this week’s blog entry, we would like to talk about the reasons why we think intending entrepreneurs who want to kickstart the process of building a company must understand the idea behind building an MVP as the first step to that process, most especially in cases where their idea falls into the category of new and emerging technologies companies.
Budding startup owners already know the importance of an MVP but for the benefit of up and coming entrepreneurs, one of the reasons why building a minimum viable product first is crucial in the development of your company is because it can help to determine market the need for your product or service with a barebone product before you commit larger resources in terms of time and money to building a full product
Why Do You Need to Build an MVP?
A minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development.
In new and emerging technologies applications development, an MVP is the most basic version of your product with important core functionalities that allows you to launch quickly enough to test several hypotheses you may have on whether your idea is viable or has a substantial market.
In most cases, it’s mainly built to see whether theories about what your target audience needs are correct. We will list some of the other benefits of building an MVP.
Focus/reFocus on important Functionality
An MVP is mostly built with a minimum set of important core functionality so as to determine which other set of features matter and get suggestions on ways to make a;ready determined features better.
The importance of an MVP is in the fact that it lets you know how your target audience would respond when you finally build the actual product with the full set of features after going through several iterations on the barebone product as you incorporate feedback from early adopters of your MVP.
Early User Intelligence Gathering and Testing
Starting a company by first building an MVP is an important strategy in crucial feedback gathering on the solidity of a business idea and in validating the idea cheaply before substantial investment of time and money. It not only helps to avoid building a product that customers do not want but also helps you to test out incorporated features from users’ feedback before a full launch of your product.
Cost Effective Way To Achieve Market Validation
Building an MVP as the first step to starting a company is an effective way to quickly achieve market acceptance since you would most likely have incorporated several users’ feedback into your product and be sure that there’s a market need for your product.
Examples of Successful MVPs
An example of how important MVP can be in the success of your business is evident in this story of the Nike SNKRS website launch as told by Katie Boyd
In the first screenshot, a design for a feed of purchasable products was prototyped and placed in front of five consumers for UX research. The Call to Action (CTA) for the products was represented as a price within a button with a white background. When asked to simulate purchasing the item, each of the consumers struggled with determining where the CTA was. We heard people ask multiple times: “How do I buy it?”
This feedback helped us understand that the CTA needed to be more explicit, and the design evolved into the second screenshot. Prototyping prevented us from releasing a product that was difficult for users to engage with.
Final thougths
From helping to focus on important core functionality to helping to gather user feedback and leading to market validation in a fraction of the time it would typically take, it is clear that building an MVP first is a really important step in building a successful company and smart founder would do well to find a development agency to help them create a proof of concept for their innovative vision and future-proof their idea through the use of new and emerging technologies.
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