It’s a fact that in this dynamic and turbulent world full of brilliant ideas ready to be born into great startups, every entrepreneur faces the same challenge – a blank page because they ignore MVP development! That is one of the primary reasons why about 90% of startups fail, 10% within the first year!
Endless possibilities, no guidelines, and the absence of structure scare off talented entrepreneurial minds even before they start. The lack of honest and measurable feedback keeps these entrepreneurs in the dark about the accuracy and validity of their approach and their business model.
MVP development shapes the blank page of a new business model into clear ideas, a concrete plan, and at the end, a viable product. The success of your business cannot depend on your intuition of what users want; business conclusions and decisions should result from hypothesis, experimentation, and building an MVP.
Read on to understand the MVP software development process in-depth, with expert tips and examples of building successful MVPs.
The Why’s & How’s of MVP Building for Startups
Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) enables new business owners, developers, and marketers to determine the viability of their product based on credible audience feedback.
An ideal approach is to create a future-ready solution version of your product with the most critical features that solve the customer’s problems instead of creating a complete MVP.
Building an MVP not only gives startups the first-mover advantage but also helps businesses validate their economic viability.
Basic Goals for Building a Minimum Viable Product for Startups
- Testing the product’s viability
How to start? Is your concept effective, but where to begin? Making your ideas real and testing their popularity with customers can be accomplished through MVP development. To gain this aim, start by making a feature list including the basic functionality to integrate.
- Spending wisely on product development
Focusing on working only with the essential product’s functionality will lower operational expenditures and save your budget funds. If your budget for solution development is limited, it is especially important to consider “how to develop minimum viable product.”
- Fast delivery of a product that solves at least one user’s problem
Your team strives to minimize the time and money spent on MVP creation and develop a solution to customers’ problems.
MVP Development for Startups – The Challenges
The first thing to remember is that MVP is not the final product, and it won’t be until your user base is large enough to make it viable for you to invest more in product development. Startups should consider it a learning tool for you as much as it is for your users.
You also need to understand that an MVP is not about making something that completely meets all requirements from end-to-end but rather about getting feedback from users on what parts of your idea are most important and which ones are not working out as well as expected (or at all).
In addition to helping entrepreneurs avoid common mistakes in product creation, a good startup MVP development consultancy can also discuss some of the pitfalls that new business owners can fall prey to if they don’t have enough experience building products.
The purpose of MVPs is to get quick feedback on how well an idea will work. Since this can happen when you are just starting, building your first MVP may seem too difficult.
Although MVP development for a tech startup is a great way to test the market, it can be quite challenging. The most common concerns for startups are:
- Not understanding why they need an MVP in the first place
- Not doing enough market research before creating their first product
- Trying to create something too good to impress the investors
More often than not, startups fail to properly analyze their target market and audience before developing their product. Statistics show that 34% of startups are failing because they don’t have a market need. Defining the target market and product discovery cannot be overstated in such a situation.
Build an MVP for Startups: The Critical Stages of MVP Development
It is essential to map out all the necessary steps before starting MVP development. What steps should be taken to create an MVP, and where should the development process be initiated? Let’s explore the details of the MVP development process.
When developing an MVP product, it is important to go through the following steps:
1. Market research
For any successful project, market research is essential. To avoid financial loss, it is important to analyze the data. Building a minimum viable product (MVP) website or app that is interesting and useful to users is essential. Additionally, some platforms offer paid surveys that can help create a detailed customer profile. Monitoring competitors and investigating how they create their MVPs is also essential.
2. Getting a clear understanding of a product
To create an MVP, every business owner should take the time to assess their project by answering the following questions:
- What problems can my platform solve?
- Can it be useful for the end consumer, and how?
- Why would they use this solution?
Once you have identified the key features and benefits of the product, you can begin to develop the minimum viable product (MVP) of your future product. This will involve defining the issues, challenges, and solutions the product will address. All this information has been gathered, and you will clearly understand the product’s main qualities.
3. Defining the feature list
For the planning phase of your startup’s MVP, provide your software development company with a comprehensive list of features you would like to include in your app.
MVP means you don’t have to simultaneously implement complicated frameworks and fancy designs. So, take one step at a time. Create a minimum viable product concept by leaving only the essential features.
4. Building and launching
So, how do you create a viable and attractive product for users and investors? After all the criteria are arranged, you can start building your MVP. Remember that you should strive for a balance between professionalism and brevity to get the best results.
Your MVP should be manageable and high quality, with all bugs, addressed promptly to prevent issues from arising. Additionally, it should appeal to customers and effectively address their core needs.
5. Analyzing the feedback
How can MVPs be designed in such a way as to gain positive feedback? As part of the MVP development process, it is crucial. Using it, you can conclude the other features to develop or a bug search. Thus, the early users will serve as idea creators and testers for your MVP.
A successful MVP must meet your customers’ needs. Once the initial version has been released, you can use feedback from the first users and analytics to refine and add more features.
Moreover, be ready to make constant improvements and upgrades to the launched MVP to make it the most relevant for your chosen market.
Expert Tips on creating a successful MVP for Startups
Now that we have gone over all the steps of creating an MVP product let’s review how to manage it correctly. Here is a list of tips to assist you in the development process.
- Define buyer persona
Creating messaging and content more precisely for your target audience by using a buyer persona is possible. It can contain personal information as well as professional details. To create a portrait of your ideal consumer, you should take an opinion poll and ask the right people for information. You will increase the interest of users in your MVP as a result.
- Define the problem you’re solving for customers
Start with identifying the problem you want to solve for consumers. For building MVP, it’s essential to check its feasibility and validate the idea without development to save resources and ensure that there’s a need to learn if the problem you want to solve exists.
- Define your value proposition
What value does the new product offer its users? How can it benefit them? Why would they buy the product? The answers to these questions can help define the app’s value proposition. It should also be clear what the essential estimations are for the product. As MVP implies, the product has to introduce value to the people in its most basic state. Begin by outlining the users and build the MVP based on their needs.
- Create a prototype
You might think, why is a prototype of an MVP created? A prototype is an early attempt to visualize a working solution, while an MVP is a basic product form that performs target actions. A prototype will put designs and functionality into perspective, validating UI/UX and letting you get feedback for improvements you’ll implement in your product.
- Testing & Re-evolution
When you build an MVP, you need to test its quality with your engineering team, even if it’s not released. After launching your product, do everything again. By getting feedback from the users, you can determine the acceptance and competitiveness of their MVP.
Build an MVP for your Startup: The Voxturlabs Way!
VoxturrLabs is a highly experienced MVP development company based in California, USA, with a team equipped with the expertise and the technology to build high-quality MVPs for startups.
With over a decade of experience, we have built MVPs backed by cutting-edge technology for startups and enterprises. With our specialization in a wide range of IT services and software solutions, our approach and processes are dedicated to helping businesses achieve workflow efficiency, business growth, and the acquisition of a competitive edge in the target market.
If you’re a startup looking for an MVP development service at VoxturrLabs, you’re sure to receive-
- A consultation with our Business Analysts regarding your startup business model
- Access to services like MVP Software Development, DevOps Consulting, Cloud Consulting, Headless eCommerce Development, and much more!
- End-to-End MVP development services from a team of MVP experts
- MVP supported by future-ready technology & tools
- A dedicated POC for your project with VoxturrLabs
