Everything starts with an idea. No matter how promising it sounds, you must validate it. With the huge number of start-ups springing up right now, the competition is fierce and stakes are always high. It can be rewarding but at the same time a challenging job. Survival is not a piece of cake.
MVP App Development for Start-ups
As an entrepreneur, you must take the risk, but it has to be well thought and calculated. As Warren Buffet said, “Don’t test the depth of the water with two legs.” It is really important for start-up founders to realize at an early stage whether their concept is actually feasible or not. Is it really going to serve the purpose? Is it truly going to benefit customers? Is my solution actually addressing the problem? Well, MVP is the answer to all your questions. It does not just help you authenticate the idea but understand your customers’ requirements more precisely. That’s how smart entrepreneurs run their start-ups.
What is MVP?
MVP stands for “Minimum Viable Product”, term coined by Eric Ries, the author of The Lean Startup.
MVP is the basic version of your product with the certain set of features to resolve a specific issue of targeted customers. It is released to be tested in the market with the primary functions of a complete product. You add other features and functionalities based on the analysis and feedback from users.
It is building a slice across rather one layer at a time.
Why does your startup need MVP?
Most of the starts up ideas fail due to the lack of the clarity. If yours is one of them, Minimum Viable Product makes you aware of it before it gets too late. It validates your concept and tells you whether it is fundamentally right or wrong.
Remember, you are making it for your users, not you!
Let’s understand the benefits of MVP in detail
Create a useful value proposition
MVP is the crux of your product. You test your product in the market with its Unique Selling Point (USP). You do this for the defined target audience to find out usability and loopholes of your product. This helps you better understand your product better. You build and add upon the further features based on the accurate suggestions, you receive from the early adopters.
Reduce rework
It takes humungous amount of effort to develop a product right from the ideation to implementation. Rework can never be totally eliminated. However with MVP approach, you can make it as less as possible. You know the unwanted features and complicated user experience components of your product from customer reviews at an early development. This allows your product to be more agile and flexible in the market. So rather than revamping the entire product from the scratch, you just need to make the basic fundamental changes to the product. It is the easiest way to minimize the development rework. By doing so, you ensure the smooth execution of your product.
Save your time and money
This is the most important aspect of any start-up to succeed. Validating the concept essentially means identifying the problem and addressing it with solution. Your product must resolve the specific issue not hypothetically but in reality. Otherwise there is no point in pursuing the idea. Once you’ve identified the problem, test your solution hypothesis with MVP to verify it.
It’d be great if you could do some A/B testing and offer customers a few variants. Sometimes people in fact don’t know what they want. Asking them about the solution won’t work as you don’t get the clear answer. Offer them different interesting options and let them choose the best for them.
Stop guessing, validate your concept.
This is the most important aspect of any start-up to succeed. Validating the concept essentially means identifying the problem and addressing it with solution. Your product must resolve the specific issue not hypothetically but in reality. Otherwise there is no point in pursuing the idea. Once you’ve identified the problem, test your solution hypothesis with MVP to verify it.
It’d be great if you could do some A/B testing and offer customers a few variants. Sometimes people in fact don’t know what they want. Asking them about the solution won’t work as you don’t get the clear answer. Offer them different interesting options and let them choose the best for them.
Nurture customer relationships
Last but not the least; customer relationship is at the core of the success of your product. The relationship, you develop with your customers at an early stage plays an instrumental part in the product development process. As an entrepreneur, you can align your thoughts with customers for whom you make the product. You understand their expectations, needs and most importantly their problems.
During the MVP phase, your customers think that they are also an integrated part of every product design and development step. You listen to them and implement changes accordingly. All these factors make them feel valued and contribute to the success of your start-up.
The Real Life Examples
Just recall when you first used Facebook or Instagram. Some of you can’t even imagine it. The fact is they are completely different than the time, they’ve started. They were not introduced with their final versions and have gradually evolved depending upon users’ expectations.
Let’s have a look at some of the most successful start-ups of our times that kicked off with MVP
Buffer
8 years back in 2010, Joel Gascoigne, a British developer from Birmingham wanted to know that do users actually need a tool that helps them schedule social media posts. He had this idea of creating such a tool but he didn’t start off with it. He made a landing page and promoted it to the certain set of people whose feedback could be useful. He then started collecting the data and gathered the requirement. He actually evaluated the market need for this product and decided to build a tool with a specific set of features that serves the purpose. Buffer has 4.5 million registered users as of now.
Foursquare
Naveen Selvadurai and Dennis Crowley released the MVP version of Foursquare with only check-ins and awards features. They constantly improved the app with users’ feedback. The secret of the success is user experience; they have precisely analyzed the user behavior and worked on it to make it better over the time. This local search mobile app has 60 million users today! They developed and added the new features such as recommendation and guide to the cities much later
Uber
Uber launched in 2010 with the beta version. The first version of its mobile app was very basic. You could locate and connect with drivers and make payments over the phone. Garret Camp and Travis Kalanick, the founders of Uber tried this app in San Francisco and received feedback from the targeted segment. Based on that, they have created a multi-billion dollar app over the period of time and revolutionized transport all over the globe. Today, Uber has much more features such as fare spitting, gamification elements and other complex functions that didn’t exist at the time of its first release.
Not just these three, there are many more start-ups that started underdog and today they are the inseparable part of our lives!!!.
Wrapping up
Start small and go big with MVP. It enables you to enter the market and make the most of your product with minimum expenditure. It is all about validating your hypothesis and identifying the right features to resolve a particular issue.
Start-ups think outsourcing is a great option for MVP primarily because of the cost effectiveness and faster time to market. However, finding the right mobile app development company can be a tricky exercise as you need a company which has knowledge and capability to meet your expectations. MVP App Development does not only demand technical expertise but it involves strategic thinking and business acumen at a great deal. Techcronus has a vast experience and wide-ranging technical expertise at your disposal to deliver a project from concept to completion. Connect with us today to make your idea MVP ready!