5 Things to Keep in Mind while Building an MVP
One of the major reasons most of the startups fail is because of their vision. Don’t get us wrong but a vision different from approach. If you intend to reach a place from where you are, it’s a vision. How you reach it is your approach and startups often confuse between the two. That’s why they fail. When people startup, they only think of making it big in the market. Right from the first day, they dream big and attempt bigger things without passing the basic few litmus tests that are crucial in deciding how things will work and move forward for them as a business.
They spend on building heavy websites, on huge marketing and promotion campaigns, overproduce the volume of their products, hire too many employees or anything that would hinder them from finding answers to questions that will define their startup. That’s why we dedicate this post to something very important – on building an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) and the things you should keep in mind while building one.
What is an MVP?
An MVP is a basic working model of an actual product that is rolled out to test its functionality, sustainability and patronage. Now, this is clearly not a textbook definition of an MVP but an interpretation of what it would mean to an entrepreneur. A lot of startups often overlook this concept for their products and services and end up complaining about zero growth. An MVP saves you from tons of consequences and helps your business from the initial overhead costs and expenditures, allowing you to know if your product will succeed or fail in the market. If it succeeds, you’ll know how to better it and if it fails, building an MVP actually gives you a route map on how you can go about it.
However, building an MVP is not easy. You need to consider some important factors to make sense out of your MVP. The more specific the factors, the clearer answers you’ll receive. Here, we’ve compiled the 5 things you need to keep in mind while building an MVP. Check them out.
How Effective is your idea?
The first and foremost thing you should consider is how effective your idea of your business is. Personally, you’re bound to feel your idea can change the world but unfortunately, people might not be ready for it. That’s why you should validate your business idea to see if your service is actually required in the market. Doing so will help you find out who your target audience is and where it hands out. It also gives you an idea of the demand for your idea that will later influence your pricing.
How do you intend to validate?
This can become tricky. If you’ve figured out how effective your idea is and the demand for it, you’ll realize the right approach to validating your idea. This involves using a landing page instead of a heavy website, using spreadsheets and basic tools instead of accounting or enterprise edition software and more. The trick here is to cut down on several expenses and running the show with what’s most viable. Personally, I’ve managed to generate leads for companies with just a landing page and minimal marketing budget and that’s how I figured out there’re takers for what I was working on. The initial patronage allowed me to seep in to the market further and slowly help the product I was working on to what it is today.
How do you define success?
To have clear results, you should have a clearly set definition for success. Success is a very subjective concept and you’ll have a version of what it means to you. In the example I’ve quoted, generating leads was my success. For your business, lead conversion or clicks on a call-to-action may be. It varies from business to business and you need to decide what will define the success of your MVP for that to evolve into a product.
Would I buy my product or service?
If only people asked this question before they ventured into their businesses, this would save a lot of their expenditure. If you were to pay to buy your product or service, would you buy it? If you buy it, will other people like you buy it? What will they get out of your MVP? What issue is it addressing and resolving? Why should your MVP matter amongst tons of other actual products? Consider the questions while building your MVP.
The Messaging
You may be from a technical background or an expert in coding, having a clear idea of how your product or service would work in the backend. But how will someone looking at your MVP for the first time understand that? What messaging does your MVP convey to potential customers? Ultimately, the message that you send out to them via your copy will what connect the concerns of people to your business and make them buy your product or service. So, while developing your MVP, give extra care to its messaging.
Paying attention to these will help save your business by 90% and pave way for business growth. At the outset, building an MVP might sound simple but it takes more than what meets the eye. Consider the factors and grow your business.
