Introduction

When it comes to launching a new product, the stakes are high. In order to mitigate risk and drive fast results, many businesses have adopted an iterative approach to product development known as the minimum viable product (MVP) strategy. 

An MVP is a version of a new product that has been stripped down to the bare essentials and is ready for user testing. The goal of an MVP is to test whether there’s a market demand for your product and not waste time and money building something that no one will buy. 

An effective MVP process involves creating multiple versions of your product at various stages of development so you can move fast and avoid getting stuck in any one iteration. In this blog post, we explain what the minimum viable product (MVP) strategy is and how you can implement it in your business. 

What is a Minimum Viable Product?

A minimum viable product (MVP) is a prototype that helps you test your ideas with customers and stakeholders. The goal is to create a basic version of your product with the fewest features that could be used in a real-life scenario. 

The prototype may not be as robust as the final product, but it allows you to collect feedback and make adjustments before investing in a full-scale launch. A minimum viable product is not perfect, but it is good enough to ship. 

The main purpose of creating a minimum viable product is to develop a working model that can be used for further development and sales.  In most cases, MVPs are created using agile software development methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban or XP.

When you’re building a minimum viable product, you want to focus on the essentials. An MVP should help you answer the questions that are crucial to your product’s success. 

For example, you can use a minimum viable product to test a new product feature, a new sales process, or a new business model.

5 Reasons to Start With a Minimum Viable Product

  • Building a minimum viable product allows you to explore your business idea before fully committing to the execution. This can save you money and time, especially if you’re exploring a new technology or marketing strategy. 
  • You’ll also get feedback and data from real customers. This can help you correct any misconceptions you have about your target market, as well as discover new opportunities. 
  • You can start with a really basic version of your product or service. The important thing is to provide a version of your product that’s functional enough for customers to use. You don’t have to create a fully-working product before you launch. Instead, use your MVP to gather feedback, test features, and make necessary adjustments before you make a final decision. 
  • You don’t need to worry about funding. You don’t need to build the entire product with the best materials at the best price. The main advantage of starting with a minimum viable product is that you can reduce costs by building the barest essential features in order to get feedback from customers. By focusing on these basic features at first, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t without spending too much money or time on something that may not work out as well as expected.
  • Even if technology or financing prevents you from building a fully-fledged product or service, an MVP can still help you make progress towards your goal through the feedback generated.

4 Characteristics of a Minimum Viable Product

An MVP might be an entirely new product or service, or it might be an existing product. In either case, an MVP should be the simplest version of your product that is still useful to customers. Here are some key features to include in your MVP: 

  1. Usability: The first characteristic of a minimum viable product is usability. This means that you have to make sure that your product is affordable, easy to use and understand. If it is not, then people will not be able to use it. The best way to make sure that your product is usable is by testing it on different groups of people before launching it.
  2. Cost Effectiveness: The second characteristic of a minimum viable product is cost effectiveness. This means that the product should be cheap enough so that it can be sold at low cost without affecting its quality or performance. You also need to make sure that the cost does not affect the final price of the product which will affect its sales volume and hence profits as well.
  3. Feedback Generation: The third characteristic of a minimum viable product is feedback generation from customers about how they feel about using this product and what kind of problems they faced when using it for example, how many times did they use this product in a day or week etc.. This helps in improving on the features if required with the help from other users who have used this product.
  4. Customers Need Satisfaction: A minimum viable product is a product that satisfies the needs of early adopters, who will be the first to buy it, but does not have enough features to satisfy the needs of the majority. Minimum Viable Products are created with an emphasis on customer needs, rather than product features.

How (and when) to Move Beyond the MVP

After collecting feedback with your MVP, you should have a better understanding of your target market. You’ll also have a good idea of the challenges you’ll face when creating or scaling your product or service. 

You may also have a rough estimate of the cost of bringing your product to market. With this information, you should be able to create a realistic business plan. 

You can use your business plan to guide you as you seek funding, hire employees, and create a timeline for bringing your product to market. You’ll probably have to make some changes to your original idea. 

However, you should have a more accurate idea of what it will take to succeed.

How Formplus Can Help Use Survey Feature Requirements for an MVP

If you’re building an MVP and need to collect feedback on a survey, Formplus can help.

Here’s how:

  1. You can create a survey in Formplus and set up the questions you want to ask your users. You can also include text boxes and checkboxes, so that users can write in their feedback while they’re filling out the survey.
  2. Formplus has features such that when you’re ready to launch your survey, you can send it out by email or schedule a time for users to complete it on whatever platform you want. You can also customize your survey if you want to limit who can take part in the survey.
  3. After they’ve completed the survey, Formplus can help you analyze the feedback and show you all of the results.

Conclusion

Every business and product idea goes through a series of phases. The first phase is the idea stage, followed by the prototype phase (where you create a minimum viable product). 

Once you create a prototype, you can test and analyze it before beginning to scale your business. While all businesses go through these phases, not all of them reach the scaling phase. 

If you’re able to create a viable product, you can create a scalable business and bring your product to market.


  • Olayemi Jemimah Aransiola
  • on 6 min read

Formplus

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