How to Create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product): Your Step-by-Step Guide

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Short description of the article

  • Intro

    1. Defining the target audience and their benefits from your app

    2. To design MVP think of similar existing projects or products

    3. Key Performance Indicators

    4. Get your priorities straight

    5. Testing stage

  • Summary

Intro

First of all, let’s define what does a minimum viable product (MVP) mean. MVP is a product that have a core functionality such as minimal but sufficient for early adopters. The main task is to collect feedback from initial users for making a further strategy. Building a big and fully new project is always a great risk, but for building MVP app you should find out if this idea seems interesting to users. After that, you can correct and improve your future changes.

Top 5 steps for building a Minimum Viable Product

1. Defining the target audience and their benefits from your app

Defining your target group is crucial for all businesses. Which people should use your product, what age and maybe what gender are they? What profit do the customers get from your product? Why should they choose it? Find out as much as possible about their life, needs and way of thinking, talk to them if they are present in your social circle.

Also read our article: Top 6 advantages of choosing Angular for your web app.

2. To design MVP think of similar existing projects or products

How will you be distinguished from them, what is the integrity of your idea? The important thing you need to do is to search for pros and cons of your competitors. Surf the Internet ib order to search for comments in forums about what problems of existing similar products do people mention? It would be great to a MVP product to be free from mentioned complaints and flaws.

A good application will help you to analyze traffic and statistic is Similar Web. It’s free, same as App Annie, Follow, Ahrefs, QuantCast, SensorTower or MOZ - the last two are paid.

3. Key Performance Indicators

What should the users reach with help of your app? Is there a demand for this product or service? One of the minimum viable product examples is Bla Bla Car: its primary goal is to allow people to save money when going by car. Started as a MVP the app became very popular among people all around the world. Remember that you make assumptions and try to find out if your ideas work. Define the Key Performance Indicators on which you’ll learn the position and interest of users to some features, design, suggestions.

4. Get your priorities straight

In each product, there are the most important features and features with lower priority. MVP template should contain the most important ones but slowly it should get more and more features. The MVP concept should include such features as “must-have”, then “nice-to-have” and after that "not-that-important" features. Clarify them for yourself and for your developers when creating the MVP. If the first features are implemented and the users give feedback you can go to the second stage. Remember that the primary product shouldn’t look ugly and uncomfortable, because it has to provide a good first impression and to appeal users.

5. Testing stage

After completing development the product should be tested. Surely you heard about alpha and beta testing. Alpha testing is usually made by the limited audience. After that, the beta testing follows and here many users can take participation. In both cases you’ll get feedback, find out problems and advantages of your product. Step by step you will add new features to your MVP and the startup will turn into a full-fledged project.

Summary

Now we come to the conclusion that a MVP is a solution to find the basic customer’s demand and needs as well as getting feedback to make product better. It should contain core functionality, look nice and fascinating for users.

It has a big advantage comparing to the full product. First of all, the owner doesn’t know if his idea works. That’s why he isn’t going to invest much money in it. But while users are testing your MVP, they can prove or disprove your assumptions. Define the Key Performance Indicators according to which you can validate your ideas, correct development direction of the MVP and only then, launch the full-fledged product.

Got a bold idea or have questions, do not hesitate to contact us and we will build the future together!