Being an entrepreneur comes with its own freedom, responsibility, and 360-degree skillset.  But entrepreneurs are also known for one major quality- identifying existing problems and presenting a practical solution. 

Everyone can create and launch products in the market but the one which ideally heals the problem thrives in the long run. Everyday hundreds of products are launched in the market and 90% of them fail to get customer support. Reason?

They didn’t focus on their pre-launch homework!

Great startups are built in years with consistent feedback and improvements in their offerings. They started with one product and one core feature with lots of market testing to bring up the most ideal solution to complete the market jigsaw.

In short, they started with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

What is a minimum viable product and why it plays such an important role in business success? This article is going to clear up everything so keep reading.

What is a Minimum Viable Product?

Minimum Viable Product is the most basic version of a product you are going to develop and present in the market. It’s the most relevant explanation of a product, its features,  benefits, and how it can bring convenience to people’s lives.

Eric Ries introduced the concept of MVP in his book “Lean Startup” and defined MVP as a version of a new product that allows a team to gather the maximum amount of validated information about customers with minimum effort. Here, validated information means identifying whether customers will actually purchase your product or not and if they purchase what feedback they have about it.

The key intention behind the idea of a minimum viable product is to produce a basic version of the actual product to offer to customers and analyze how it is performing in the market.  Testing the MVP is essential before launching the full flagged version of the product in order to save time, money, and resources. As an entrepreneur and marketing manager, it will relax you from any uncertainty of product performance in the market as testing gives you the surety of what product customers prefer to purchase.

There are many types of MVP that are easy and affordable to publish and get feedback from potential customers. It guides in making iterations in the product by adding useful features and eliminating unnecessary elements to come up with a ready-to-launch finished product.

Why do you need MVP?

After knowing what exactly an MVP is, now let’s have a look at why businesses need a Minimal Viable Product.

Shorter release time

People spend major time developing the product, fixing bucks, testing, and retesting. But it doesn’t matter how many features your software offers all that matter is one core solution.  MVP is exactly what we call a core finish version of a product.

MVP takes just a few months to develop and release and thus enhances your chances to succeed in the market with a first-mover advantage. MVP helps in creating product visibility while your team is constantly working behind the scenes to develop a full-fledged solution based on customer feedback.

Understand customers

Customer satisfaction is the prime element in the business cycle. If this element is disturbed, the whole chain of time money, and resources will go in vain. MVP guide the developers to test the core product on beta customers and know what exactly they are getting and are their feedback on the same page as your assumptions for the product.

The success of MVP can make your business and its failure can save you from huge costs.  If MVP is not going well with the market expectations and it’s the right time for you to make improvements or shift to a whole new concept of the product.

Beat the risk of failure

Rolling out a complete software with multiple features can introduce you to the uncertainty of failure. Skipping on MVP is like serving the meal without testing for salt. Without MVP you are at a high risk of boiling your time and money based on some market assumptions.  Assumptions don’t work in the market, testing does!

Developing software consumes a lot of talent time money investors trust.  what if after such an extensive process your product couldn’t stay in the market?  That’s going to be a horrible situation with hardly any scope for improvement.

By developing an MVP you are not just reducing risk but also empowering the chances to success and continuous learning.

Build a loyal customer base

An MVP has the potential to attract target customers. A product with the core feature delivers a clear message in the market. It automatically communicates the “why” of the business and gives customers a reason to stick with the brand. Users prefer specialists over generalists and this is the reason why certain companies diversify their offerings and present different solutions for varied problems.

Take for example Uber entered with the feature to book affordable rights to travel around and later it introduced Ubereats specifically for food delivery.  Now customers exactly know what app to click on to avail desired services.

MVP is not just the final product but also helps you stick with your original vision.

Keep the learning curve intact

Developing a product is not a one-time investment. It’s going to be an ongoing business process with regular analysis, updating, and upgrading the software with better features.  While you build your customer base with MVP, operating the software can help you scale in the coming years and decades.

The market is going to change and customer demand will increase. In such a scenario, it’s a constant process to take customers’ feedback and integrate necessary features in the software.

So the journey from developing an MVP to keep integrating the features performs a critical role in the steep learning curve for the team.

Wrapping up!

So far, we’ve seen what is a minimum viable product and how it can truly define the success of your business with market support. There are many ways to develop an MVP right from a video to a solution prototype.

If you’re looking to test your business idea and don’t know where to start, 5RiOS will help you achieve that and always be there to support your products from both the frontend and backend.

Book your spot now for a free consultation and we’ll provide you best methods to launch your idea in the market.