MVP development: what is MVP, why do you need it and how to build it

MVP is a minimum viable product usually developed to test an idea with early users and get truthful feedback. Based on the received thoughts, bugs and suggestions what to change, product owners and developers can improve their project or renovate the whole concept.

MVP is better to develop with the basic feature set and minimum resources spent to test your hypothesis safely and with no extra expenses. Thus, creation of MVP implies not only technical feasibility check, but also understanding of the future product’s viability on the market.

Why does your project need MVP first?

MVP allows you to market the concept without spending a lot of money and time. It may become a perfect solution for startups to test their ideas in practice. You can also use MVP strategy when implementing a new feature, even if it is a long-lasted complex project.

Development of MVP helps you to:

• Release your product faster than your competitors;
• Introduce users to your product and find your target audience;
• Get response about functionality and what you need to develop or change;
• Validate your project idea;
• Increase users’ knowledge about your brand and its recognizability.

If your MVP fails, then unlike the development of a full-fledged product and high costs, you can understand what your user really wants and correct his CJM and increase conversions.

How to build MVP?

MVP development process usually includes the following steps:

1. Research
   Market research is the most important part before MVP development. This way you understand your project capabilities, restrictions, and correlate your business goals with user expectations. Careful market research ensures that resources will not be wasted on an idea that users don’t need.
2. User map creation
   This stage implies the entire product concept construction and product design that will guide its users to achieve their goals and make conversions for you. Mapping user journey helps to define priority features that can lead a user to his goal and satisfy his needs in the fastest and easiest way.
3. Project Decomposition
   For the quality MVP development you should identify the basic set of features that can fulfill the needs of your users. Try not to overload your MVP with functionality as maybe your user needs something completely different while you spend resources. You can identify possible features according to their necessity: what definitely should be, what maybe will do the product better and what hypothetically can be added. Together with users’ insights you will have a plan for the further updates.
4. Building
   The development stage includes client and server side creation, software testing, integration and deploy. From the very start it is advisable to release MVP for one platform to receive feedback from the focus group. Don’t get stuck with product launch without market needs insights. The faster you iterate, the faster you reach to your target audience.
5. Analysis
   After the MVP release, you should analyze the results and repeat the cycle from the beginning. MVP can be continually improved and may grow into a complex software project.

If you have an idea and want to test it in real market conditions, we are happy to create a quality MVP for you. You will get a Web or a Mobile app MVP with all essential features and design ready for release. After alpha testing, we can create a full-fledged product that your customers will use.

For any inquiries contact us at contact@exposit.com or send us a message via the contact form on our site.