If you’re in the business world, you’ve probably heard of a minimum viable product. Maybe you understand the idea but not why people might want to use one. The following will explore in detail what a minimum viable product is as well as why people use them.
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What Is A Minimum Viable Product?
A minimum viable product (also called an MVP is an idea that emphasizes the importance of learning within new product development. An MVP is the version of a new product that allows your team to gather the maximum amount of validated learning about your customers with minimal effort. It is a product that, if customers purchase or interact with it, you will learn from your customers because you can observe their behavior with the product or service.
How Does An MVP Work?
A minimum viable product is something that you actually create. It might be as simple as a landing page. You offer the product to customers and watch how they interact with it. Seeing what people do with your product in their hands or on their devices can help you gather valuable information about changes that need to be made, add ons/expansions that people might want in the future, sister products that work well together, and benefits and uses that you didn’t realize people were using your product for.
The main purpose here is to gain as much information about how your customers will interact with a product (buy and use and buy again, buy and not use, won’t buy, etc.) while at the same time investing the minimum time, money, and effort into actually developing the product. This allows you to notice glaring flaws and address them before spending all that money and effort on developing a product. It also allows you to throw out bad ideas without having invested too much into them before you realize they’re not viable.
Why Is A Minimum Viable Product Better Than A Poll?
Polling was once considered a useful way to conduct market research, but that is no longer the case. Studies find that people are actually pretty bad at predicting their own behavior or remembering their own behavior. Ask the average person how much time they spend watching videos on their phone and then compare that with the data their phone collects about how much video is being watched. Almost always, there’s a big difference.
Gain A Realistic View Of Your Idea
We’ve all encountered those entrepreneurs who are super passionate but have no sense that a better version of what they’re trying to make already exists or that no one is going to want what they’re trying to make, or that what they’re trying to make is impossible. Interacting with these folks is heartbreaking, and sometimes when you’re developing your own business idea, their image can pop into your mind. Cue the 3 am freakout as you wonder if you’re as delusional as they are. After all, how could you tell? The very definition of delusion implies that you don’t know you’re not seeing things accurately. MVP products are a fantastic way to inject a healthy dose of realism into your business strategy.
Avoid The Sunk-Cost Fallacy
One of the best parts of developing an MVP product involves avoiding a very common and brutal trap called the sunk-cost fallacy. This fallacy is basically a human’s natural response to investment. If you put time, money, or energy into something, you’re more likely to stick with it even if all the data is telling you it’s not working or it isn’t worth the time. People tend to think: well, I’ve already put in $2000, and yes, it’s not selling, but maybe if I just toss in another $500 to advertising, I can make back some of that money.
This doesn’t only apply to business endeavors. No, this applies to literally everything in our lives. We all know that person who should quit their job, the one that they’re always complaining about and always getting passed over for promotions at. But they’ve put in the time, so they’re sticking it out, hoping to get the reward they feel they’re owed for that time. Even more intense is the sunk-cost effect in relationships. We all know a couple that should not still be dating. They fight every time they go to a party, and they hate each other, and they make each other miserable and have been doing so for years, but they’re not going to break up because they’ve already put so much into the relationship that they’re desperate to get back a little of what they’ve invested. It’s really hard for humans to admit that the time, money, energy, and effort they’ve expended is gone, and it’s not coming back, and it makes them make bad decisions sometimes.
MVP products help avoid this whole shenanigan by limiting the investment required to figure out if something is a good idea and worth properly investing in. The goal is to invest as little as possible and only continue investing if positive results are found.
Common Errors
Of course, there are still ways to mess up MVPs. It’s crucial that you don’t mistake the idea of a minimum investment with the idea of creating the least effective or functional product you can get away with. This sort of experiment isn’t going to give you accurate data because the product doesn’t work, and therefore, you don’t know how viable a working version of the product is. Yes, the word minimum is present, but so is the word viable. It has to work. You can’t skip that step.
Getting Help
Because minimum viable products are such a new thing to so many businesses, there are consultants and companies available to help with this specific part of the process. An MVP development company will meet with you, gain an understanding of your aims, and then help you create and monitor your MVP product. They have the infrastructure and experience to gather and guide you in working with this type of data.
This Is Only The Beginning
It’s worth noting that MVP testing tends to be the beginning of your testing process. You’re also going to want ethical focus groups, beta testers of the final product, and testers along the way. Testing should always be looked at as a continuous process, not something you do once and are done with.
The above information should have made the benefits of a minimum viable product clear. The information gathered can be crucial in business decision-making.
