Introduction

Starting a business is no small thing. It requires a lot of planning, strategy, hard work, and investment. A business has several stages through which it eventually grows. As it keeps on going through these stages, the business eventually becomes bigger in terms of size and revenue. 

However, when starting a business, one faces a lot of questions such as:

1. At what point should I start marketing my business?
2. What is the best way to market my business?
3. Is in-house marketing better than professional marketing?
4. How to identify the product review and feedback?

A lot of similar questions can easily pop up in the mind of someone who goes about running a business. To help with these questions, Eric Ries, a consultant on startups, popularised the concept of a Minimum Viable Product or MVP. 

Table of Content

1. What is an MVP?
2. Least Effort vs. Minimum Functionality
3. Constituents of MVP
4. How To Build an MVP?
   • Video and Multimedia Use
   • Attraction is the key
   • Follow These Trends
   • Climb the ladder step-by-step, safely
   • Invite People Online
   • Use the Flintstone Method
   • Prioritize Your Features
5. Conclusion
   

What is an MVP?

A minimum viable product or MVP is a technique in which the development of a product or website takes place in order to check out the reaction of the initial users before launching the product or service entirely. 

It is, in some ways, a Beta version of the actual product or service which can be used to test how people respond to the service. Crowdfunding projects, demos, landing pages – all of these are examples of MVPs. 

An MVP is characterized by three main characteristics. They are:

1. An MVP should be of enough value that people feel inclined to use it or test it.
2. It should display or convey the benefits of its service to the users. 
3. Considering the testing aspect, it should have a readily available feedback system for further development. 

Developing an MVP saves valuable time and resources, and a fair assessment of the product helps any small business to work on the features that it feels are required before it can launch any product. 

Furthermore, if the MVP feedback is negative, the product can be changed or altered in accordance with the feedback, to ensure that the people feel satisfied with the product in the future. 

Least Effort Vs. Minimum Functionality

While MVPs are built to ensure that the least amount of time, effort, and resources are put into the product, it does not mean that the product should be any less functional. If anything, the product has to convey the benefits of using it to the participating audience.

Constituents of an MVP

An MVP should feature the following elements in order to be classified as a functional one:

1. Empathetic Design – The design of an MVP should be research-oriented, expressing clear needs and concepts and based on a hypothesis about the usage of the MVP. It should prioritize the needs of the people with regard to the usage of the product.
2. Reliability – An MVP needs to be highly reliable and should be of such use that people get a good impression of the product.
3. Usability – An MVP should be as usable as the product itself, in order to give a fair idea of the people about its user experience. For example, a website should be in consonance with the latest UI/UX design trends of 2023.
4. Functionality – While using the MVP, people should see it as a highly functional, stable product that offers good features and cares about the user’s interaction with the product.

How To Build an MVP?

While startups start passionately, with a problem in mind, however, with time, they start winding up because they end up solving problems that people do not really think about. Every product is built upon the hypothesis that there exists a problem that said product solves, and the problem is important enough to make people pay for said product. 

More importantly, that the product solves the problem better than anything else in the market. This is the standard hypothesis for every product. However, this is the hypothesis that most people fail to test before acting on it. The purpose of the MVP is to test this hypothesis before making people pay for the product.
Following are the steps to follow if you are looking to find out how to create a good MVP for your business:

1. Video and Multimedia Use – Before Dropbox became a highly renowned tech giant, it was nothing but a YouTube video. Before it even got functional, the founder of the company made a YouTube video explaining the prototype and how it functions. This made people realize that Dropbox was something they needed to solve the painful problem of data loss.Therefore, one of the most important tools for your MVP is reaching out to people via social media and websites in order to showcase your product and gain feedback for it. Any good UI/UX design company offering UI/UX design services can build a highly interactive website for you.You can further use this website to reach out to people and gain relevant feedback about your product.
2. Attraction is key – Ever wonder why huge companies engage in graphic design services? Because they want to draw people’s attention to their products. Not a lot of people would be inclined to try out your product without being offered the right incentive. That incentive comes in the form of attraction. Hire a graphic design company to ensure that your website remains visually appealing in order to attract more and more people. Your ads should be visually interactive.
3. Follow The Trends – With the face of the internet constantly evolving day by day, you need to keep up with trends. Advertising with the right trends makes people want to explore. One of the major examples of this is social media creators using viral songs and video templates to promote products. You can also check out the latest UI/UX design trends of 2023 to implement over your website.
4. Climb the ladder step-by-step, safely – before you go all in, use plain old methods that are cost-effective to justify your time and resources and analyze if they are going in the right direction. This is a good way of ensuring that your hypothesis never turns out to be untrue. Don’t go guns blazing. Instead, consult a UI/UX design company and seek a safe method initially.
5. Invite People Online – Develop your landing page and add ads to it. Use your landing page to measure conversion rates. Invite people to buy your product and greet them with an out-of-stock message. This is the most common exercise most businesses do to determine if people are buying their product without them having to sell it.
6. Use The Flintstone Method – Create the illusion of a fully functional MVP by already using a fully functional product and simply marketing it in order to check if people are buying it. Once you notice that they are, invest your time into building and developing the product from scratch.
7. Prioritize Your Features – Your MVP should have features that can be labeled as ‘Must Have’, ‘Should Have’, ‘Could Have’, and ‘Won’t Have’. Your features should be completely highlighted in order to convey your product’s idea. 

Conclusion

Master Infotech is a top-rated UI/UX design company offering both UI/UX design services to startups in order to help them establish themselves in the market. We are a highly reputable digital solutions company with a diverse clientele, making us one of the most experienced firms out there.

Considering that MVPs require some level of technical expertise as part of website creation and attracting people, it is always recommended to avail of the services of a digital solutions company in order to attract people to the website and get them to know about your product. 

That is where we come into the picture. With us, you can easily promote your MVP and spend the least amount of time, effort, and resources while still being able to get the most out of this testing process.