Six Steps to Successfully Launching Your Minimum Viable Product
The launch of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) whether that’s a website, mobile app or cloud solution is a key time for your startup or business. It will allow you and your team to validate your idea and have something presentable that shows the public what your concept looks like. If the MVP proves to be successful, it can lead to further investment, interest and sales. However, launching an MVP is not always a walk in the park; it is a long process that requires significant time and effort from many different people working together closely, as well as financial backing. Here at Woods & Walker we have helped many startups successfully launch MVPs and have detailed the steps below on what you can do to successfully launch your idea into reality.
Conceptualise your Idea 💡
The first step to launching your MVP is to conceptualise your idea. This is where you come up with what your product or idea could be and how it may work. Many ideas arrive from the discovery of a real world problem.
Define your Proposition 📝
Defining your proposition is the first step to building a product and finding a market for it. What do your customers get when they buy or use your product? In a nutshell, that's what you need to define. It's the act of stating clearly what your product or service will do, and how it will do it. When you know who you're aiming at and know how they will benefit from using your product.
Validate your Proposition ✅
Now that you have your idea and have defined it, it's time to determine whether there is a market for it to make sure that there is a need and address any potential problems before you spend more time and money developing a product. To do this, you need to conduct market research. This involves finding out if there are any organisations that currently have products or services that are similar to what you are proposing. Next, you should carry out user research to find out whether your idea will be a solution to a problem, and how customers feel about the idea.
This is also where you will source financing to launch your MVP, this could be through personal funds, Venture Capital or Innovation Grants. Many financing groups will want to see evidence to back up your idea that there is a need for it, which is why the market and user research is a key building block.
Create Product ⚙️
Congratulations! You’ve now reached the point where you will collate all the research and information you have gathered through your process into a well-defined design brief and you will have enough information to start forming a product and you can engage with a development team who will work to build your Minimum Viable Product website, or mobile app. This is a significant point in the development life cycle of your product.
Launch MVP 🚀
You’ve spent time and money building your MVP. Now it’s time to launch it! At this point, your website or mobile app should be lightweight and easily accessible to your early adopters. This first version is all about validating your assumptions, solving problems, testing and learning from these early users.
We have found that the following components are key for a successful launch:
1) Define and target your audience
2) Create an on-boarding process for users that helps you acquire early adopters and keep them engaged with your website or mobile app
3) Collate user feedback and engagement with analytics and data collection
Review, Enhance, Scale 📈
The goal of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is to build the simplest version of your product that meets the needs of users and allows you to learn as quickly as possible. Once you have a live MVP, you can start gathering feedback from your users on what direction to take next within your roadmap so you can refine and enhance your MVP into a Marketable Product.
If you are at any stage of this process and feel that you need a little guidance, want advice, or want to discuss your thoughts on how to create and develop an MVP, get in touch with our team today, we would be delighted to help!
