With over 6.3 billion smartphone users worldwide, it is not surprising that the mobile app industry has been thriving. Smartphone penetration and app usage are growing at a pretty steady rate, and in the foreseeable future, there is no sign of slowing down. These days every organization has an idea of a product; however, building a product or a service will cost a lot of money. Every business does not have the capital to implement its vision into reality. This is where MVP development services come into action.
When businesses create and develop MVP (Minimum Viable Product), they can test their idea with the actual customers and also generate money that will support their further MVP development. A Statista report says that 25% of mobile apps are abandoned by users after the first use. Also, the number of competing applications has been expanding and becoming increasingly stiff. In this post, we will discuss how you can build an ideal MVP that will help you raise money from investors. We will also look into the benefits of developing an MVP as well. Let’s get started!
Key mobile app statistics:
- The global downloads of mobile apps are going to touch the mark of 299 billion by the end of 2023.
- Mobile app services can generate more than $935 billion in revenue by 2023.
- 21% of millennials are seen to open a mobile app more than 50 times a day
- The average owner of a smartphone uses 10 apps every day and 30 apps every month
- On the Google Play store, 2.87 million apps are available for downloads
- On the Apple App Store, 1.96 million apps are available for downloads
Minimum Viable Product: The advantages of building an MVP
An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) solution can save you attract investors, reduce costs, and save money. Ut tests the usability with its real users and also examines the overall feasibility of the system. The objective is to get your product out to customers quickly with feasible features, and early input from the customers can be incorporated. Also, it is important to test the viability of any new idea early in the process of mobile app development services. Building an MPV has its own benefits. Some of the advantages of creating an MVO for the purpose of fundraising include:
Investors can see the functionality of the product
You need to choose to use the structure of the minimal viable product to get the investment money to develop a product. MVPs are important for product development and must be addressed when seeking funding. Investors can examine how can the product work in practice, and it can check whether it can be a possible solution to some genuine issue by funding an MVP. Investors can have difficulty purchasing ideas that are still in the prototype stage as they can still need to perceive the future worth of the product. The ability to acquire and incorporating input from real users is a way MVPs help guarantee customer-centric mobile app development services.
Get maximum leverage with just a minimal investment
Now that you have invested a lot of time and money in developing your app, you need to know if it is fully working and is commercially viable. Putting money into the development of a fully complete app is very risky. It can take more time to fix issues only located late in the process. You will get an early version of your software with an MVP for a reasonable price, and thus you can maximize your benefits.
Early Feedback
An MVP lets you iterate and iron out any kinks in the design of your apps quickly. Getting feedback early is very important. Before it’s too late, you must know if your app development process is headed in the right direction.
Early testing of your idea
For high-quality final testing, idea testing is important. Creating a minimally viable product is a wonderful way of determining the demand for the concept of your app. It will showcase how crowded is your niche market, what steps you can take to differentiate yourself, and how well your competition is. You get a thorough understanding of the failings of the software.
Guide to Building an MVP
Creating an MVP is quite a simple process that takes careful work and preparation. Let’s look into the learning process of creating an MVP.
Begin with market research
There are circumstances when ideas must mesh with what the consumers wish. Before you launch an idea and start the development process of MVP, a company needs to be sure that it can meet the needs of the intended audience. Conducting surveys can help any organization. There exists a direct correlation between the amount of data available and its success level. You need to see how you can keep sight of the competition and how your product can stand out. Customers will go along with your product if it can address their issues.
Prototype Potential Solution
The screen inside your app represents the heart of the minimum viable product. Then the product needs to be distilled down to its essential functions, craft the design that is going to elicit the desired reaction of the target audience with hardly any friction, and then map out the user’s journey. Every display takes form, from the preliminary sketches to the polished prototypes. All displays are finally linked to stimulating a real-world application where one click can lead to a transition to another screen. Now we have a digital representation of the MVP.
Identify the user persona and the target market
Your next move is defining your ideal customer profile. Discovering to whom you are trying to sell your product and what they need is a vital part of this process. Ask yourself questions like ‘Who are the target users?’ and ‘What are they looking for precisely?’ Why they would implement your solution is important to answer. After you get answers to all these questions, you can learn to whom your MVP will service and what problems it’s going to solve.
Code MVP
Selecting the right technology stack is important at the code-writing stage. Ideally, you would pick a solution that is pretty easy to combine with the other systems and that can scale well. Always remember to prioritize just the things that can increase value and have a direct bearing on the ROI. After the product is out and it has gained a following, you can start to work on the additional features.
Plan your product’s critical features
Now you can start defining the key benefits that your product is going to offer. Zeroing down on the features that will make your service or product the most valuable to the customers is part of this process. An MVP must have the minimum important features. You must zero down on the key functionality that can help you to meet your niche’s demands.
Prioritize the MVP’s features
An MVP can give your company a glimpse of the final product. So, it is important to rank all the features that your MVP will support. Do the features stand to gain popularity and help users when they purchase this item? Sort the MVP’s remaining attributes into three groups: low, medium, and high. Prioritizing these features in your product backlog is a vital step.
Develop and test your MVP
After you have settled on the goals and objectives of a product, you must swiftly move into the creation phase. Moreover, you need to check the functionality of the program at every stage to ensure that it will run smoothly. While collaborating with the creators of the app and provider of mobile app services, you can get their help. Before releasing an app, one of the essential steps is testing it thoroughly for issues. You should be deliberate in realizing the vast potential of establishing MVP in the apps.
Build and launch/release your MVP
After you have determined the core functionality of your product and have gathered market intelligence, a company is able to develop its MVP. Apart from its name, an MVP must not be considered a careless attempt to soothe your customers. So, it needs to be appropriate, attractive, and user-friendly.
Building and releasing your MVP follows the decision of which features need to be included. The next step is creating the actual product or service and making it readily available to its intended consumers. It is crucial to focus on the user experience while releasing an MVP. Also, you must ensure that your service or product is enjoyable and user-friendly. Soliciting customer input and marketing your MVP is crucial.
Analyze the user’s feedback
User’s comments can be extremely helpful while figuring out what features you can keep and what to change. This will make your service or product the best, and the failure or success of a specific strategy can be assessed better. Keep in mind that even the MVP can have shortcomings, and there will be places that need tweaking. Also, remember that your ultimate goal is creating an MVP that will sell well in your intended market. Now consider seeking investments for your product or app.
Development mistakes you need to avoid while building your MVPs include:
Postponing your money to the future product updates
Your MVP must have a wonderful monetization plan if you take it as a finished product from the beginning. Your clients need a working product. It doesn’t matter to them if it is an MVP. You need to develop a plan for making money from the finding. Subscription-based applications tend to have a higher rate of success.
Too less or too many features
Refrain from under-featuring or overloading your app. New ideas can alter the budget, timeline, and return on investment of the project. Ensure that every addition should increase profitability and must serve some purpose.
Unfit development approach
If you select a fixed-price model with strict money and time constraints, you will end up with products that need better product-market fit and need to meet the demands of maximum users. Keep yourself updated to make sure that your app agency uses agile methods by telling them to demonstrate it.
Building entirely from scratch
Software developers nowadays get several resources that help them create an MVP. Various software development kits, libraries, and application programming interfaces can help implement functionality like mapping or chatting in days instead of months. By utilizing some trusted external tools, accelerate the development.
Lack of analytics post-launch
After the release of an MVP, it is important to evaluate its success to check it meets the expectation regarding subscription rates, user base size, etc. Interface with the app analytics provider while building your MVP. In this way, you may begin collecting data when your app is live. You must link your app to an app analytics service.
Ignoring the marketing budget
A typical error is to spend all your funds on development instead of marketing. Make sure that in the app industry, there is constant innovation, and all new apps need to fight for attention. It can be risky if you do not allocate funds for advertising now. You must establish your marketing budget before you start your MVP project.
Wrapping Up
Building an MVP is a vital step in the process of raising funds for your mobile app. Polished MVP development services from a renowned software development company like Whitelotus Corporation will provide the capital required to launch your full-scale software. MVP is an important milestone, but it is just the beginning. When everything goes as planned, an MVP will attract thousands of customers. A combination of user comments and behavior data can establish the feature priorities for future updates at par with the validated analysis from your paying customers. MVP will provide a scalable and versatile method for funding your mobile app. The tips mentioned above will help you to create a product that resonates with investors and help you secure the funds needed to take your mobile app to the market.
