If you are developing a new product, it can always be a risk. Maybe you are not sure of how your audiences will respond to it. This is true if you are launching a new mobile app in the market, you may not be sure about how your target audiences will respond to your app. To reduce this risk, you can build a minimum viable product or MVP.

An MVP helps you test your idea or product to gauge if it resonates with the target audience. This way you know that you are headed in the right direction. In this article, we will discuss how to plan and build a minimum viable product.

What is an MVP?

An MVP is a minimal version of your product that only includes basic features. MVP enables you to validate or invalidate your product assumptions and see how your target users interact with your product’s core features. This process helps you save your time and money by only investing in areas that resonate with your audiences. If there is a feature your audiences think is missing in your MVP, you can use this insight to incorporate that in your final product. Similarly, you can improve or eliminate certain features that do not work for your target users.

MVP also ensures that you do not end up investing a lot of money when you build the first version of your product. You can include core features in an MVP to test them out. This way you do not spend a whole lot in the beginning.

In mobile app development, an MVP is an important part of the process. While developing your mobile app, build a minimum viable product that includes the core features which focus on solving a specific problem. This way you can update and improve your app after you gain insights from your target users to create an app that resonates with them.

Why build an MVP?

In mobile app development, an MVP is a basic version of your app. The focus is to test this basic version and find out how your users interact with it. Instead of developing an app with numerous features that requires a big investment, it is a better option to first build a basic version for testing. This helps you save money and reduce any mistakes related to your app.

An MVP can enable you to test how your app is doing in the market. You can validate or invalidate your assumptions or ideas. If any feature is not working out for your users, you can remove it or update it. This version of your app can also help you test your user interface and app design. Based on audience insights you can make improvements to enhance your user experience.

With time you can add more features based on the preferences of your users. A minimum viable product can help you build a better version of your app which better serves your target users.

How to build a minimum viable product?

Here are some steps you can follow to identify and focus on core features to help build an MVP for your target market.

Determine what problem you are solving

Start by identifying the needs of your target market. What are the pain points or problems of your target users? How will your mobile product solve these problems? When you are planning to build your MVP, you need to assess the needs of your target market. Moreover, you should analyze your competitors and look at how they are solving these problems. To build a successful app, you need to offer solutions that stand out.

Assess the market and determine how your product will fit into it. This will help you come up with ideas for the core features of your app.

Identify your users

Who is the end user of your product? Identify your target users who are going to be using your mobile app. Understand the problems, interests and needs of your users to build an app that is relevant to them.

Map out user journey and user flow

User journey is a path the users take to reach a goal while using your app. Consider how the users would interact and engage with your app. To build a successful mobile product you need to keep your users at the center. To ensure that your users will have a good experience with your MVP, you need to map out the user journey.

This will enable you to envision your app from the perspective of the users. By mapping out the user journey you can get ideas on designing your app in a way that appeals to your users. User journey also helps you understand the actions the user will take to complete a goal.

Moreover, map out user flow to build a product that satisfies your target users. User flow includes all the steps from start to finish that a user takes to complete a task like purchase. User flow ensures that you don’t miss out on any steps a user takes to reach their goal.

Prioritize MVP features

In a minimum viable product, you will only include the most important features. All the previous steps can help you get better acquainted with the main pain points of your target users. When you know what your user needs are, you will know what type of solution they need. In this stage you will need to decide which features you want to include in your MVP. In addition, also determine the features that are medium and low priority.

If you include too many features it can impact the user experience and you may stray away from the main purpose of your app. Hence, it is important to prioritize features that will help solve the user’s main problems.

Once you have prioritized your features, you can build a prototype of your MVP to test how the features will look like.

Build MVP

After you have finalized your core features, you can build your MVP. Not that an MVP is not a lower quality version of your final product. It is just a basic version of your product that includes the core features. After testing how these features will look like you can build and launch your MVP in the market.

Measure results

The main goal of an MVP is to gather important insights on how your users interact with it. When you launch this test version of your product ensure that you are collecting valuable insights. Understand how the audiences respond to your app, which features they find most helpful and what needs to be improved. Collect user feedback to understand what is lacking in your product. This can help you get better ideas to improve your product.

After gathering these insights, you can use them to build a better version of the current product. By measuring results, you will have more clarity on what your users need.

Building a minimum viable product is an important part of your mobile app development process. Without an MVP there is a risk that your product may not work in the market. Hence, to ensure that you are building an app that is useful and valuable to your target users, you need an MVP for testing. An MVP can help you gather valuable insights that can enable you to build a successful app that is relevant to the end user.