As an entrepreneur, you may eventually come to the point of planning a startup and launching your software product. Initially, you only have the idea of the project. What’s next?
MVP development for startups is something that will help you at the beginning. You will learn what it is from this article. But first, some statistics.
In 2020 the failure rate of startups exceeded 90%. And Euler Hermes’ latest research is even more disappointing. It shows that the number of global business bankruptcies will have increased by 15% by 2022.
Can you guess what the reason is? It is a lack of demand among the users in the market. That’s why when you have a brilliant idea, do not rush building a fully-featured product and spending months on hard work.
There’s a more efficient way to initially understand whether your idea will be required in the market. And this implies developing a minimum viable product (MVP). This popular approach in startup product development will help you test your business idea and save both time and resources. This way, you understand what users need and can create an offering that they are ready to pay for.
Thanks to this article, you will know how to define a minimum viable product. You will also learn all about the MVP approach. We will start with the definition of this term and take a look at the best minimum viable products built by famous companies. Finally, we will provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to build a minimum viable product.
What is a Minimum Viable Product?
This term comes from the Lean Startup methodology. It emphasizes the influence of learning in the process of building a new software product.
In a nutshell, MVP in software development refers to building an app with enough functionality to attract early adopters. As soon as feedback from pioneer users is received, the software development team knows where to improve or iterate the product. Providing the necessary information about the state of your product in short terms is one of the main advantages of minimum viable product.
Many entrepreneurs do not know what a minimum viable product is and what MVP benefits exist. However, virtually all successful startups started as MVPs.
Let's look at how the MVP approach works using one of the examples of minimum viable products built by famous companies. It is a well-known Airbnb service.
The story of the birth of Airbnb is truly legendary. In 2007, the prices for renting apartments and rooms in San Francisco were sky-high. Brian Chesky and Joe Jebbia rented a four-room flat in San Francisco. The friends had the sudden thought of earning extra money. They decided to let the participants of a large conference of developers spend the night on air mattresses in their flat.
The idea had a chance of success because many hotels in the city were overcrowded. Brian and Joe made a simple website, and soon three guests responded to their proposal.
This is how the Airbnb service (that is, AirbedAndBreakfast) was born.
One of earlier versions of the Airbnb website
And notice, it is just one of the many successful MVP examples showing that you don't have to fully implement your service to test the idea.
So why should companies bother with developing a minimum viable product, you may wonder. Basically, there are several ways this concept can help companies create high-quality products and establish a successful business. Let's consider them:
First, an MVP product development allows companies to launch their products in the shortest time possible. Fast release, in its turn, means that businesses can get valuable experience much earlier. For example, entrepreneurs can test marketing strategies and sales channels much earlier. As a result, they can find the most efficient ways to promote their product.
Second, this approach allows companies to cut software development costs significantly. Since they build an MVP app, there is no need to implement complex functionality. It means that the development team will need less time to complete the project. Consequently, businesses will have to pay less money for development services.
Finally, one more of the MVP benefits - is that a minimum viable product helps attract investors. Forbes recently published an article on tips for companies seeking financial aid. It was stated that investors need to see that you have initial accomplishments, that there is customer demand in your product. The companies that managed to show the demand for their product will likely get the required funding. The best way to solve this task is to create an MVP with several basic features and wait for customers’ feedback. If it is positive, you can freely present it to investors, knowing that your business idea is feasible.
As you can see, there are multiple benefits of MVP approach. To sum up, starting your web product with an MVP is a wise way to save time and budget, especially when it comes to creating complex solutions, for example, online marketplace websites.
What are MVP goals?
Is an MVP really necessary? Let's see: you have a brilliant idea, and you want to present it to the world. Can you say without any doubts how long it will take to bring your startup to life? What will monetization be like in the future? How to attract new users? Obviously, it is difficult to say whether the product will be a high-flyer.
To look into the near and forward-looking future and evaluate the risks, we need the help of the minimum viable product approach. The MVP is the starting point for building a successful software product.
The minimum viable product shows how realistic and profitable your idea is. This first form of a product helps you test your idea in practice and find faults if they exist. Undoubtedly, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
So, what are the MVP goals? Here's the list of what the minimum viable product development can offer:
- Minimize the costs required for product testing
- Obtain feedback from users for making timely changes
- Reduce the time spent on development
- Ensure fast product release for early users
- Attract investors
- Detect and prevent future pitfalls
These MVP goals are intended to simplify your project development. You don't need to risk and build the product from A to Z from the outset. A more thoughtful way to implement the idea is to build an MVP and test your future product with its help.
Successful examples of Minimum Viable Product
It’s a well-known fact that almost all successful startups start their path to success with a minimum viable product. Let us consider the most famous examples.
Uber
One of the successful MVP examples is the Uber taxi service. In 2010, its creators launched UberCab, a simple iPhone app that allowed customers to connect with drivers. The beta version of the project saw user demand, and a year later, large investments were received.
Source: WayBack Machine
Youtube and Instagram
YouTube and Instagram are good examples of how the timely introduction of changes to the product idea helped. And these modifications led to the creation of well-known brands.
For example, in 2005, YouTube looked like a video dating site.
Source: Medium.com
Instagram was initially called Burbn, and it was a glider that allowed users to tag places they visited, post photos, and earn points.
Source: Timetoast.com
However, both YouTube and Instagram’s initial concepts were not in demand. The companies analyzed their performance. They took into account negative feedback and changed the direction of a business. YouTube video dating and Burbn glider became examples of successful MVP development for startup.
You may also like: How to Make a Video Streaming Website Like Netflix
Pinterest is a worldwide catalog of ideas known to every creative person. Its early version was called Tote. The startup was intended especially for female users.
Source: VatorNews
It was focused on the feature of pinning items to the handy board while shopping on the Internet. The MVP of Tote had none of the features you’re used to on Pinterest. But the MVP was successful, it grew and covered a lot of themes and target audience.
Facebook is a classic example of the MVP project.
Today we all know Facebook as a complex platform and a dominant social network. However, initially, it had a pretty simple concept. Thefacebook, launched in 2004, connected Harvard students only. The platform allowed them to publish messages on their boards.
Surprisingly, the service with minimal features has proven its viability. This narrow approach helped Facebook's founders - Zuckerberg and Saverin - avoid pitfalls many startups face in their early days. These challenges include investing too much time and money in software development or scaling too fast. Also, the startup was secured from providing users with unnecessary features.
Gradually, TheFacebook began adding other universities and colleges to their network. Eventually, it was rolled out worldwide becoming the largest social networking website, and grew into a multibillion-dollar company.
Spotify
The example of Spotify shows us how to build a minimum viable product with one key feature and get great success. The company aimed at creating the best music streaming service. For this reason, for Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, the task was to create an MVP with a focus on a single feature which was the crucial one - music streaming.
Spotify decided to build an MVP that was a desktop version of their app and ran it on a closed beta to prove the feasibility of their idea. This way, the company managed to keep costs down.
As it turned out, the minimum viable product offered at a freemium price perfectly matched people’s interests. Soon Spotify upgraded their product by signing new artists and developing a mobile application.
Foursquare
The local-based social platform Foursquare is another example of minimum viable product with one core feature. Its founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai decided to build MVP which was pretty simple. Users checked-in into various places and got badges as a reward.
As soon as Crowley and Selvadurai were convinced that there was a demand for such an app, they started implementing new features.
In 2014, Foursquare decided to get rid of check-in functionality. Instead, the startup concentrated on local search features.
Benefits of Minimum Viable Product
And now we will consider the benefits of minimum viable product development.
Getting feedback from users
User feedback is a must when building a new product. According to Failure statistics, 123,300 startups are closed every day in the world, which makes approximately 85 per minute. Experts believe that in most cases this is due to poor market research at the start of MVP creation and insufficient feedback.
Source: Medium.com
One of the main MVP advantages is that it helps to see the users’ reactions to the product. It helps understand whether the project is relevant on the market or not.
There are many ways to get feedback:
- target customers interviews
- A / B tests
- short explainer videos
- pre-order pages
- digital prototypes
- paper prototypes
- single-function MVPs.
Negative responses will also help to prevent future mistakes.
Hypothesis testing
The way you see the product is a hypothesis. One of the MVP benefits is that you can either confirm this hypothesis, correct it, or find out that it should be reviewed. Quite often startup founders can spend years developing a product, but eventually it turns out that their hypothesis is wrong.
A study by CB Insights found that 42% of new project failures take place because of the lack of market demand. An MVP helps to ensure that there is a demand for a product and to change an unprofitable idea in a timely manner. You should test your key business hypotheses and business ideas with real users. And do it as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.
Quick launch
The market changes quickly, thus developing minimum viable products is the best approach for new ideas. Since an MVP requires less effort to create, the product will be released faster. Fast release gives you the possibility to test today's market and get an edge over competitors. It also helps to avoid any costly failures, as you will have the opportunity to make sure that your idea will really be in demand.
One of the MVP benefits is that it saves resources. It will take much less time to create the MVP and then improve it than to develop a project from scratch.
The sooner the product hits the market, the faster it will start generating income. Furthermore, you can outperform competitors with similar startup ideas. Long development time can negatively affect both the product and the idea itself. Under the best circumstances, the MVP development process takes a few months.
For example, recently, our team helped quickly launch an MVP of a dental imaging management system.
The customer is an owner of a dental imaging center from Israel. He needed to quickly test the idea and launch the minimum viable product with core functionality. Our team helped create the dental portal MVP and optimize the cooperation between the clinics and the dental imaging center.
We quickly launched the MVP, and thus the client was able to obtain feedback from early users. Thanks to that, the customer knew that the idea met the market needs. And then, he decided to create additional functionality and further promote the product. We are now helping them with further platform development.
Financial risks reduction
It is impossible to say that the MVP development process is cheap, but building a product with full functionality is definitely more expensive. It's better to launch the initial product in 1-2 months in order to understand its effectiveness than to invest a huge budget into a project. It makes no sense to spend 6-10 months developing the final version if it turns out to be not interesting for clients.
The MVP helps companies capitalize on resources, work, revenue, and time. The cost of minimum viable product is greatly reduced by eliminating unnecessary functionality. You should be guided not only by the desire to implement a good idea but also by actual numbers. It is important to conduct an interim analysis of the results achieved without waiting for the final release.
Investors attraction
You have a working MVP version, the right monetization model, and the first loyal customers. In most cases, investor support is essential for further product development. To increase your chances of success, develop a business plan and marketing strategy. You need to prove to investors that your MVP is worth the investment.
You can present the MVP to the stakeholders, and it will improve the prospects of successful funding. As an example, the MVP of Buffer, without special efforts, raised $120,000 of investment in 2011. Also, at an early stage, you would need not only money but also mentoring support.
We have experience of quickly building a minimum viable product that is necessary to raise investment. For instance, one of the recent projects that the Codica team successfully delivered was an MVP for a search expat housing platform. This project is the world's first service helping to find long-term accommodation for expats moving to a new country.
Our team built the working minimum viable product with core functionality within short time frames. We created a fast-loading website with a convenient interface and integrated Google Maps.
Finally, our customer was able to present the minimum viable product to investors and receive financing. Besides, they didn't spend too much money and time on MVP website development.
How to build a minimum viable product
Now it is high time to proceed to the key stages of building a minimum viable product. The steps listed below will help you to launch a successful product.
1. Define the problem
The first phase of building a minimum viable product is to check whether your potential product solves any users’ problems. At this point, you should get initial feedback from your potential target audience. You need to get answers to the following questions:
- Do they need this product?
- How can it help them?
- What problems will it help them solve?
The answers will help you to understand how to build a minimum viable product that has a clear product goal.
There exists a practice to find out application objectives based on your personal experience and challenges. Since personal thoughts are pretty subjective, you should ask a wider public starting from relatives, friends, colleagues, and partners: is there a problem they would want to solve in case they have a special device/tool? And then you can ask yourself: can I build such a product?
Thus, it makes sense to work on the main application idea that solves some issue and see how this idea is perceived by your potential target audience. If it is perceived well, then you can try and build MVP, and if not, then perhaps you should try another idea.
Therefore, as you can see, defining the problem you want to solve with your product is one of the most critical steps in the product development process.
One of our clients, David, struggled to organize after-school activities for his own children. After talking to other parents, he realized that they were facing the same difficulties.
So David had an idea to build an online platform where parents could easily plan and book activities for their children. Codica team helped to create the MVP of the platform quickly and successfully launch this activity booking service.
In such a way, with the help of MVP, our client was able first to test their idea with the minimum budget and then make a decision to develop the product further.
2. Do market research
Well, you have chosen the product idea. Obviously, there are already similar products available, so you need to make a competitor and market analysis. Quite often, startup entrepreneurs skip this stage as they believe in their product uniqueness, but this approach will most likely lead to failure. The main reason is that the customers may already be using a similar solution, and might not be willing to switch to another one.
That is why competitor analysis is of utmost importance. You should do your homework before engaging in minimum viable product development. Analyze your main competitors, find the opportunities where you can provide a better service than them. If possible - try their products or services.
In case you see some competitors’ features are better than your planned product, then it’s a great opportunity for you to improve your idea, to bring even more benefits to the customers.
Furthermore, always bear in mind that it takes more than just a product to get buyers and win the competition. You can survey the competitor’s product users and ask whether there are any issues to be improved. This way, you turn their weaknesses into your strengths by defining how to build a minimum viable product with a hot feature that definitely will be in demand.
Additionally, there are numerous tools for competitor analysis that allow gathering important data from your competitors’ websites. Such tools provide you with website traffic, engagement geography, profitable keywords etc.
Here is the list of the most popular instruments:
- SpyFu
- SimilarWeb
- QuickSprout
- SEMrush
- Alexa
The process of market and competitor research will also help you figure out the key audience that potentially may be interested in your minimum viable product. To choose the audience, you should tilt toward the market segments for whom it will be useful, or the ones using your competitors’ solutions. You need to create the buyer persona.
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your potential customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed they are, the better.
3. Define the main features and prioritize them
By the time you have executed the market research, bearing in mind the users’ problems to solve, you can switch to selecting minimum viable product software features most valuable for the customers.
Snapchat is an excellent example of the MVP with minimum key features.
Initially, Snapchat had only one feature. With this feature, users could send each other images, which then disappeared. It was enough for testing this concept among the community and gaining success.
How can you define the main functionality that should be included in your minimum viable product? Firstly, you have to define the user flow. It is the path taken by a prototypical user on a website or app to get the desired result. With its help, you are able to define the required features.
For example, to arrange a taxi in Uber, you need to enter the pickup location (i), the destination point (ii) and tap “Confirm” button (iii). Additionally, you can enter some extra settings like a form of payment, choosing ‘Cash’ or ‘Credit Card’. It is called user flow and each stage has its own ‘must-have’ feature for the best user experience.
After creating the user flow, we recommend you to list the features your product should have and prioritize them sorting by importance. Here comes Value Proposition Canvas - a tool which can help ensure that there is a fit between the product and market.
There are three key points: Jobs-to-be-done, Pains and Gains. You need to fill in each component to define how to create an MVP product that will meet the customers’ needs.
Source: Strategyzer.com
Here is an example of Tesla VPC figuring out the best product-market fit.
Source: Designabetterbusiness.com
After listing gain creators, pain relievers and products and services, each point identified can be ranked from ‘nice-to-have’ to ‘essential’ in terms of value to the customer. A fit is achieved when the products and services offered as part of the value proposition meet the most significant pains and gains from the buyer persona.
Now you can categorize the features by creating a table with several columns called ‘must-have’, ‘nice-to-have’, and ‘additional’. Try to prioritize the features among the columns so that the top one is the most important.
4. Validate your idea with prototype
Once you have done the market research, keeping in mind all the strengths and weaknesses of your potential competitors, you should substantiate your idea before turning to the minimum viable product development stage. One of the most cost- and time-effective ways is to create a prototype before you build an MVP. This way you see how your future product will look like.
Prototyping is one of the principal stages of product development with Codica. Below you can see an example of a prototype that our team created for an international hiring platform.
Nevertheless, what is the difference between MVP and prototype? The minimum viable product can be sold to users. It is already introduced to the market, and the prototype is one of the iterations towards this goal.
The next question you can ask: what is better, a prototype or MVP? They are both important. The choice depends on your audience and the stage of your project.
A prototype is more effective than a static wireframe because it is very close to the finished product. Not only does it bridge the gap between conception and realization for the development team, but it can help your future customers and potential investors to understand it too.
Moreover, one of the best practices in figuring out the audience is to select the narrow range of early adopters to test your idea. They are the potential users interested in the product on the stage of the idea validation. They are looking for some solution to a problem you are ready to provide. These could be your relatives, friends, colleagues, business partners etc.
Furthermore, you can use your personal network or social media. It could be forums and communities, groups, Quora, blog posts etc.
At this stage, you finally understand whether your idea is reasonable to develop further. Or vice versa, you may decide to terminate your product creation based on the previous research results.
Here’s a great example of creating and testing a prototype using the approach named Design Sprint. In this approach created by Jake Knapp while working at Google, all the stages take place within 1 week:
5. Build, Measure, Learn
When you have reached the development stage, we recommend continuing your MVP development process with the help of Lean Startup methodology called Build-Measure-Learn (BML). A core component is the build-measure-learn feedback loop.
Source: Theleanstartup.com
Let’s discover the cycle stages:
Build
Here you figure out problems and define how to create a minimum viable product that will solve them efficiently. Bear in mind that you need to begin the process of learning as quickly as possible. There are different options to choose from, but we want to emphasize four options of development:
Find a technical co-founder
One of the main benefits is that if your technical co-founder is interested in your product and idea, they will work as hard as you do to build a brilliant application. They will always find ways to improve the product version because they have the same passion as you do.Pick a freelancer or a freelancing team
Instead of searching for a technical co-founder, you can hire a team of freelance developers as an option. You are able to choose from dozens of platforms like Upwork, Google search, or you may have some contacts in the required domain to find a team that knows how to create a minimum viable product.Hire in-house developers
The middle option between a technical co-founder and a freelancer is to hire a highly skilled developer in-house. This way allows you to monitor and control their progress daily. However, this option may also be funds-consuming as a skilled professional should be motivated both by the project idea and the salary.Collaborate with an MVP development company
The main benefit of this choice is that such agencies have vast experience and can offer quality MVP development services. It allows you to be sure of getting exactly what you need. Having built many similar solutions, the agency knows beforehand all the methods and approaches that may be useful for your product creation, and will greatly contribute to its success.
After building a minimum viable product, you can work on tuning the engine. This will involve measurement and learning and must include actionable metrics that can demonstrate cause and effect question.
Measure
During this phase, you determine whether real progress is being made or not, and this involves measuring the results obtained during the BUILD stage.
Firstly, you should pay attention to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) - sales metrics to measure MVP’s success. You can use their correlation to realize whether it is profitable to continue the development.
Additionally, you can utilize Google Analytics or Hotjar for the website to see the traffic, conversions, etc.
Learn
Here you summarize the accumulated measurements: should it “persevere”, or should it “pivot”? Persevere means moving on with the same goals. At this stage, you are able to launch the final product and collect the users’ feedback for the future improvements.
On the flipside, pivot leads to changing or shifting some of the product strategy aspects. It means you should change some features or choose another development strategy. Afterward, you would have to document your findings and share them.
To conclude, we can simplify the BML loop and figure out the main points:
- Define whether the product idea solves the users’ problem.
- Quickly manage an action or a program that will test the idea with the users.
- Obtain sustaining MVP feedback loop with customer.
- Consider the sustainable development of the product. Will you be able to maintain the current level of engagement?
Getting feedback
Having finished the BML cycle, you should always collect and consider the customers’ feedback. The matter is your customers are the only people who may definitely figure out what features are important or not.
There are different ways to collect user feedback data for your MVP. One of the best ways is to interview and survey your early adopters - the users interested in the product on the stage of idea validation as they are looking for some problem solution you will be ready to provide.
How to find early adopters? As already mentioned, we suggest that the best channels are socials - Facebook and Linkedin groups, Quora answers, and, of course, forums and communities, like reddit threads. Basically this can be any online resource where your target audience can be found.
Mistakes when building an MVP
Despite the benefits of MVP approach, sometimes it may not bring the expected results.
What mistakes can occur when developing a minimum viable product? Which of them are the most common? Let's take a look together.
Striving for perfection
The MVP is a product with limited functionality that helps the user evaluate the essential capabilities. Do not try to make it flawless - this may lead to unnecessary costs and distract from the main goals. Remember, the overly detailed development will only slow down the process of creating the test version.
Recommended reading: How Much Does it Cost to Build an Online Marketplace
Creating the MVP is just the start of a long way. The minimum viable product mistakes and negative reviews are inevitable - be prepared for this.
Tech giants use the MVP approach to test their ideas all the time. For instance, Google has shut down many of its services which were not successful. One of the prominent examples is Google Glass, which was closed in 2015. Users were not simply fond of the gadget. Nevertheless, trial and error do not affect the success of Google.
Another example is Twitter. It was initially a service for finding and subscribing to podcasts, but the company decided not to compete with iTunes and made a pivot.
To put it short, don't be scared to make mistakes or start from scratch. And stop trying to make the perfect product from the beginning.
Ignoring feedback
It is crucial to provide users with a basic understanding of the future product. If the product is not interesting for customers, neither design nor fast performance will save it. If this happens, then your resources will be wasted.
You have to be focused on the needs of your audience and analyze the feedback. Even if the users' reaction is negative, you should pay attention.
Remember the situation with the creators of WhatsApp, who wanted to create an address book as an MVP project but obtained a messenger. If they hadn't tracked users' behavior, WhatsApp would have become unnecessary very quickly.
At present, WhatsApp is at the top of the most prominent messengers in the world. In 2021 WhatsApp had over 2 billion users, and its growth doesn't stop.
False announcements
It's not good to announce something without its implementation. Surprisingly, many people make this mistake. At the MVP stage, startups often announce future innovations and additions. But anything can happen, and the project may not come to implementation. Don't lie to your customers. Remember that reputation is your everything in any business.
Excess saving
You don't need to waste resources on unnecessary functionality - that's true. But does it mean economizing on everything? Of course not. Key functions should be of the best quality. Otherwise, users will notice low-quality work and lose interest in the application.
The main mistake when creating such a test product is not being serious about it. Someone might think: why bother if this is a demo version. But in fact, the minimum viable product is the foundation for a future project. And therefore, the development of the MVP must be taken with full seriousness.
Don't forget: “Minimum” does not mean “minimum quality”!
Minimum Viable Product cost
The final cost of MVP can vary. The final figure largely depends on the available budget and project complexity. There is no such notion as the "exact cost of the MVP."
Nevertheless, we tried to give you approximate figures of how much it will cost to create the minimum viable product. Let's consider the development cost by the example of building MVP for a multi-vendor marketplace website like Amazon. Here we will use the average rate of Eastern European software development teams, which is $50/hour.
| The average cost of MVP for a website like Amazon | ||
| Features | Time, hours | Cost, $ |
| UX/UI Development | 42 hours | $2,100 |
| Authorization and Security | 72 hours | $3,600 |
| User profiles | 42 hours | $2,100 |
| Home page | 84 hours | $4,200 |
| Search and filters | 96 hours | $4,800 |
| Product Page | 42 hours | $2,100 |
| Reviews & Ratings | 48 hours | $2,400 |
| Shopping cart | 64 hours | $3,200 |
| Payments | 42 hours | $2,100 |
| Notifications | 32 hours | $1,600 |
| Buyer panel | 120 hours | $6,000 |
| Vendor panel | 230 hours | $11,500 |
| Admin panel | 164 hours | $8,200 |
| Wishlist | 32 hours | $1,600 |
| Total | 1100 hours | $55,500 |
Therefore, depending on your product, the minimum cost of MVP may vary between $30,000-$50,000.
To figure out the specific cost to build your product, contact us. We would be happy to have a discussion about your project in detail and provide you with an estimate.
It does not matter if you want to implement a simple web application or a complex multi-vendor marketplace - it is better to work with professionals. Our experts are ready to help develop the MVP platform of any level of complexity.
Benefits of working with an MVP development agency
We have analyzed the above information about the benefits of MVP, and there is no doubt left about the need for its creation. And now the question is: how to choose a team to implement the project.
As we mentioned earlier, hiring an MVP development company is the most efficient way to build your product. This way, you increase your chances to get a working MVP solution within the predefined time-frame and budget.
Let’s take a closer look at the core benefits of hiring an experienced MVP development agency:
Save costs and launch quickly
Why is a fast launch crucial for your business? By releasing your product earlier than competitors, you reduce your chances of being beaten by your market rivals.
MVP for software development supposes building the very basic functionality. In this regard, collaboration with an established company that offers minimum viable product development services saves the day.
Thanks to the vast experience and in-depth industry knowledge, developers know what functionality to include in your MVP project. As a result, their expertise will save you from paying extra money for unnecessary functionality.
Also, the development approach you choose will influence the project timeframe. At Codica, we follow the principles of the Agile methodology. We firmly believe that this approach will help you see results fast, make alterations when required and what’s most important – reduce the price of MVP development service.
As an example, we can cite a project that our team delivered in less than a month - a custom job matching website.
The initial concept of Wowner was to build an intelligent online job search. This website was intended to help people working remotely find new relevant jobs.
The customer was limited in time, and our team managed to launch the project in the shortest possible time frame. We prepared the prototypes and design within three weeks, and our client could launch their product and test the idea quickly.
If you are looking for advice on how to build an MVP, contact us, we would love to help.
Get the right solution for your needs
You have probably heard of a Project discovery phase - it is the first and foremost stage of any MVP product development process. At this stage, a software development company will dig into a customer’s project idea and issues it is going to solve.
At Codica, we start all our projects with discovery sessions, and we take enough time to apply our vast multi-domain expertise and analyze our clients’ ideas and requirements. Therefore, you can be sure that we will offer the most efficient and cost-effective way to implement your idea.
As a result of the product discovery stage, we provide customers with a project estimate, recommendations on the tech stack and functionality. Also, you will get clickable prototypes for their future MVP based on the product goals and target audience. This way, we create a user journey for an intuitive custom app that will be sought-after among the end-users.
Based on this thorough approach, you can be sure that you will get the best solution for your product idea.
Get expert advice on MVP development
Partnership with a reliable MVP company gives you access to the services of high-skilled developers. This means accumulated development expertise of building minimum viable products for various industries, combined with profound knowledge of the latest programming languages and frameworks.
Therefore, your product will be created with the right tech stack, depending on your product requirements, so that your minimum viable product can be further scaled if necessary.
At Codica, we use the most advanced tech stack such as Ruby and Ruby on Rails, React.js, Vue.js. We firmly believe that they are best suited for building high-quality MVP solutions within a short period of time.
It is worth noting that the partnership with the MVP development agency does not end with the launch of your minimum viable product. As soon as your product is deployed, the specialists will be monitoring your software. If there are some bugs or issues, they will fix them in no time. The full-cycle MVP development company will support your product on a regular basis. Such an agency will be a good help if you don’t have an in-house tech team.
How Codica can help create a successful MVP
The MVP development process is a way that is best taken with a team of qualified developers. This process must be fast and efficient. Our company has extensive experience in creating MVP projects. We are proud of our clients' feedback on the effective and swift implementation of their ideas.
We know how to build an MVP quickly and within the budget. For instance, one of our recent projects is PlanMyKids - an activity booking platform that we already mentioned - also started with a minimum viable product.
This application is intended to make it easier for parents to find activities for their children. With its help, parents can choose after-school pastime options for kids considering many indicators, such as budget, age, child’s interests, family preferences, etc.
Based on the provided data, an itinerary of activities is drawn up. Then it is sent to the parent for approval. The app also has a calendar. Thus, parents can always look at the child's schedule.
With our MVP product development, we made this platform very easy to use and the interface modern and attractive. Since this application is intended for planning children's activities, the site is designed in a cute childish style.
We have implemented all the values of the customer, helped to narrow down the main functions of the MVP, and tested them in practice. It is essential that we managed to create the MVP below the budget quoted initially.
Also, we used PWA technology, which has allowed the customer to save costs on the development of mobile applications. The PWA is also convenient for users. Parents don't need to download a mobile app on their phones.
PlanMyKids turned out to be very useful and was approved by many satisfied users. Busy parents are in love with this app.
Our mutually trusting cooperation with the customer led to the rapid realization of the idea. The MVP was developed in a couple of months. We are sure that no matter how complex the project is, it can be implemented, and we succeed in doing it.
You can also get acquainted with other examples of the projects that our team delivered on our case studies page.
Conclusion
That is all about building a minimum viable product. You have learned all about the advantages of minimum viable product and understood why it is important for startups. We hope that this detailed guide will help you launch a successful and high-quality application.
To begin with, you will need to collect the users’ feedback about your MVP advantages and disadvantages. Then, you should conclude whether it is reasonable to continue improving the product.
If there are many positive comments with useful criticism, then you should take them into consideration and go on improving the product that is already a success. In case you see the product failed to attract customers, then you may think of choosing another idea or trying to change the existing product.
To sum up, build an MVP to test your business idea and see if it is reasonable enough to create a fully-featured product. Also, it gives you an opportunity to save much money instead of injecting funds into a forehand useless product.
If you are looking to build a minimum viable product, Codica Team will be glad to help. We use the best practices for making a successful MVP and have extensive experience in MVP development. We have already created minimum viable products in such domains as marketplaces, travel, e-commerce, finance, healthcare and others. Let’s get in touch!