Tag Archive for: minimal viable product

Is Your App High Risk To Warrant A Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

Deciding on whether to develop a minimum viable product or a full-fledged app can be difficult. As an appreneur, you’ll need to take a hard look at your project and determine whether an MVP is worthwhile. Below, we provide a few handy tips to help you make the right decision. 

1. Determine Whether A Minimum Viable Product Is Right For You

In many cases, it’s usually smart to develop a minimum viable product instead of a full-fledged app. And this is often the way to go if you’re a startup that needs to stick to a budget and mitigate risk. However, it’s also likely that an MVP may not be right for you in specific cases. 

If you’re developing something simple, such as a to-do list or note-taking app, then consider if an MVP is the sensible choice. After all, an app with such limited functionality and scope already fits within the confines of an MVP. But there’s a difference; an MVP can be scaled into a larger project at a later stage after testing the market.

2. Are Your App Ideas Truly High Risk

You could position your startup as an innovator and trailblazer that makes unique apps. And if you’re indeed creating new and unique apps, then it’s likely that your risk is higher too. In that case, you’ll want to develop an MVP to test your app ideas and appeal to investors. 

But if you’re not veering away from the well-trodden path and playing it safe, your app’s unlikely high risk. Furthermore, it will be harder to excite users with an app that’s not much different than existing alternatives.

3. Why You Should Implement Good App Design

A side benefit of developing an MVP is that it helps your team hone their app design skills. And a few areas that will improve include the following:

  • Gaining a better understanding of the product and the resources required to complete it
  • Accelerate the team’s understanding of the client’s needs and enhance iteration and delivery 
  • Significantly reduce time to market (TTM)
  • Gain a competitive advantage over rivals entering the same market 

However, developers need to understand what they’re trying to achieve with a minimum viable product. They’ll need to build a vertical slice encompassing emotional design, usability, reliability, and functionality. And never a horizontal slice across only one of these key elements.

4. How To Develop An MVP Successfully 

As we mentioned earlier, an MVP is the sensible choice when embarking on a project that’s high risk. So, you’ll want to tackle it in a manner that leads to a successful outcome. Your minimum viable product should be a usable product, even with its minimal functionality. It should never end up as a demo, feel incomplete, or be meant only to gather feedback from users.

Furthermore, your team should be capable of using the right tools for making and releasing an MVP. They should implement analytics and a robust feedback pipeline for gaining insight into user engagement and responses.

5. Consider The Costs Of Developing An MVP

Depending on the size and complexity of your MVP, it can cost between $25,000 to $100,000. That’s a significant amount of money that could go towards your advertising and marketing endeavors instead. Therefore, it’s vital that you’ve done marketing research and determined what pain points you’re addressing before embarking on your MVP. Then, ensure that you build a community around your app and that you listen to user feedback.

Given the challenges and amount of work required to complete an MVP successfully, it’s best to work with a professional studio. Contact us today to learn how NS804 can help you develop an engaging MVP with brilliant app design.

Perfecting Your MVP Pitch

Crafting The Perfect Pitch For Your MVP

Businesses do not start from nothing. No, rather, a business forms from a thought. Sometimes, a single thought that undergoes nurturing and care until it’s a full-blown business operation. Think about Steve Jobs starting the behemoth that is Apple out of his garage. That’s some all-star thought-nourishment. As with any venture, a vital step is taking that thought, and turning it into a tangible prototype. This is the epicenter of an MVP when it comes to app development.

Designing a prototype that exemplifies the core concepts and values that your idea offers is integral to gaining traction; not only with investors and potential partners but with users as well.

The Ins and Outs of an MVP

MVP stands for minimum viable product. However, an easy way to think about MVPs is like they are the prototype of the application market. In that way, they share many of the same responsibilities and functions that a prototype serves in other industries. For example, MVPs often contain core components of the ultimate design, function, and user experience so that investors and potential partners can get an idea of how your app will deliver its value to the end-user. Now, that’s an extremely important word when it comes to MVPs – ‘value’.

The value-proposition is what should really drive the development of your MVP. When asking yourself or your team which elements need to be included in the MVP, consider which components you would regard as a core aspect of the value proposition. Asking and answering this question acts as a guide that yields a well-crafted MVP that contains the core aspects of your application and demonstrates the value that it will bring to users.

Building Value With Investors and Partners

Investors and potential partners are often akin to NFL coaches in a sense when it comes to “seeing it on the field”. In other words, ideas and potential are just that until they’re proven and tangible. This is what an MVP offers to your investors – the proof they need to sign on the dotted line and hand over the rest of those start-up funds. Plus, by having an MVP to show to interested parties and partners your team will be generating more buzz around the exciting new project that’s being developed.

Doubling down on this point, an MVP should also contain aspects of the user experience and design intentions. This will give investors a more immersive sense of what to expect from the final product, which keeps everyone aligned to the same value proposition and expectations.

Pitch Tips and Tricks

There are many pitching techniques and sales strategies that developers and programmers use. However, the most potent strategy in delivering an impactful MVP pitch is the integrity of the MVP and the value-proposition themselves. A strong MVP speaks for itself.

Wrapping Up on MVPs

The minimum viable product, or MVP, is an extremely important aspect of the application development world to grasp and master. For more information on MVPs or anything else related to app development; continue browsing NS804. NS804 is the proud app developer of the everyday person.

Finding Early Adopters for an MVP

It’s no secret that investors of all sorts receive a constant barrage of inquiries and proposals. Busy investors don’t have the time to read through every proposal that hits their desk.  Therefore, as an appreneur it’s important to stand out amongst the crowd. One way to elevate your proposal is to develop an MVP, or minimal viable product.

An MVP gives investors and early adopters a chance to hold, feel, and test the product before making any important financial decisions.

Developing an MVP is really only the first step in acquiring investors, and early adopters though. After developing an MVP to include in proposals, it’s time for the next step. The next step involves actually recruiting early adopters and early investors.

It’s hard enough to gain the attention of serial-investors, but how does one go about securing early adopters to test the MVP, and provide real market-feedback?

Using an MVP to Attract Early Adopters

There is a bit of an art-form to attracting the right early adopters and investors to your mobile app. This includes utilizing a series of preparation tactics. In other words, doing the due diligence to create an accurate and informative presentation on products that offer a real solution to a real need.

It can be tricky to find the right pool of early adopters and potential investors. This group should represent a larger marketplace that the product ultimately aims to serve. Additionally, this group should possess an expert level of insight into market trends. This, along with other important insight, will be crucial in determining value.

Once there’s an understanding of the demographic for a product, the search for suitable early adopters can begin. This starts with the brands online presence. GutCheckIt has social media as the number two way to attract early adopters. However, there’s a catch.

Engaging an Early Adopter

Many early adopters are so ahead of the curve that they can be hard to actively hook into a conversation. That being said, showing an interest in their challenges and a real desire to provide a successful solution can be the exact appetizer they need.

Once an early adopter is engaged with you, and opening up about their problems, the time will present itself to pitch your solution. This is a sensitive window. This will really be the time to put your product to the test.

The proposal should certainly include a comprehensive business plan. The plan should contain both a marketing, and acquisition strategy. However, there’s an element that will be even more interesting to the eager early adopter. That is practicality. Early adopters, and early investors, will want to test the product.

Testing can provide valuable feedback and insight. Consider and implement this feedback moving forward.

NS804 is dedicated to making mobile-app design services more accessible than ever before. With years of experience that bridges industries, and spans the entire marketplace, NS804 mobile-app design can be trusted to provide users and appreneurs with the absolute best design service available. Visit NS804 and start the conversation today!