An essential part of product development is a minimum viable product (MVP). It gives you a profound insight into learning what you need to know to develop their product to perform well in the market. And MVP provides the core value that your users seek from your product and yet helps minimize development costs and risks. Only then can you expect ample customer feedback as you continually improve the product to its final stages as an end product. You need to know the MVP checklist for successful product launches.
What is needed to build a successful MVP
What makes a truly successful MVP can be broken down into three primary categories:
- It must have a prioritized feature list to represent the bare minimum functionality required to solve your customers’ problems.
- It must have a user flow process to show the exact process and the steps your customer will need to take to continue using your product.
- It must have a set of goals to define at least one of the significant problems that you’re trying to solve for your potential customers.
Let us now discuss the above three categories as your primary checklist for successful product launching.
- Goal
At the very outset, you need to clearly define at least one of the significant problems you will solve and who you will solve it for.
1. List out long-term objectives for future versions.
You’ll find many problems when you research the market, issues that can help you to offer, and uncover various other features for your potential customers to benefit from. However, it is best to keep these in the pipeline and try to solve one of the significant problems for the customers when you launch your MVP. This list will help you genuinely understand your MVP’s long-term goals. As time goes by, this value addition and the strategies to integrate them into your MVP will benefit you, your brand, and your customers.
2. Be clear about the problem that you will solve.
It would help if you always understood what the market wants and what challenges you may have to overcome. Choose one of the significant problems that you wish your MVP to be able to solve. This will make your product more valuable to your target audience, thereby creating good business opportunities. This value-addition stage should be able to address why potential customers would choose your product. Once you identify the major problem that most customers want a product to solve, providing them that solution through your product can benefit the users and create massive potential in the market for you.
3. Make sure to know your target market.
At the very outset, you need to analyze and understand who you’re targeting, what they need, and what challenges you may face. In-depth market research and many interviews will get you there. At this point, you should also try to find out how exactly your competitors and their products are doing. This will give you in-depth knowledge and understanding of what is available in the market and how customers react.
- User flow process
This is the stage where you will need to set up the steps that each user type will follow when they use your product.
1. Set up particular user flows
It would help if you charted the entire user flow for every user type. Create a framework of the stages of every process and then focus on the steps that need to be taken so that the user can reach the primary objective seamlessly and quickly. Always break down the primary purpose into smaller tasks that can be completed efficiently. When you know precisely where the user needs to start and where they need to reach, you can clearly describe the process and explain the simplest way to do it.
2. Ensure that the experience is simple
Always ensure that every task is straightforward. When you minimize the number of clicks required to complete a particular action, you will be making the user experience far more valuable for them. The MVP’s ease, simplicity, and functionality should center around the convenience of use.
Once the product has been accepted and ample user feedback is shared, you can always integrate more features and functionality into the product, but that comes later. Make sure that your product is streamlined initially so that your target customers have much clarity and focus when using your MVP.
3. Always view everything from the perspective of the user
Always consider how you expect each user to engage with your product. You need to understand what they wish to do, where they want to reach, and even where exactly they may use your product. Always try to analyze all these things from the user’s point of view. This will help you understand most of the users’ needs, targets, and feelings that they will have during these radio stages.
- Prioritized feature list
To ensure that your MVP is launched with the simplest functioning version, it is essential to know the primary functionality without which the product cannot be launched. We can always determine the essential features that need to be integrated into the first version and why you keep the other features in reserve and be integrated later in further updates and versions. You need to decide on a prioritized list of essential features to release the MVP.
- Story mapping
This is where categories represent each stage of the user’s pathway. The features must be placed by the descending value of priority.
- The Moscow method
This must be divided into features that address all the won’t-haves, could-haves, should-haves, must-haves, etc.
- Matrix for prioritization
This must include effort and result, value and risk, urgency and impact, etc.
Conclusion
After you have the entire empty checklist for a successful product launch in place, you may not only launch your product, but you also need to connect with your users to get unbiased feedback and market validation as well.
