An MVP (minimum viable product) is a product with the bare minimum features required to perform the main function(s). It is used for the market validation of an idea. For example, if you have a new business idea in your mind, like a new service or a product, then instead of spending your resources on the full-fledged development of the service/product, you can prepare an MVP to test your idea’s market potential first.
This MVP is released to a subsection of your target market and user feedback is collected and analysed. If the idea is validated and there is a demand for the product, you can move on to the next stage of materializing your business idea.
However, there can also be other reasons to develop an MVP
- Investors often require a complete POC (proof of concept) in order to invest in a startup organization or new product. MVP is an important part of POC development.
- Entrepreneurs wanting to expand their business to new markets also use MVPs to test their product in new socio-economic systems. This prevents the risk of launching a product in an unfavourable market.
- The user feedback gathered during the deployment of MVP highlights the scope of improvement. Iterations can be made to bring incremental improvement and release a high quality product in the market.
In case the market validation fails, you can always make adjustments in the service or product based on user feedback and relaunch the MVP.
MVP for a marketplace
A marketplace is a website where multiple vendors can sign up and sell their products. The marketplace owner mainly earns through sales commissions. Today, there are various types of marketplaces available, such as furniture marketplaces, electronics marketplaces, cosmetic products marketplace, etc. Two most popular examples of marketplaces are Alibaba and Amazon.
If you are looking forward to releasing a similar marketplace in a new market or have a completely new idea for your marketplace, then a marketplace MVP will help you confirm the profitability of the market. If there’s no demand for your marketplace service, for example, neither vendors are ready to sign up nor can you find enough buyers, then you can look to release your marketplace services in some other region.
Let’s discuss the MVP development process
The actual development of a minimum viable product (MVP) depends on various factors including the number and complexity of features, the selected development technology, number of developers and testing/QA rounds.
Along with the aforementioned, the feature selection round in itself is time consuming. Entrepreneurs often require professional IT consultants to find the right set of features for their marketplace MVP. Then, there are various approaches to software development that also impact the overall time.
The following are the two most popular software development approaches
Waterfall Development: This approach follows a linear method from the requirement gathering stage to the product delivery stage. As every stage in the waterfall method is based on the output of the previous stage, any changes during the development process are not possible.
Agile Development: The agile development approach is based on incremental improvement and includes various sprints. Each sprint has different backlogs to be tested and developed. Any changes can be introduced in these backlogs in agile development.
Although agile development is a lengthier process, it is more suited for MVP development. This is because an MVP also includes the collection of consumer feedback, which may indicate some changes and scope for improvement.
However, there is even a faster approach for MVP development, which is using readymade MVPs. Several companies develop these MVPs and sell them to entrepreneurs for business idea validation. In the market today, you can find an MVP for various kinds of business ideas like online food delivery, home services booking, cab booking, eLearning, rental marketplaces, etc.
These MVPs comprise all essential features to facilitate your business operations and can be quickly deployed in your desired market. On validation, you can further customize or enhance these MVPs to launch the final service or product.
Now you have a clear idea about MVP and its development process. If you are looking to find a professional MVP development company then you have to do proper research. As per my research, FATbit Technologies is one such MVP development agency that caters to the diverse needs of entrepreneurs. It has a wide range of eCommerce MVPs with free-to-use demos that you can try on its official website and use to validate and launch your business. You can check its full range of MVP products online.
