MVP App Development: How To Build An MVP App?
After the inception of MVP in the mobile app development field, it has observed tremendous growth. For those who don’t know, What is MVP? It is known as Minimum Viable Product, and it is a version of a product built with the minimum features for early adopters.
In other words, MVP is a version of a product that enables a team to collect a max amount of validations from customers with minimum effort.
Over the years, many startups, SMEs, and Enterprises have adopted the MVP. Moreover, they develop mobile apps only after their MVP becomes successful.
If you are also planning to launch a mobile app, you should first create an MVP app. Then, convert it into a full-fledged app.
You may have a question, why?
Here, in this blog, we will walk you through some of the most crucial reasons why the MVP app development of your idea would be beneficial.
After this, we would provide the process for MVP development, mistakes to avoid in MVP development, cost of building an MVP, and well-known Minimum Viable Product Examples.
So, let’s get started:
Reasons to Create an MVP App
Here are some reasons you should choose MVP to build an app.
Market Validation
The majority of businesses imagine that their new app will be highly successful in the market as it can resolve a crucial problem of the masses.
Considering this, they convert their idea into a full-fledged app based on their vision. But, only some businesses taste the remarkable success of their app.
The main reason why an app cannot gain response as expected is that the app is not able to fulfill the user’s needs.
MVP app helps you resolve this issue as it allows you to test your application early in the market and obtain customer feedback.
Analyze App Security
Data security is one of the essential elements of any application.
With the help of the MVP mobile app, you will have a clear understanding of those features that can lead to a data breach.
One of the most crucial advantages of the MVP app is that it helps you find out the weaknesses of your app at the design and development stage itself to correct them in time.
Apart from this, it helps you identify all the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with the MVP app. These things will help you in further stages of MVP App Development.
If you want to design a mobile app with integrated payment options, you must ensure there are no loopholes in the app design that make it vulnerable to hackers’ attacks.
Also Read: How Much Does It Cost To Design An App?
Thus, MVP allows you to test your application in the market and then launch a highly secure app that is foolproof from hackers’ attacks.
Minimum Investment
Another essential benefit of MVP App development is that you can build an MVP with minimum investment.
Also, you will get a crystal clear idea of whether your future application is worth the investment or not.
Very few apps on the play store and iOS store get sustainable users because of issues in their user interface and poor performance.
Hence, it is advised to create an MVP as it is an easy way to enhance the mobile app development strategy.
Attracting Investors
Several companies across the globe depend heavily on outside investments. MVP is one of the most effective ways to gain interest from investors.
Also, the majority of investors don’t believe in an idea that is just presented in a paper; hence, you should think of creating an MVP.
Another reason is that MVP allows you to create a functional application that helps you gain the investors’ trust instantly.
Takes Less Time to Develop Your App
For creating an MVP app, you have to consider fewer features, which requires less development time and cost. Hence, you can launch your app rapidly and obtain feedback from the target audience.
After going through the reasons to create an MVP, the next and most important thing is to build an MVP app. Here, we will provide you with a step-by-step process of MVP app development.
How to Build an MVP App?
Follow this simple yet effective process to build an MVP app.
1. Conduct a Market Research
Market analysis is one of the most crucial steps in MVP App Development. Moreover, as per CBInsights, 42% of startups fail because they are not able to meet the market needs. Therefore, we recommend you consider two main questions:
- Who will be my target audience and what are their requirements?
- Does my app meet the expectations as per the user’s needs?
To answer the first question, you have to identify the target audience by doing surveys, polls, etc. To determine the needs of your audience, you need to closely consider habits, behavior, and challenges faced by your audience and how you can overcome them via mobile application.
To get the answer to the second question, you can build a business model canvas to define the app’s primary goals. It helps to list out the value of your app, the benefit it provides to users, the reason why users buy products from you, etc.
2. Do Competitive Analysis
Even if you believe that your app is unique and plan to launch it instantly, you shouldn’t do it. Why? Because every year, millions of mobile apps are launched into the market, so it is vital to carry out competitor analysis.
It helps you determine what your competitors are offering and how you can make your application different from the competitors. In other words, what unique things you can integrate into your app to stay ahead of the competitors.
You can also take feedback from the users of your competitor applications to analyze their expectations. Later, while building MVP, you can include these to meet their needs.
3. Map Out the User Flow
In the user flow, you need to outline all the steps a user must take to complete a specific task. For example, consider your app as a region, then you need to define all the roads to reach that region.
In the same way, outline a user flow of your app, as it helps to discover process stages and the needed steps to get to your goal.
In other words, you need to make a user flow diagram.
Further, a user flow diagram will be beneficial for your app in the following ways:
- List of all the targeted problems and solutions for the same.
- Check the entire user flow from the point of view of the user.
- It helps you distinguish between what the user wants and what you offer.
- Provide support to users in the app and captivate them to perform an action.
- Find a place to keep the lead magnet or call to action in your application.
4. Defining the MVP App Features
You have to sketch out all the features that users require while using your app. For this, you can put out all the features that come to your mind on paper. Later, when the MVP development process gets over, you can verify it with the list.
Moreover, you have to prioritize all the MVP features that you require at every stage. By answering some hard-hitting questions such as what users want? How will they execute a task? What is the unique feature that users need? etc., will help you to prioritize them.
Besides these, you can prioritize complete features based on the low, medium, and high priority. As soon as you bifurcate all the features, you can mention the goal of the first version of the app and switch to building an MVP.
To look at your MVP in a short amount of time, you should build an MVP prototype.
5. Design & Develop your MVP App
As soon as you have prioritized the features, the next thing that you need to consider is the design and development of your MVP app. Here, it would be best to allocate sufficient time for the task.
You can begin with the wireframing and the basic screens and navigational methods for the specific platform. Here, you need to ensure that the MVP app screens’ design is straightforward, interactive, and intuitive.
Besides this, you need to remember that the MVP is equal to the end-product and fulfills your customers’ requirements.
You can also hire a mobile app development company. They will brainstorm on your idea and develop an MVP per the project requirements.
6. Follow the BML – Build, Measure, Learn Method
As soon as your app is developed, it needs to be tested on customers to get feedback. By testing your app, you can determine the direction of your MVP app development. Moreover, users also provide details about what is right, what MVP lacks, what is great, and what you can do to improve the app.
In short, it helps you to verify the acceptability and overall competitiveness of the application in the industry.
Moreover, you may have to go through some repetitions of the Build-Learn-Measure cycle to reach a high-quality MVP version. It further helps in the final release of the application.
Mistakes to Avoid While Building an MVP
Here are some of the crucial mistakes that you should avoid while building an MVP:
1. Ignoring the Market Research
The primary purpose of MVP is to test the idea into the market. However, one of the prime mistakes that startups make is they do not spend enough time & effort on market research. It happens mainly because the startups rush to monetize their web app idea. They want to complete the MVP as soon as possible.
Due to this, they conduct analysis of only a few things. Further, they believe that the research is enough to make a suitable MVP. It leads to a major loss in cost as well as time. Therefore, it is essential to understand the needs of your target audience before starting an MVP.
2. Adding too much in the MVP
Minimum Viable Product is not the final product. It is meant to be a prototype. Therefore, adding too many features and making the MVP perfect is not feasible. Also, it will cost you a lot when you make changes while testing the MVP.
The mistake will further delay the time of MVP deployment. It will also waste a majority of your time. One of the best things to avoid this mistake is to make a list of primary features and integrate them as soon as possible using different technologies. It will help you launch MVP effectively and get users’ feedback on time.
3. Not Setting a Proper Feedback System
The ultimate purpose of the MVP is to test the idea from the early adopters and then convert it into a final product. Hence, you need to obtain user feedback and update your product accordingly.
If you do not have a proper feedback system, you might be committing several mistakes as follows.
Firstly, you forget the feedback and do not gather it. Due to this, you will not be able to identify wrong things from a user’s perspective. It results in a second mistake, which is the requirement of quantitative and qualitative feedback.
To get the quantitative feedback, you need to answer some questions, such as, how many errors were faced when using the product? What was the average usage time of the MVP? While the qualitative feedback depends on the product’s effectiveness and the audience’s thoughts about the same.
To get rid of this mistake, you should focus on gathering both types of feedback and make decisions accordingly. You can detect issues on time and resolve them efficiently.
4. Building an Inexperienced Team
Startups do not have a sufficient budget to hire an app development team. Hence they hire only a few employees. Due to this, they commit two types of mistakes. They either hire one employee who looks after the MVP or spend a lot of resources hiring a team.
In the first case, if only one employee works on MVP, then it will take a lot of your time and delay the deployment. In the second case, you don’t have a guarantee that the team you hire has proper knowledge of MVP or not. Moreover, the team might not be able to communicate well.
One of the best solutions is to hire an experienced mobile app development team. They can understand your idea and provide you with the most suitable MVP on time.
5. Not Providing Enough Resources to Team
Although the MVP should utilize the minimum resources for the development, one should not compromise. You shouldn’t hesitate in providing the required resources for MVP development. If you don’t offer enough resources to the team, it will result in delays, hindrances, improper work, etc.
How Much Does it Cost to Develop an MVP?
There is not a fixed cost to build an MVP. The cost of building an MVP depends on various factors as follows:
Platform: Android or iOS
Whom you hire: Freelancer, In-house team, or an Outsourcing App Development Company
Hourly Rate: It depends on the Location and the Experience of the professionals
In general, the average cost to develop an MVP is 20-30% of the overall app development cost.
For instance, the cost of app development is $10,000, then the cost of building an MVP would be around $2,000-$3,000.
Popular Minimum Viable Product Examples
Here we will walk you through some famous minimum viable product examples. You would have definitely heard of these companies but may not know that they started as an MVP.
1. Dropbox
Several times, building a unique and attractive video is enough to put your brand in front of the audience. The audience in the digital era connects with a video.
Dropbox had understood the importance of video and created an MVP video that explained the benefits of storing data online. They got positive feedback from the audience and their signups increased to 5x in just one night.
The feedback helped the startup to obtain funds for building the actual product.
Currently, Dropbox is one of the most well-known file hosting services used by companies worldwide.
2. Amazon
Jeff Bezos started selling books at low prices in 1994 with an online bookstore known as Amazon. He bought books from the distributors and then shipped them to the customers based on the orders.
After generating high sales from the books, he started exploring products that he could sell online. He curated the list to five products that include videos, books, software, computers, and compact discs.
Further, he added new products and converted the online bookstore to a massive online marketplace. It has now become the eCommerce marketplace and offers a personalized experience to users through a website and mobile app.
3. Airbnb
The primary purpose of Airbnb is to remove the middlemen and offer short-term renting to travelers at a low cost.
Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia are the two product designers living in a loft apartment in San Francisco. They were having difficulties in paying rent for the home.
Both of them want to generate more income and hence thought of creating a platform to provide their room for rent. Therefore, product designers captured some beautiful photos of the apartment and then shared them on their simple website. In no time, they got 3 paying guests. Moreover, Paul Chesky, one of the founders, started living in different Airbnbs to feed the product.
It has become the biggest online marketplace for lodging, specially homestays for vacation rentals and tourism activities.
4. Spotify
In 2008, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon identified that music lovers do not have a specific platform to stream songs. Hence, focused on building one core feature, i.e., music streaming rather than including many fancy features.
They created a desktop app with a freemium version and conducted a closed beta test. They found that people loved this model. The company also created a mobile app and collaborated with many song artists worldwide.
Spotify is currently the leading music streaming service worldwide.
5. Twitter
As soon as Apple released iTunes, the podcasting business Odeo was going through the downside. Various podcasting companies started investing more money to gain market share. Odeo thought out of the box and organized hackathons to discover some new ideas.
In one hackathon, they found an idea to create an SMS-based messaging platform known as Twttr.
In the beginning, the Odeo employees were spending massive amounts of money for posting SMS on the platform. They further converted Twttr into Twitter, a microblogging and social networking website.
Conclusion
We hope that now you have understood the importance of MVP in app development and the streamlined process to build an MVP app.
At Guru TechnoLabs, we believe that every product needs to be built considering the target audience and the current trends in the particular industry.
If you plan to build an MVP app of your idea, you can reach out to us. Our mobile app developers will provide new insights and suggestions to create a highly successful MVP app.
