It goes without saying that building a Minimum Viable Product is a smart move for a startup. It’s easy way for them to validate their business idea and secure a product-market fit. But what happens if your MVP fails? How is it possible that an MVP fails at all? What are the benefits of a Minimum Viable Product?
Unfortunately, it does more often than you expect. Many things can go wrong already during the MVP development stage, and teams keep on mistakes over and over again.
Here are the 7 most important reasons why MVPs fail. Read on to find what they are and how to avoid them to build a successful Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Cons and benefits of Minimum Viable Product
1. Lack of an adequate project development strategy
Sure, you’re building just an MVP. But you still need to have a good grasp of the basics before launching the development process. It’s critical to understand why you’re building an MVP and how you’re going to do it. These two aspects are the core of your strategy.
- What is the problem that you’re going to solve?
- What is the solution that you will offer to your customers? Is the problem pressing?
- How is the market solving the problem right now, and what makes your solution unique?
- What are the benefits of using your product?
Answering these questions is what business analysts and founders need to do to build a strong foundation for their Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
2. Implementing too many features in MVP
A Minimum Viable Product is simple by definition. It needs to include just enough features to make an impression on early adopters and inspire them to share their feedback. Adding too many features is a mistake that many startups commit. They end up spending more hours on development and generate higher expenses. Sometimes they even overrun their budgets before achieving their goal of delivering an MVP. By that time, their competitors might dominate the market or the problem might become irrelevant. In the worst-case scenario, users might no longer be interested in the solution because they’ve been waiting too much.
You might be tempted to step out of your primary user flow or start focusing on the needs of your secondary target market. But when doing that, you’re risking overblowing your MVP with features it doesn’t really need.
Don’t have clear expectations? Let’s arrange a product design workshop. Together we will define your needs and choose the best software development services for your MVP.
Get in touch with us3. Not having enough features MVP
An MVP is supposed to be a viable product at a minimum scale. Some startups focus on minimalism but forget that the overall product still needs to bring value. How to understand which features you should implement in your MVP? Consider the ones that will make your MVP innovative and solve the most important problem of your target market.
4. Missing the prototyping stage in your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Prototyping is an essential step in any software development project. It always needs to be carried out prior to the development phase.
By prototyping, you can refine your idea for an MVP and get early feedback from users. This will facilitate the overall development process and convince investors that your project is worth to invest. A prototype includes first sketches of the interface architecture, including the basic screen elements and their interactions.
Low-fidelity wireframes might be enough. You can also hire a UX/UI designer who will help you to develop high-fidelity wireframes to capture your idea better.
5. Benefits of market research
Startups often make the mistake of believing that they know what the market wants better than the actual target audience. They assume that the users like or dislike something without even asking them.
Carrying out market research is a critical step. But doing that isn’t enough. You also need to be ready to incorporate the results into your MVP, even if you don’t like them. Let’s say that the result of your market research looks questionable or makes you worry. Redesign the research and carry it out again – but don’t ever ignore it.
6. Lack of user feedback
Getting user feedback about your idea as early as possible is the primary goal of building an MVP. Forgetting about that means that you no longer care about the very reason why you started building an MVP in the first place.
When observing the user experience and gathering feedback, focus on specific market segments. Ask questions that get you the answers you need to develop a better product.
7. Lack of a solid development team
Building a Minimum Viable Product is an art. So, you need a development team that has the right skills and brings value to your project. An MVP is a time- and cost-sensitive project. It’s also extremely important to the survival of your startup. You need to hire expert developers, but also UX/UI designers, testers, business analysts, and project managers. Otherwise, you risk going over your budget or missing deadlines. That can happen because of simple mistakes like too many bugs that need fixing and meetings that could have been an email.
Wrap up – Benefits of Minimum Viable Product
There are a lot of benefits to creating Minimum Viable Product. MVP development is an essential step for any startup to get early validation and develop its product-market fit.
By avoiding these common mistakes, you will increase your chances of developing a successful MVP and releasing it to the market within the set timeline and budget.
At mobitouch, we have plenty of experience in helping startups with building MVPs. Our specialists know what it takes to build an MVP that does the job.
