Why a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is necessary for Mobile App Development?
Today, mobile application is becoming increasingly more present than ever in our everyday lives – from shopping, to entertainment, and various business tasks. Many businesses are transitioning to mobile and thus, looking to efficiently develop a mobile application for their own business.
However, there’s always a lingering question of whether your mobile app will be well received by the public audience or not. So, to reduce the risks inherent with mobile app development project, app owners can build a minimum viable product (MVP) mobile app to assess users’ reception against real data, to ensure market validation.
An MVP will allow app owners to continuously improve their app through users’ feedback, as well as helping them to apply their findings to build a product with a better chance for succeeding in the market place.
Definition of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Mobile app development-wise, Minimum Viable Product can be considered as the core structure of any mobile application. MVP allows businesses to validate the main app ideas with their app target audiences.
One of the critical features of MVP is that it incorporates only the features deemed necessary for the app, the ones which app owner think are needed.
Once targeted app users can get their hands on the app, they’ll be able to experience the look and feel of the app core features and give feedback to the development team on such experience.
Consequently, app owners can make out the response of their product in the market. Based on real data, app owners can then analyze to identify which specific areas need improvement and continuously improve upon it.
Additionally, app owners can either release their MVP mobile app to the targeted group of users or publish the app directly to the app market place. And again, if user feedbacks are not favorable, then there could be something wrong with the app ideas and such an app would require further improvement.
So, what are the benefits of developing an MVP Mobile App?
As the mobile industry is getting more competitive day by day, the importance of an MVP mobile app has become even more prevalent. MVP allows businesses to invest just enough in a product to find out whether their ideas can get traction in the market or not. It offers app owners the quickest and most efficient way to reach the market and gather data on user feedback to evaluate the development project.
Fastest and accurate way to gauge user reception about the App
Many entrepreneurs and businesses organization usually have an idea and greenlit the development project as they think it’s necessary to develop an app based on such ideas. The entire process usually takes months and the final result is a full package product. However, there’s a limitation with this approach because app owners would not be able to make informed decisions (based on real data) on their app development project.
On the contrary, having an MVP will allow businesses with an opportunity to collect users’ opinions on the app ideas and experience. Thus, app owners would only have to concentrate on the features that are needed and/or important, improving and enhancing app experience for users.
Effective development cost
As mentioned previously, the primary objective of the Minimum Viable Product is to only concentrate on the key app ideas and app features. Therefore, MVP does not focus on other secondary ideas or other not very important features. All so that business organizations, especially start-ups, would get the benefits provided by MVP.
Here many start-ups can kick-start their development project at a reasonable budget within an acceptable required time-frame. This is because the cost of app development is reduced for the implementation of basic features only.
MVP Helps to Evaluate the Technical Performance
With MVP mobile app, business organizations can evaluate the performance of their product technical wise. Specifically, the development team can assess if they are on the right development track and incorporate the best suitable technologies and trends while building the app.
Eventually, it’s always the app users who determine the outcomes of your app project success. From feedbacks gathered, app owners can find out if their mobile app has been successful in helping users solving their specific unique problems based on app ideas. Furthermore, businesses get to determine the success rate of the app during the initial stages, which helps in saving money and time.
Improve App Security
Mobile applications today go beyond the sole purpose of entertainment, as apps can help facilitate various business tasks including making online payment. Thus, app security has become vital for complying with security and regulations when it comes to handling digital transactions. With MVP mobile app, business organizations will be able to identify security loopholes and resolve them accordingly.
Another benefit of fixing the security issues at the early stage of development is that the app remains bug-free right at the beginning, which in turn improves the app performance and security, enhancing users’ experience. Ultimately, increase the chance for success of the app project.
Creating an Improved Version of the App
Furthermore, MVP lets app owners measure if their app is getting the level of recognition as expected. If businesses find that their product has not achieved the level of recognition and/or adoption from users, then they can re-assess the app ideas and features in order to create an improved version of the app.
Examples of Popular Apps with Great MVP Success
Many successful app products today began with an understanding that they need to invest just enough to prove their ideas assumptions. And even after a successful launch, those companies still frequently revisit their core app ideas in order to continuously improve on those features helping solve a particular set of problems for their targeted group of users. Among the successful MVP apps are Spotify, Instagram, and Uber.
Uber
The ride-hailing app started out as an MVP with the basic goals of connecting between drivers and riders to quickly provide an affordable car service to its users. UberCab was the MVP with a simple design with only one central feature.
Gradually, Uber has improved its product and offers a wide range of additional features such as fare estimations, fare splitting, estimated trip time, advance booking, etc. All these features were introduced after the original MVP was successfully validated in the market.
The MVP version of Instagram was first introduced 9 years ago, with only a handful of filters for photo edits and sharing. Now, Instagram has become the most popular app in photo sharing with many more filters and edits functionalities, including many additional features such as video content, direct messaging, IGTV, Instagram stories, etc. As Instagram iteratively improve their products, their MVP has now turned into one of the most popular social media platform.
Spotify
Together with Apple Music and YouTube, Spotify is among the most popular music streaming platforms available on the market. At first, Spotify MVP was developed as a desktop application for testing purposes on their targeted users. When it is validated that Spotify MVP was exactly what its users looking for, they started to expand the app market by cooperating with more labels and roll out their now highly successful mobile app.
Concluding the Discussion
There are numerous factors that affect the success of a business mobile app development project, and the Minimum Viable Product is a necessary stage, especially for start-ups due to the scarcity of investment funds available.
Particularly, and on a general level, it’s important to validate app ideas in the market before starting to invest in a full-packaged deal and make it big.
Get in touch with TP&P Technology if you are searching for a trusted software development partner in Vietnam to help with your Minimum Viable Product development needs.
