8 Different Types of Minimum Viable Products

Posted by Peter S.
4
Nov 26, 2022
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Creating a minimal viable product my seem like a lot of extra work, but it will help you learn more about your target market, receive constructive criticism, and refine your concept. Some new businesses are frightened off by the prospect of releasing a beta version of their product. Still, in our experience, one of the most prominent challenges startups face is not a clear understanding of their target market or their ideal customers' needs. So they invest a tonne of resources into developing a product with features no one actually cares about.


Startups often fail because their creators rush to make a perfect product and release it to customers before it's ready. One's learning ability is a startup's single most crucial factor in moving forward. In order to learn, you don't need to release a fully functional product. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for your business is the cheapest and most intelligent approach to begin learning and experimenting while still giving customers access to your product.


The market is flooded with different minimum viable products (MVPs) that You can tailor to fit any need or price range. If you're unfamiliar with the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) concept, this guide will help you grasp the big picture and zero in on the correct variant for your needs.

What Is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?


To get a product off the ground, the first version needs only the bare essentials to serve its primary purpose, hence the term "minimum viable product" (MVP). Consider the following: Minimum features are necessary for the product to work, while Viable signifies sufficient characteristics. Building a minimum viable product doesn't have to be complicated. It needs to:


  • Solve a primary issue


  • Serve a target audience.


  • Provide a clearer picture of what needs to be built


  • Reduce costs in development by eliminating the possibility of adding features that users won't like.


In a nutshell, a minimum viable product (MVP) is a product that is provided to users to test features and collect feedback for further development. It's a tool used by startups to gauge interest and enthusiasm among their intended audience. If the concept is promising, they will use the responses to refine the next iteration.


Basics You Need to Know About MVP


Creating an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) may seem like a lot of extra work, but it will help you learn more about your target market, receive constructive criticism, and refine your concept. Some new businesses are frightened off by the prospect of releasing a beta version of their product. Still, one of the most prominent challenges startups face is not developing APIs for projects or a clear understanding of their target market or their ideal customers' needs. They invest a tonne of resources into developing a product with features no one cares about.


Startups often fail because their creators rush to make a perfect product and release it to customers before it's ready. One's learning ability is a startup's single most crucial factor in moving forward. To learn, you don't need to release a fully functional product. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for your business is the cheapest and most intelligent approach to begin learning and experimenting while still giving customers access to your product.


The market is flooded with different minimum viable products (MVPs) that You can tailor to fit any need or price range. If you're unfamiliar with the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) concept, this guide will help you grasp the big picture and zero in on the correct variant for your needs.

Examples That Eventually Became Successful Businesses


What factors should you focus on when creating a ​​minimum viable product? Here are some of the best minimum viable product examples that became successful.

1. AdWords Express


AdWords Express is a streamlined version of the original AdWords platform that enables customers to have targeted advertisement copy written on their behalf. Although at first glance it appeared to be mechanical, the team that developed this product was actually comprised of nothing more than a group of students producing advertisements at breakneck speed. After it was determined that this approach was successful, AdWords Express underwent additional development so that the process could be fully computerized.

2. Airbnb


When Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia first moved to San Francisco in October 2007, they shared a loft apartment. However, they soon found themselves unable to pay the $1,500 per month in rent. Chesky and Gebbia's concept of turning their living room into a bed and breakfast involves setting up an inflatable mattress.


As they put it in interviews, their initial intention was "to make a little cash," but they soon recognized that connecting B&Bs with potential guests might be lucrative. They developed a website but had trouble getting users to sign up. This is why the San Francisco firm opted to advertise on Craigslist. Airbnb was able to attract a large number of new users by enabling hosts to post listings on the popular classifieds website Craigslist automatically.


3. Buffer


Buffer was an early MVP that quickly became a popular app with over 100,000 users. British businessman Joel Gascoigne came up with a brilliant plan in 2010. As he explained in retrospect, his goal was to "take the scheduling feature of numerous Twitter clients and applications and make that one feature fantastic." Gascoigne initially built a landing page to gauge the product's interest and see whether it would be viable as a business. 


After receiving a certain number of signups, Gascoigne spent seven weeks developing and designing the application's first edition. Buffer was only compatible with Twitter in its first iteration, severely limiting its usefulness. In the first four days after its release, Buffer had one paying customer. In the following weeks, the number of users grew to 100; in the subsequent nine months, it increased to over 100,000.

4. Amazon


Nearly anyone is aware that Amazon started as an electronic bookseller. But you might not know that when Jeff Bezos first started out, he fulfilled orders for his online bookstore by purchasing books from wholesalers and sending them out to customers. Sales of books were so strong that it seemed sensible to keep adding more items to the shop, buy storage facilities, and eventually tailor the shopping experience to each customer.

5. AngelList


The success of many platforms depends on a large user base, yet even those that need a lot of users to take off can begin with a modest minimum viable product. One such example is AngelList, a website that connects employers and investors. The initial contacts were made using the team's existing network and email. This proved that AngelList's business model was successful, allowing the company to expand into the larger platform it is today.


The MVP strategy is worth pursuing if it fits the offering you intend to provide. It's better to make a change early, before investing too much money, in case your initial concept doesn't go over with users. In addition, assuming the proposal is feasible, an MVP model will allow you to include early customer feedback in the design process.

6. Facebook


When it originally appeared on the market, Facebook was nothing more than a straightforward medium via which users could maintain contact with long-lost friends. Every single member was a student at Harvard, and they kept as low of a profile as they possibly could. The initial deployment of the platform was successful enough to justify the platform's further development, and currently it supports a greater variety of

7. Groupon


Groupon is a vast platform operating in countries all over the globe. However, it began as a piecemeal MVP, promoting the services of local businesses and offering deals that lasted for a limited amount of time. Initially, the founders could not build their own content management system, so they used a WordPress blog. They waited until they were successful before scaling the venture.

8. DropBox 


The developers of DropBox didn't rush the product to market, but now that it's available, you can make changes to files on your desktop and have those changes reflected instantly on all of your other devices. They decided to make a video as their Minimum Viable Product. Although the three-minute video explained the entire synchronization procedure, it only scratched the surface. The video was successful in its goal of attracting early adopters thanks to its abundance of tech jokes. As a result of the video, beta sign-ups went from 5,000 to 75,000 in what seemed like no time at all.

Final Words


The traditional single-feature software development prototype is very different from the MVP concept. There are other ways to test an idea that works for different goals and types of products. Choosing the correct MVP for a startup app lets you run experiments without spending much money or time and still get valuable data for further development. To get started, you can get help from an MVP product development company, as this will help you find the right MVP approach and build the right assets for successful customer engagement.





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