6 Ways to Test Minimum Viable Product

Minimum Viable Product is a great way to test your idea and figure out whether it addresses the problems of the masses or not. MVP is not only the testing version of your product. Rather, it is a predictor to help you recognize whether the concept is great enough to attract the masses. Or it is just a concept that looks great on paper, but not practically possible.

Startup companies are short of time and money. They are not in the position of investing too much on the first-hand. Moreover, it is foolishness to invest your time and money on something that is not tested before and nobody knows about it.

Moreover, it is quite frustrating for the people to experience the buggy product. For this reason, testing MVP on different levels can be quite useful. Testing of MVP depends on the type of product you are introducing. Different kinds of MVPs can range from early prototypes to AdWords test.

In this post, we are going to discuss types of MVP testing techniques you can adopt to get the real picture of what results to expect.

Interviewing customers is the proven method to give you insights on how well your MVP will respond. You are not selling anything in this phase; rather you are taking opinions, listening and learning.

Customer interview will help you identify pain points, areas of improvement and features that are lagging. You can simply list down the problems that your product can solve. For each question, you can get the opinions and suggestions.

The interviews can prove to be the treasure chest of actionable acumens. No matter, whether the interviewee is interested in your product or not, it will reveal more ideas without costing you a dime.

Creating a landing page is another way to test your MVP. The landing page can tell you about your visitors, potential customers who are somehow interested in your product.

A landing page is just like a marketing copy to explain your product’s features and let your visitors signup. On the other hand, it also allows you to test your MVP against the market expectations. Some people view it as email capture pages, but it is far beyond what you could imagine.

A perfect landing page describes the product features in detail, pricing and other related stuff. For example, you can create pricing and feature table to see what people are opting for. It will also help you analyze what attracts them the most and what price are they willing to pay. You can come up with better pricing plan in the future as well as improved features.

Nothing can beat the power of video marketing, especially explainer videos. Minimum Viable Product is all about the demonstration. Take advantage of videos and explain your product in 2 to 3 minutes.

An explainer video can do miracles and test your MVP will be much easier and responsive. For instance, Dropbox demonstrated 3-minute video, which resulted in sign ups from 5000 users to 75,000 users overnight.

You can post your video on YouTube or Social Media platform to get the response. For example, you can add a survey form at the end of the video and ask open-ended questions. The questions can be like what features were relevant, what price are they willing to pay more happily and what would they like to have in the future.

Validating market through ad campaign is an ideal way to validate your idea. Facebook and Google ad campaigns will help you to shortlist people by age, gender and location to reach them without much effort.

For instance, running ad campaigns will give you an idea of what is the CTR (click through rate) and conversions. The information will be helpful in analyzing what features of your product are most tempting.

Moreover, you can also make use of banners to drive them to your landing page. Running ad campaigns will give you a much broader picture on how your product testifies the real user problems.

Digital prototypes such as mockups, prototypes and wireframes are another great way to demonstrate product’s functionality. It can vary from low-quality sketches to screenshot previews.

Using collaborative Wireframes and Prototyping Tools can allow you to depict what you want to build and share those ideas with the audience. Digital prototypes are ideal because anyone having knowledge of PowerPoint and technical know-how can build it. It can drive your product from concept to functionality without breaking the bank.

A/B tests are very effective as it allows you to test the effectiveness of different marketing campaigns. It eliminates all the guesswork and allows you to analyze how visitors react to the design of your product.

A/B allows you to test two variants of the same marketing copy. Some of your visitors will see the version A while other will see the version B. The conversion can help you understand how visitors are being engaged on your page and which one performs best. How can you apply for your MVP development program?

Simply design two variants of landing pages with different color schemes, pricing and features. Set the prices too high in “A” variant and relatively low in the “B” variant. It will give you an idea whether people are willing to opt in for your product, even if the prices are too high. Moreover, you can also bring different features in both variants to test which one is convertible.

Whenever it comes to MVP testing, you have plenty of choices. However, before you opt in for the test, make sure you are well aware of the technique. Before investing huge on a final product launch, make sure you make the right more. Develop an MVP, test it and deploy it after the results are shown positive.

Author Bio:

Ray Parker is an entrepreneur and internet marketer with over 15 years of experience in Search Engine Optimization, Creative Writer and Digital Marketing with IQVIS. He has worked with several clients from all over the globe to offer his services in various domains with a proven track record of success.