Measure and Learn

An MVP is basically a way to test if your idea will be loved by people with the minimum effort invested.

Your product should be the answer to the market gap, to something people are missing out on, to something they desperately want, while possibly still being unaware of it.

Nevertheless, when creating an MVP, you should not only try to solve your users’ pain points, but you should also think of ways of identifying whether you managed to do that successfully.

That is when all the creativity of a product development cycle should make way for analytics, metrics and data.

Before you launch your MVP, identify your key success parameters.

This is meant to be the data that you can rely upon when analyzing if your product is exactly what your target audience needs.

Be careful what data to study, however: in most cases choose qualitative over quantitative.

The number of users that downloaded your app can be impressive, but what’s the point if they have never actually used it?

Foremost, though, gather your early adopters’ feedback!

You heard me right.

The ultimate way to develop a successful product is to measure your users’ satisfaction level.

So send out polls and surveys, study on-site user behavior, email your users, conduct usability tests, or simply reach out to them personally for a user interview.

If you want your product to truly satisfy your users’ needs, talk to them!

Ask them the right questions and brace yourself for the answers. This is the feedback you should be listening to, as it directly reflects the chances of your product’s success.

Build Up

If you did your homework right and launched an MVP that people enjoy, the next move is to grow your product accordingly.

With your users’ feedback in one hand, you know for sure which features they enjoy the most and what those features lack.

Now prioritize your product backlog accordingly.

With an iterative approach in your other hand, slowly but steadily (but never forget the time-to-market factor) build up your product into something your users would love.

Do not stop inspecting, though, or talking to your users.

This way you’ll be able to notice the shift in your end-users’ behavior and needs early and adjust the further development of your product in an agile manner.

Let Go

On the other hand, your users might indicate a feature (or more than one of them) they find useless.

And the toughest thing is when that feature is the one you have fought for the most!

You might have paid extra to have this feature launched together with MVP. You might have imagined how happy your users would be having this feature. You might have stated this feature was what will have made you all a fortune.

And it might come as a shock, but what you love won’t necessarily be loved by your users.

So prepare yourself to let go of features you invested so much time, money and energy into.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, one of the first things he did was to get rid of numerous products Apple offered at that time, and to focus on the quality of the few ones.

If Steve Jobs could do it, you surely can too!

Takeaways

Two things lie at the core of every successful product: users and analytics.

Co-create your product together with your users, engage with them regularly and implement their feedback into your product roadmap.

Being driven by the proper analytics, you’ll be able to make an informed decision and point out the feedback that will bring true value to your product.

‘Cause building your MVP only gets you halfway through.

What really matters is what you do afterwards.

An MVP is just the starting point of development, so you need to keep in mind that there is still a lot of work ahead of you if you want your product to succeed.

Your MVP’s essential set of features will either pass the test or fail, but whatever happens, you’ll learn something.