Why Start-ups Must Consider Building an MVP for Their Mobile Apps?

It’s no secret that on the way to launch the products, startups have to make a lot of choices. From feature designing to budget revision, every little thing matters. At this point, there is no better suggestion than telling them to launch their own mobile app idea with an MVP. Startups often get confused about a Prototype and an MVP, however, they do have differences.

In this article, we will explore the interesting world of MVP, why it is important for startups and how it can help a mobile app idea to scale its business.

What is a Minimal Viable Product (MVP)?

Minimal Viable Product comes with some limited features to create initial interest among your early customers to get feedback from them that helps to create a fully featured mobile app. It allows your mobile app development idea with the customers directly. You can consider it as a basic version of your app.

Difference between Prototype and MVP

The prototype is more of a draft, which are created to find errors and are often far from being perfect. Building a prototype gives you a sneak-peek that how users will interact with your mobile app. Your mobile app development team can gather feedback and make further changes to the prototype. It also helps in coming up with new functionality ideas for an app.  

On the other hand, MVP is the minimum version of the final mobile application only with core functionalities which can be presented to the market. It has to be user-friendly and attractive without minimum bugs or issues. It is like a method which startups or companies use to verify the idea about their app.

Why MVP is important?

It often happens companies, startups or individuals end up launching a mobile application that no one needs. Building an MVP offers the groundwork of the product to the market which makes it easy to understand whether the mobile app has any value at all. And if it does, the companies and startups can proceed with the advance mobile app development. However, an efficient mobile app idea with proper MVP can start making money from the early adopters too.

For startups, they can present this basic featured mobile app to the investors for fundraising. If everything goes according to the plan, the mobile app development team will begin developing the full version of the product.

Source

“60% of the app features are not at all used by users.”

These features are an unnecessary waste of development time and resources. MVP will help you to find out which trend is optimal for full app development.

How MVP works?

It all starts with idea initiation, which must fulfill the target users’ needs. The more information you can gather from the target audiences, higher the chance to develop a better mobile app. You should be clear about your app idea and for what purpose you are building it. With this clear impression, you can talk to a mobile app developer to build an MVP App. The MVP method helps to speed up the app’s launch with a small budget.

Considering your idea, the mobile app development team will start working on the prototype of the app. I recommend you to go for an agile development methodology that allows continuous testing of the app design as well. Keeping the foundational concept in mind the MVP is launched. It is all about the right balance between minimal design and maximum value.

Once you have got the confirmation from the early adopters, you can ask your development team for a fully functional & advanced mobile app. Based on user feedback, you can add components that users expect to see in the app. There is always a room for improvements for any mobile app. It is better you get your mobile app developed from the same team who have worked on the MVP. This ensures hassle-free communication making the process easy.

Examples of Popular Apps with great MVP

Vivino

Let’s talk about one of the most popular wine scanning app Vivino with 35 million users developed by Sphinx Solutions. The very first version of this app was simply used for scanning wine bottle label and receiving the price, detailed information about the wine. Their minimum viable product was widely accepted by investors as they accurately designed the core functionalities. We took that basic concept and enabled more features to make it the World’s largest wine community and the best place to discover and buy wine.

Dropbox

When Dropbox was launched, an MVP was built to show the file sharing between a fluid network of collaborators, particularly the big and edited documents. The competition was tough as by that time there were tons of existing cloud-storage platforms. To promote Dropbox’s MVP, they created a video, where they explained how to use their application. The video showed how the application works to fulfill the file sharing across all major platforms like iOS, Windows, OSX, etc. This content marketing strategy generated great curiosity among the target audience. And this gave the company confidence to launch their product with full functionalities.

Tips for MVP app development

• MVP version should be basic, but should not deprive your mobile app’s USP
• Initially, start by adding only the required functionality
• Parts of features and functionalities should be integrated after user feedback comes in
• Keep monetizing your mobile app progress, focusing on the foundational concept
• Always remember the app’s overall viability
• If the MVP results are not up to the mark, don’t worry, talk to your mobile app development team for a way out

With the competition getting stiffer, the importance of building an MVP app for any mobile app has increased. MVP showcases, whether your app idea is really unique and helpful to the users or not. To save money, time and resources when entering the mobile app market with a new project, MVP guides to you and your target audience as well. An MVP app brings more scalability and greater chances for your mobile app retention.

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