At the very basic, MVP is the bare-bones model of a product that has only the essential features to supply the core value to the marketplace in the fastest way possible. MVP is deployed to accumulate feedback and notice whether or not early adopters want that product. The user’s insights and choices will pave the way for MVP marketplace builders to tweak the product/service accordingly and plan further updates in future releases.
An efficient MVP
Building an MVP is all about the methods and strategy that you choose instead of development. Although after building an MVP, you have to update it from time to time. It would be wrong to say that MVP is something that you just build once. In order to create an MVP that is efficient for your business, you need to include some vital features and exclude some non-vital features. While building an MVP, you also need to consider that it is able to ship the lightest product as quickly as possible in the market. The whole process is just like doing experiments and making the version of MVP better every time until you reach the best model that fits the market.
Following are some methods and factors explained that will help you take your business forward with help of a minimum viable e-commerce platform. The main three factors to build an efficient MVP are:
- M – minimal
- V – viable
- C – competitive
- Minimal
If you create an MVP that is the simplest model of your product or service and is built with fewer resources in a limited or short span of time, that model will be categorized as minimal. You might ask yourself some questions while navigating to minimal points like what can be the biggest risk assumption or what is the smallest experiment I can perform to test this risk assumption? After answering such questions, you will be able to create an MVP with minimum resources and time that will also take your business forward.
- Viable
If your marketplace is running successfully even for a single group of audience, it is viable and effective. Being viable along with being minimal is hard to achieve but not impossible and it also takes your MVP marketplace to another level. In order to become viable, you need to research your target audience. Try to understand their issues and solve them with your product. Improve your product, experiment, correct your mistakes, learn and continue doing this until you have reached your goal of a successful MVP marketplace.
- Competitive
In this part, the focus is the only important factor. Always be focused on your marketplace and market space. Know your competitors and the qualities they lack. Provide such qualities in form of an improved version of your product. Try to stand out among the crowd of competitors by creating an effective MVP. Make good strategies and act through them in order to stand out.
Engagement
It enables a startup marketplace to measure not only the current value of the product but also the future value of the product. Engagement also assists in improving the customer’s experience based on their feedback.
Marketing
Although at the start, MVP is not the finished product. As discussed before, MVP is updated and improved time from to time thus there is a difference in the marketing of an MVP and of a final product. It is better to start with the promotion of the product as soon as the MVP is launched. Start with whatever is cheap or free like content marketing, social media marketing, or email marketing.
Define The Value That Your Marketplace Offers
After finalizing what type of product or service you are going with on your marketplace, now you have to define the values that you can offer to your customers as well as to vendors. Unique ideas in this category are going to make you win from your competition. Such as making sure that your customers know that you will be providing safe and sound online transactions, a smooth user experience, a broad range of cost-effective products, and even some discount offerings too. This will turn the users into your potential customers.
Do Market Research
The number of organizations at the marketplace in the area of interest that you are going to enter, their size, marketplace share, and statistics, as these will be your direct competition. Do research on who their customers are and what they are searching for.
Conclusion
MVP is an approach that empowers startups to discover a lot about their users with the help of a working product, without overspending valuable time and funds.