Are you about to launch a new product? You studied the market needs and developed a prototype, but you’re still unsure if your target audience will be willing to use the solution you’re offering? Your caution is fully justified. Before investing in a full-fledged release, it makes sense to test your idea in a focus group.
But to understand what your target audience expects from your app, the idea itself is not enough. You need something tangible. Something that can be practically criticized. Something that will provide you with valuable feedback and allow you to release a genuinely competitive product.
Just for such cases, there is the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The idea of such working models appeared relatively recently but has already proven its effectiveness.
Leading QA companies with many years of experience in software testing and knowledge of the market realities have algorithms that provide the necessary testing of your idea for a reasonable budget. As a result, you get a clear picture of user expectations and do not spend extra time and money developing a product that does not fully meet the needs and preferences of your target audience.
Below we offer you a list of the most successful practices used by both world-famous developers and leading QA companies, approaches that have proven their effectiveness in the field.
What is MVP testing?
Since the approach to releasing new software through the pre-production of an MVP is a relatively new practice, there is not yet a rigid framework for testing it. However, by contacting experienced outsource QA testers, you can work with their experts to develop a strategy that best suits your product.
Below, we list 5 strategies proven to be the most successful and cost-effective.
- Interview with a client.
- Landing pages.
- Crowdsourcing campaign.
- Advertising campaign.
- Simulation of the complete cycle.
Let’s look at each of these strategies in more detail.
Top 5 MVP testing approaches
Interview with a client
It may well turn out that you did not accurately define your target audience. Your application may generate interest from groups you hadn’t thought of before. For example, the Uber app was initially designed only for taxi passengers, but it was during the interview that it turned out that it is no less relevant for drivers. It is to have a prototype that can open up unexpected perspectives for you or point out nuances that may seen insignificant to you but are important for your users.
Of course, information about your MVP is collected not only through communication with ordinary users. You can not discount the numerous advantages of static testing. This stage is carried out by experienced researchers who study project documentation, code syntax, and the presence of errors such as the program going into an infinite loop.
Landing pages
Many entrepreneurs believe that the primary function of landing pages is the presentation and sale of goods. Sometimes they are also assigned the role of one-page business card sites. However, at the MVP testing stage, the possibilities of landing pages are much broader and more diverse.
Some of today’s world-famous web services have only recently started out with a couple of these pages, containing product information and a registration page. However, even this minimum allows you to get detailed data from Google Analytics, create a funnel for your future users, test various thumbnails, which will later become the basis of a new site.
Crowdsourcing campaign
It is widely believed that crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are needed to raise funds for a new project. Of course, this is true, but in terms of MVP testing, the possibilities of crowdsourcing campaigns are far from limited to this.
A well-organized campaign allows you to form a target group at an early stage, whose members will wait for the release of your product, actively discuss it, and provide you with much-needed user feedback.
Advertising campaign
Although at first glance, it may seem that the essence of an advertising campaign in the MVP testing process is to place more advertising banners on the Web with the names of your future product, in fact, this is only the smallest part of its key functions. Be ready to involve experienced specialists in this process who can channel requests and interpret the received analytics. In that case, you are guaranteed to receive precious material for further work.
In particular, by creating a virtual image of your user, you can use the appropriate mechanisms to check the correctness of your assumptions and correct them promptly.
Simulation of the complete cycle
Sophisticated technology creates a believable illusion designed to test the system you plan to start later. You can use only some elements of the future complete cycle by virtualizing the rest. This gives your users the impression that the system is authentic. This approach allows you to test the areas that you have doubts about and, at the same time, get the sincere reaction of the users who became participants in this experiment.
Summing up
The above list, of course, is not a dogma. After consulting with experts, you can choose any of these strategies or combine several elements. The main thing is that the MVP testing path you pick is suitable for your product and provides you with the information you need to release a successful product as fully as possible.
