Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the fastest way to grab the audience’s attention with a marketable product. But even with your best efforts, an MVP can fail to meet your expectations.
But why do MVPs fail? And what to do when you feel your MVP is not good enough?
What To Do When Your MVP Isn’t Performing Well
Despite following all the precautions, you might find your MVP underperforming. But don’t panic since it’s a common occurrence, and the solution is always around the corner.
#1. Fix The Deal Breaker Bugs
Often an MVP underperforms because the intended functions of the applications are not working right, which is off-putting for the users.
Run as many tests as you need to figure out how the bug affects your application, and work with your team to fix it as soon as possible.
#2. Ask Your Users
The best way to fix your app is to ask the potential clients and regular users you are targeting. So how do you do it?
- Go to your target client/ user
- Ask them what the most important task they do every day
- Then ask them what their biggest frustration is with that task
- Solve the frustration by building an appropriate tool
If your original MVP gets close, then adapt it. If it doesn’t, start over until it does what people are willing to pay for.
#3. Get Help From an IT Consultant
Sometimes, all you need is professional consultancy from an expert in your industry. Suppose you’re doing your very best and still coming up short. In that case, the only reason can be that you lack the vision that comes from professional experience.
The remedy here is to get professional advice on growth and development from an IT consultant who knows what they’re doing.
#4. Hire Dedicated Team
If you plan to build your MVP, hiring a team of experts who know what they’re doing is the best way to do it. When you hire a dedicated team for your product, they can invest their complete attention and expertise in it, making it operate as smoothly as possible.
#5. Prioritize Steps Based On Feedback
It’s essential to act on the feedback you get from users ASAP. Use the insights and suggestions provided by the users to make improvements and roll out updates. This iterative process allows you to refine your MVP continuously, ensuring that it aligns better with user expectations and needs.
By actively listening to your users and implementing changes based on their feedback, you can enhance the performance and usability of your MVP over time, increasing its chances of success in the market.
The MVP exists to solve the problems of your users. Since it’s about them, rolling updates or fixing the bugs that are bothering them should be your top priority.
10 Reasons Why An MVP Fails
Considering you’re reading our content, there’s no denying that you know your stuff and never believed in the myths. But there are still reasons why your MVP can fail. We took a good look at our previous case studies and found ten reasons why an MVP fails.
- Lacking A Proper Development Strategy
- Implementing Too Many Features
- Not Implementing Enough Features
- Skipping The Prototyping Phase
- Not Doing Enough Market Research
- Not Having Data Analytics
- Not Gathering Enough User Feedback
- Not Having A Solid Development Team To Work With
- Not Having Scalability
- Not Performing Enough Tests
1. Lacking A Proper Development Strategy
Even when creating the most basic version of your product, you need to have a good development plan before making any progress. To devise your development strategy, ask yourself the following questions:
- Which problem of your target audience are you planning to solve?
- Are you offering a solution for a pressing issue?
- Are there other solutions for the same problem already present on the market?
- If the previous answer is yes, how is your solution different and unique compared to others?
2. Implementing Too Many Features
MVP has “Minimum” in its name. That means it has to be as minimal as possible. When you’re trying to cram in as many features as possible at the same time, you’re defeating the purpose of the product itself.
When you try to put in too many features, you end up rushing the development, and the product can have many functionality issues when published. And, of course, people won’t like a product when it has many features, but none are usable.
3. Not Implementing Enough Features
You may feel this point contradicts the previous one, but it’s a fact. Just because an MVP is a minimal version of a product doesn’t mean that you get to dish out a product that barely has anything that the user base can call “features.”
At the very least, your product should have fully functional features that solve the core issues of the customer base. You must find the spot between “too many features” and “not enough features.”
4. Skipping The Prototyping Phase
Though it may seem unnecessary, the prototyping phase is one of the vital stages of a product development cycle. Unless you create a viable prototype to prove the feasibility and viability of your product, the development has a higher chance of going to waste completely.
Many startups skip the prototype phase and go into development without any clear vision or feedback to consider. And, of course, the product comes out as something unnecessary to the market or doesn’t function the way it’s intended to, causing it to fail.
You should check out our guide on proof of concept (POC).
5. Not Doing Enough Market Research
Thousands of startups fail every day just because they didn’t test the viability of their product before starting the development process itself. As a result, their time and resources were wasted, and the product failed. Make sure you don’t join that list.
When you do market research, you get a clear idea of the problems users face. Then base your product’s functions on solving those issues. That way, you aren’t spending resources on something useless.
6. Not Having Data Analytics
Having your analytics to act on is like looking at the dashboard while driving your car. Without the dashboard, you don’t know what’s happening under the hood. That’s where many startups go wrong: trying to drive without the dashboard.
Always consider the analytics before going to the next action phase. That way, you can make more calculated decisions based on the public reception of your product.
7. Not Gathering Enough User Feedback
User feedback is the most valuable asset when developing a product for your targeted market. MVP or not, the goal of a product is to serve its users and customers. So, what the users think about the app will always matter the most.
Many startups try to force-feed what “they,” think is right for the market instead of paying attention to what people want. That way, the users get highly dissatisfied with the service of the product, and the user rate drops like crazy.
Validate your users by listening to them, and incorporate every user feedback into the product if you want to avoid failure in the long run.
8. Not Having A Solid Development Team To Work With
A good development team can work with each other in the right sync to reduce the development time as much as possible. When you have a team trying to work their own thing into the product itself without following an organized structure, the team will constantly fall behind, and the product will also fail.
Whenever you plan to work with a team, ensure that you’re working with a team equipped with the right expertise to make development the most efficient.
9. No Development Scalability
Many startups are so busy pushing a product out the door that they forget the future scalability of the product.
No matter the platform, an application should be scalable from a development perspective. That way, the product is future-proof. Many features simply fall off the map because they are no longer relevant to the current technology. Of course, you would want to avoid that.
10. Not Performing Enough Tests
No program or application is without bugs. But there are also tests that the devs can do to remove the said bug. To rush the publication, some startups often release their MVPs without running any bug tests for their app.
When a program is buggy, there’s no way for it to function the way the developers intended it. As a result, user dissatisfaction results in the downfall of the MVP.
When developing your MVP, you should always allot time for bug testing to avoid such scenarios in the future.
Let’s talk about some common myths about MVP that can lead to a startup founder doing something that affects the product negatively in the long run.
5 Common Myths About MVP
Like any other industry, there are a few myths about MVP. Let’s bust these myths and move on forward. You may or may not have believed these at one point too.
- “MVP Is Tough Prioritization To Save Time And Money”
- “MVP Is Pushing Barebones Product Out The Door”
- “MVPs Are Easy To Build”
- “You Should Do MVP For Every Product Development”
- “MVP Makes Scoping And Prioritization Easier”
1. MVP Is Tough Prioritization To Save Time And Money
It doesn’t because that’s called scoping. Every product goes through it, and an MVP is no different. The only difference here is that it solely targets the early adopters of a product.
2. MVP Is Pushing Barebones Product Out The Door
This is completely wrong. You shouldn’t create a product just for the sake of a product. You should aim to create a minimal product that will appeal to the customers even with basic functions.
3. MVPs Are Easy To Build
Another common false myth, MVPs are not as easy to build as people think. Even when an app has only the key features that will solve one core pain point of the potential customers, remember that the feature needs to work perfectly for that to happen.
When trying to perfect all your features at an early stage for maximum customer satisfaction, you will have no choice but to invest extra time and effort into it all.
Here’s the right way to build an MVP.
4. You Should Do MVP For Every Product Development
To this, we say, not necessarily. Ask yourself: “Do I have early adopters I need to catch on to with this certain product?” If not, then an MVP should not be your focus for the product.
Instead, you should go for the mainstream market by releasing a product’s beta version.
5. MVP Makes Scoping And Prioritization Easier
It’s partially correct. When prioritizing which features to implement first, MVP helps you make better choices based on valuable feedback from early adopters.
That way, your priority choices have higher odds of success. But that doesn’t mean the process is easy in any way.
To Wrap It All Up
Sometimes, even after doing your best, you might feel like your MVP is not good enough. But with a few simple tricks and safety precautions, your MVP can be worthy too!
If you need any help with your MVP, our team at Impala Intech is just an email away! Let us help you in any way we can.
FAQs
There are times when people are expecting more than a minimal product with basic functionalities. Since customer demand is the most important factor, an MVP will not be enough in that case.
Yes, a buggy MVP can be considered unfinished since all the features are not functioning as expected.
An MVP is already the most minimal version of a product. If you plan to make the MVP even more minimal, the product may fall apart completely, and be considered a bad MVP.
Yes, an MVP can help you validate features that are the most important and impactful for the users, and prioritize them during development.
The goal of an MVP is to validate an idea that can be scaled into a full-fledged product. Without scalability, an MVP loses its purpose and it will not work.