How do I test my MVP?

How do I test my MVP?

Find out why it is important to test your MVP and the best way to do it here.

Understanding how to validate your MVP efficiently will save you time and resources. This in turn helps to minimize your business risk. In this article, we explain what you need to consider when testing an MVP.

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The purpose of an MVP is to test a specific business idea in a lean and therefore resource-efficient way. If you don't go out and test with your MVP, you never learn and tend to move slowly in your own small circle. So an MVP quickly becomes a resource hog for you and your team. The best way to learn more about customer preferences is to test an MVP. This leads to better product decisions, more clarity about what customers really want and less wasted time and resources.

What is an MVP?  

MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product - which means minimally viable product. This term is often used by product managers to describe an easy-to-use, low-cost product or service to meet the needs of first-time customers. It should also provide a way to test whether the customer will buy the product or service in the future.

Different types of MVP testing

When developing an MVP, it is important to test it from many different perspectives to really understand the full potential of the underlying idea. Combining different experiments is usually the best way to get a comprehensive understanding of your MVP's potential. Common experiments at this stage include customer interviews and surveys, landing page registrations, expert interviews, guestimation, A/B testing, etc. 

Your innovation sweet spot

Ask yourself the following questions before you plan the testing of your MVP:

• What must be true for your product idea to become a lucrative business?
• What is the most critical assumption underlying your MVP?
• Does your MVP meet the following key characteristics?
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Desirability: A desirable solution, one that customers really want.

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Feasibility: A viable solution that builds on the strengths of current operational capabilities.

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Profitability: A profitable solution with a sustainable business model.

It is important to note that if one or more characteristics are not fulfilled, the implementation of the idea tends to be riskier and more costly.

Test your MVP from a desirability perspective 

Desirability tests: Whether your innovation solves the right customer problem

In general: collect customer data in order to better assess their preferences.

Here are 3 experiments to test the desirability of your MVP: 

1. Customer interviews and surveys
   
   Customer surveys are extremely important, but are no substitute for an actual conversation with customers. The combination of customer interviews and surveys tends to result in a better overall understanding of customer preferences. Surveys and interviews should become an integral part of any product development process. It is best to organize yourself so that the barriers to ongoing testing are as low as possible.

2. Landing page registrations / pre-orders
   
   Landing pages are a low-cost, no-code approach to validating your MVP and attracting early adopters. They are an important tool to collect customer data in exchange for freebies such as white papers or product samples. The main purpose of a landing page is to collect contact details of potential customers and prospects and attract them to you and your solution.

3. A/B tests
   
   A/B tests help to identify the better version between two variants. For example, this could be two versions of the same value proposition that are explained and advertised on two different landing pages. Specific metrics such as click-through or conversion rates can then be compared and analyzed. 

Test your MVP from a feasibility perspective

Are we building on our operational core competencies?

Can we implement the idea and what do we need?

In general: Information that helps you to find out what it takes to implement your MVP.

3 experiments to test the feasibility of your MVP are:

1. Expert interviews
   
   Exchanging ideas with experienced experts in specific areas helps to drive your idea forward and usually provides the project team with a lot of inspiration. We are happy to schedule 20-30 minute interviews in preparation for a sprint or workshop. Depending on the availability of the experts, we either invite them to the workshop remotely or we record the conversation in advance. To find the right experts, we use our own network as well as contacting suitable candidates via Linkedin. We have never received a rejection so far!

2. A day in the life
   
   In order to validate an MVP from a feasibility perspective, it helps to really understand the context in which a solution is used. It is therefore worth evaluating the world of users and providers at first hand as early as the conception phase of an MVP. This "shadowing" can take the form, for example, of a person from the development team personally accompanying a persona who uses the MVP. In this way, various subtleties of the product or service process can be identified at an early stage.

3. Wizard of OZ MVP
   
   The wizard behind the counter provides the magic. The customer, on the other hand, receives the full customer experience. Nothing is automated at this stage. Of course, such an MVP is not scalable. What can be evaluated, however, is what is really needed to satisfy customers. Various start-ups continue to operate in a partial wizard mode for a relatively long time and gradually automate those parts of the product that have been validated. 

Test your MVP from an economic perspective

Profitability: Does our solution contribute to long-term growth?

In general: Information that helps you to find out which business model best suits your MVP.

3 tools to test the profitability of your MVP are:

1. Business Model Canvas from Strategyzer
   
   The Business Model Canvas allows you to maintain an overview while forcing you to look at a business idea from the key perspectives. It is a visual diagram with elements that describe the value proposition of a company or product, the infrastructure, the customers and the finances.

2. Projected profit and loss account
   
   It can be well worth the effort to calculate a projected profit and loss account for a business idea. Of course, at the end of the day these are estimates and many things will never turn out exactly as assumed at the time of planning. Nevertheless, this exercise helps enormously to move from the big to the small and to ask important questions about the profitability of an idea.

• Guesstimation
  
  Guesstimation is a method of quantitative approximation. It is an approximation of reality and is therefore helpful in estimating the market potential and profitability of new products and services.
  
  Classic guesstimation KPIs are, for example:
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  - Total Addressable Market (TAM: e.g. total chocolate consumption in Switzerland)
  - Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM: market share for sustainable chocolates with a high cocoa content)
  - Serviceable Obtainable Market (market share of SAM that is realistically targeted)

Conclusion

It is absolutely crucial to continuously test your Minimum Viable Product from different angles during the development process. Try to understand the most critical assumptions underlying your MVP and choose the right experiment to test it, always remembering that the purpose of your MVP is to test your business idea in a lean and therefore resource-efficient way. Happy testing!

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If you have an MVP that you would like to test and would like to exchange ideas, please send me an e-mail.