How much does it cost to build an app? How to use money efficiently with MVP.

You can’t just ask customer what they want and then try to give it them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

Steve Jobs

First, what is minimum viable product (MVP)? You can easily find great amount of definitions in Google. If we turn to Wikipedia, it says: “MVP is a product with just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development”. Therefore, we want to talk about why MVP is so important. It allows obtaining the maximal amount of validated learning about customers with minimal efforts. If you have an idea and want to check it straight away then you need an MVP.

MVP for car is bicycle, but they are different. You cannot make a car from proof-of-concept bicycle.

This picture perfectly illustrates the concept of MVP. MVP is not part of the car like a wheel, that can’t bring any value while using it on stand-alone basis. MVP assumes having a product with some basic features that can already be used, like a skateboard. It does not guarantee that a customer will be happy straight away, but it allows adding more features in the future. The thing is that you add value at each stage and keep modifying the solution, until you have happy customer using your final product.

Please use your MVP for purpose. Launch it like an app. Know metrics that you want to track and targets that you want to reach.

You can spend huge amount of resources and energy with no results or you can experiment and learn from your potential users. Many projects fail, when the product is completely done without getting any feedback from potential users. MVP is an app that one can use already, but with some limited features. MVP contains idea, technical plan of implementation and understanding of who your target market is and what key metrics have to be estimated.

Restrict yourself from adding more features to an app, but feel free to exclude everything, which isn’t important.

The main idea of MVP is not to make your app too complicated, but to test its basic concept. Basic concept means it requires little time and effort to create it. The set of features should be as small as possible in order to avoid waste of resources, like time and money, and at the same time to give an opportunity to learn from your potential customers.

Join forces with your team to reach close and understandable target.

Obviously, it is a good thing to be a dreamer, but for a start, you need to set close and understandable targets. You should see a real and achievable way of your product launch and determine key indicators like certain amount of visitors or conversion rate, that will show your project viability.

Do not stick too much to fancy UI and cool designs — it doesn’t make any sense on this stage. It just needs to be good-looking.

MVP assumes set of features that fulfil minimal functional requirements and are able to satisfy potential users. On this stage, functionality is more important than fancy design. It should look nice enough to attract users with friendly interface and transparent logic of usage. Tricks that improve app appearance and user experience look great, but on MVP stage are useless.

Save budget for marketing. Test your MVP on real users. Get real customers on board. Start making business instead of running a startup.

MVP approach does not include big marketing campaign. Introduce your product to your potential customers straight away. You should not spend too much time on this stage. MVP means testing your idea, getting feedback from real users and proceed to the next stage — making business from your product. Successfully tested prototype can give you an opportunity to attract financial resources and develop your MVP into a full-scale project.

Use an MVP developing service.

This option fits perfectly for startups when it is necessary to test your hypothesis and learn about your potential users’ habits to make a decision. If you want a second opinion, you can find some interesting tools that can calculate you app cost depending on its components. You can choose, for example, the desired platform, media options, number of screens, and much more. Such tools show the provisional cost of your app, allowing you to estimate your budget.

Launch earlier, fail earlier, learn and repeat.

Be quick. Nowadays business cycle is rolling fast. You should be ready for unsuccessful results from the first ride. Meanwhile launching your product earlier means failing earlier. Learn from your failure, fix all errors and repeat until you get a result that will satisfy you and the users.

Building MVP is an essential part of app development. Even if your idea seems great, it does not mean it will work efficiently in real-time conditions.

Written by Dmitry Budko

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