Why You Should Always Build a MVP First

Let’s take a look at a classic example of a situation that I have observed numerous times. An enthusiastic maker has an idea for a great product and starts building right away without checking for competitors, creating a landing page first or getting some feedback from potential users. The maker sits down in front of his computer and starts building his product blindly.

The process of building is so fun that the maker doesn’t even pause to actually think about the viability of the product and/or show an MVP (minimum viable product) to others. Weeks and Months go by and feature after feature is added to the product. When it comes to launch day, the maker expects the whole world to celebrate his new product, but unfortunately no one really seems to care….

In reality no one really cares about you or your product. The only thing users care about is if you are solving a real problem they have. This is why it is so important to talk to your potential users about the pain-points they have and if they would be willing to use and PAY for your product. Using nocode tools you can set up a landing page or even a MVP in a matter of a few hours.

You can then gather feedback from users and see if the thing you are building is actually viable and has the potential of becoming a real business. Your users do not care whether your product is built with or without code, the only thing that is important is whether your product is working and solving a real issue. 

Let’s take a look at a few MVPs that you can build within a few hours using Nocode Tools to gather some initial feedback about your idea and product:


A Beautiful Landing Page

Building a beautiful and responsive website never has been easier. You can set up a page with a email capture form, texts, images, payments and more in less than one hour. Connect a custom domain and an analytics software (example: Google Analytics) and you are good to go. Here are some tools I would recommend for a quick landing page: Carrd, Landen, Weblium .


An interactive Bot

Another great way of gathering feedback from users and testing a potential product is to build a bot with which the user can interact and its guided through a series of questions. You can base your bot on Facebook Messenger using a service like Manychat, or embed your bot within a landing page using a service such as Landbot. Building a bot is a great way to gather feedback and collect leads in a more user friendly way. Learn how to create a feedback collecting bot here.


A functioning MVP

The best way to get initial feedback for your product is to build an actual MVP with basic features. It is important to not get carried away and more and more features: Your MVP should be as basic as possible and should serve as a Demo of how the “real” product would look. It has never been easier building a dynamic Webapp using services like Bubble, Adalo, Boundless and Webflow. You can even use a template to get a head-start and set up a functioning MVP of your product in less than a day! 

As you can see there are multiple ways in which you can build a MVP using nocode tools in order to gather feedback from your potential users and to avoid building a product that no one actually needs. If you want to see more tutorials on how to build without code you can visit Nocode HQ.

Previously published at https://nocodehq.com/article/why-you-should-always-build-a-mvp-first-1584697327178x858106113905131500