When it comes to creating a new product or service, there are many different strategies and guidelines out there. You can find advice on how to run your business, organize the process, deal with accounting, and so on. But what is really important to know when starting something new is – whether the game is worth the candle.
And that’s where MVP (Minimum Viable Product) comes into play.
In this article, I’ll explain what MVP is, why it is beneficial for your future business and why it’s better to use WordPress when creating an MVP website.
So, let’s get the ball rolling!
What is MVP?
Simply saying, an MVP is a basic version of the product you want to launch.
Sounds easy, yeah?
However, you should not confuse the “basic” version, which includes the main features of your product but without all the bells and whistles, with the “raw” version, which lacks crucial functionality and cannot be used by your target audience.
To get a better idea of this concept, let’s take a look at the definition of the minimum viable product given by Eric Ries, an author of “Lean Startup” and a true MVP evangelist:
“The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”
So, making an MVP is probably the best way to test your business idea.
Reasons to Create an MVP for Your Business
In this section, let’s dive deeper and discover the advantages of an MVP website for your future business.
1. Validation of Idea & Business Assumptions
Often when starting a new business, entrepreneurs get to work with a lot of enthusiasm and believe that their product will be the next market giant. Creating something new is indeed inspiring and engaging, but it’s also true that starting a business is not always all about rainbows and unicorns.
To be honest, it’s never so (unless you sell puppies).
The sad reality is that 35% of startups fail because there’s no demand for such a product or service.
Creating an MVP allows you to escape such a bleak future and find out the answers to the following questions:
- Is there a market need for my product or service?
- How big is it?
Moreover, besides validating your idea (i.e., understanding that there’s a demand for your product or service), MVP can show you whether your business has a monetization potential.
Knowing that users are ready to pay for your future products or services is crucial in the early stages because if you know that they won’t, you should ask yourself:
“Why I’m spending time and money on a business that will not be profitable?”
So, unless you are building a nonprofit organization (thanks for doing that), you should think twice about whether to proceed if your MVP shows low demand for your services and small monetization potential.
2. Customer Feedback
Creating an MVP allows you to get priceless feedback from early adopters. You can find out how end-users interact with your product and gain valuable insights, like:
- What is lacking?
- What is redundant?
- What is difficult?, and
- What do users like?
Simply saying, customer feedback gives you the right direction and a better understanding of what to do next.
However, it’s important to keep a cool head when planning a product development based on your customers’ feedback. Often, users ask for some small, unnecessary or complicated, time-consuming features that provide little to no benefits.
So you don’t have to rush and try to satisfy every customer request. Instead, you should listen to them, analyze what they say, and do what’s best for the product and most users.
To better understand what I’m saying, check out the “A.C.A.F. Customer Feeback Loop” created by Hubspot.
3. Faster Time-to-market
The next advantage of creating MVP is having a faster TMT (Time-to-market) for your product. Simply put, TMT is the time frame from developing your product to the moment it’s released to first users.
Here are the two main benefits of faster time-to-market:
- First-mover advantage. If you are the first on the market, you can build strong brand recognition and occupy the most significant market share.
- Revenue. It’s simple, the sooner you start, the sooner you can earn some money and reinvest them in your business.
Also, if you plan to play big and want to raise funding in the future, already having a “working” product definitely adds a few points to your investment attractiveness.
4. Cost-efficiency
Starting a new business is always accompanied by expenses, and the worst thing is that you cannot be sure everything will work out. But here again, MVP comes in handy and helps you to do the following:
- Save money on development. A good MVP should have only crucial functionality, and you don’t have to spend money on “nice to have” but not essential features at the beginning;
- Stop early. As mentioned before, not every business will be successful, and sometimes it’s better to stop and start a new one. The sooner you understand that your product has no market need, the more you
So, summing up all the benefits of creating MVP in one sentence:
MVP allows you to “test the waters” in the shortest possible period with the minimum required budget.
Now let’s jump into the next section, where I explain why WordPress is a great tool for creating MVP websites.
Why build MVP websites with WordPress?
Basically, you have two options for creating an MVP website:
- Starting from scratch, or
- Use existing tools, like WordPress
Everything depends on the complexity of your project, budget and time limits. Below, I’ll explain why WordPress may be a good starting point.
1. Variety of Plugins & Themes
The first great thing about WordPress is that there are tons of various plugins for probably any use case. To be precise, at the time of writing, the WordPress repository includes more than 60,000 free plugins.
It means that you don’t have to spend time coding all of the features for your MVP since there’s a high probability that you can find a ready-made plugin with the necessary functionality.
Also, the great news about WordPress is that all plugins are open-source, so even if you don’t find a plugin that fully suits your requirements, you can always customize it to match your needs.
On top of that, there are thousands of free and premium WordPress themes for every taste and style. It doesn’t matter what niche you choose – I’m pretty sure you can find a theme that can be used for that.
For example, let’s imagine that you want to create a niche booking or rental website. To create an MVP, you can simply use a WordPress plugin such as HivePress and combine it with the RentalHive theme.
Alternatively, you can check out this list of other popular booking WordPress themes and go with the option you like the most.
3. WordPress is Easy to Use
Currently, WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) in the world (more than 43% of all websites are built with WordPress).
One of the main reasons for its popularity is pretty straightforward: WordPress is easy to use.
It’s such a simple CMS that even a rookie can work with WordPress hassle-free. There are three factors that make it a piece of cake:
- Installation. Most hosting providers offer 1-click WordPress installation, so you don’t have to read any docs on how to do that;
- Intuitive interface. WordPress dashboard is really intuitive, so you won’t get lost there for sure;
- Community. There are millions of people out there who use WordPress and share their You can easily find WP-related forums, subreddits and groups where people help each other.
Have I already convinced you to use WordPress for your next MVP website? If not yet, check out the next WordPress advantage.
3. It’s Cheap
Finally, building an MVP website using WordPress is cheap. The CMS itself is free to use, but you’ll have to pay for premium themes and plugins (which have more features). On average, starting a WordPress website with premium themes and plugins will cost you about $150 – $300, which is a tiny amount for testing your idea.
Also, if you want to customize something on your website or add extra features and you need to hire a freelancer, you’ll be happy to know that developers specializing in WordPress are often cheaper.
So, using WordPress allows you to create an MVP website quickly, easily and without an enormous budget.
Tips on Running an MVP Website
I’d also like to share a few tips on how to get the most out of your MVP website. So, to increase your chances for success, you need to:
- Identify core features. Your MVP website should include the main features of your future product to ensure that early adopters will be able to use it.
- Keep it simple. As mentioned before, keep your website simple but at the same time “viable”.
- Work with existing tools. Avoid creating everything from scratch and try using existing tools and resources to save time (e.g., open-source libraries, APIs, frameworks, etc).
- Collect data. The main reason for creating MVP is to collect the necessary data and user feedback, so use the proper tools to measure The more – the better.
Following these tips, you can properly test your idea and make data-driven decisions.
Wrapping Up
That’s it! I hope this article was helpful to you and that now you have a better understanding of what MVP is and why it’s better to create your future MVP website using WordPress.
Also, always keep in mind that an MVP website is just a starting point to collect data that can help you develop and improve your future product. So your entrepreneurship journey only begins.
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