Key Steps in the Product Discovery Phase for Building an MVP

There are a lot of things a company has to complete before launching their MVP. First, you conceptualize, then research the market, implement the features, and finally polish the design. Not exactly a short process and one of its most vital parts actually comes close to the beginning - the discovery phase.

This stage of MVP development can make or break a product’s release and requires special care to get it just right. But what goes into it, and how can you guarantee your MVP’s discovery phase is smooth? Well, that’s what we’re here to help with, so let’s dive in.

What is Product Discovery?

The product discovery or discovery phase is the stage where you research your target market and users to understand their needs and challenges. This is contrasted against the product to see what tweaks to the concept might be necessary. The end goal is to adapt your app to the current state of things and make it as competitive as possible.

Most research should center around the end user, with things like A/B testing and story mapping. These allow you to understand the customers’ mindsets and adjust your product to their needs instead of trying to drum up interest forcibly. Ultimately, discovery can make it easier to market your app and find its rightful place in the market.

What Goes Into Product Discovery

Working on an MVP and its discovery phase includes multiple essential steps aimed at better understanding your product and its target audience. You can start by planning and preparing all the tools and practices you’ll need. This can mean creating customized feedback forms or special app builds, gathering data, and cleaning it up for analysis.

For the user-facing part of discovery, you’ll be showing them your app and asking to hear their opinion on its features, usability, design, and more. It’s important to cover all aspects of the product, not just whether or not its core feature is good enough. Sometimes, users may like your ideas while still offering ways to improve upon them.

Such insights are invaluable because these people will be using your MVP and are directly telling you how to make it more attractive to them. In addition, you can also gather your own analytics to understand the ways people interact with your product. This allows you to “trim the fat” by removing unused parts of the app and buff out any design issues.

Then, there’s the step of researching the market. You will need to listen to what the competitors are saying and doing, check user reactions to their products, and understand what’s lacking. This will allow you to enter the market with all the prior experience of your competition and avoid the pitfalls that plagued them.

Using all the information you gather, improve your product using methods like storyboarding and mind mapping methods to clearly illustrate the challenges your team needs to solve. Take into account their own feedback and see if, perhaps, they can add to your insights into the users. As a result, you should be able to iterate until your MVP reaches a state you’re happy with.

Your discovery phase is all about finding ways to improve and make your MVP more marketable. These steps will help you do just that. Remember to focus on the users, keep an open mind, and be willing to apply changes.

How to Ensure Your MVP Becomes Great

Building a minimum viable product and ushering it to success is a challenge for any startup trying to break into the market. Thankfully, as shown above, product discovery makes this process much more manageable.

To ensure that your MVP is of top-notch quality and attracts users through its polished and cutting-edge features, you must partner up with expert developers. That’s precisely where S-PRO comes in, as our dev team has a portfolio that a few others can match. Our 300+ projects and award-winning Clutch track record speak for themselves, highlighting our longevity and skill.

So, if you want a dazzle-worthy MVP and a team that keeps development running smoothly, send us a message.