Hoping 2015 will be your brand’s best year yet?
Product Development Tips
Follow these four simple product development tips to help your business succeed in future product launches throughout the year!
Ditch the interview questions and test-sell
Once armed with a great idea, the first thing most entrepreneurs will do is develop interview questions and get out to interview prospects to figure out how potential products can help mitigate problems people are having. There is often a lot of guesswork involved in drawing conclusions from interviews. After all, you haven’t actually given your prospects any kind of concrete product to play around with. The key here is not to dwell on an idea for too long; once you have established that an idea has potential, turn it into concept design and start to test-sell. This will give you an idea of the demand for your product before you launch into your production, as well as help you fully understand the types of features your customers want and what problems need to be addressed before the design has been finalized.
Develop a solid pitch
Don’t develop in the dark. Throughout the development process, you need to have a clear understanding of your product’s use case, your value propositions, responses to typical questions and objections, and more. This means you need to invest time and energy into developing a clear and coherent product pitch.
Narrow your focus to one significant value proposition
Brands often spread themselves too thin in the early stages of the development process, and try to address multiple value propositions simultaneously. This is a mistake. The far better strategy is to hone in on one specific customer need, and develop a specific feature set that addresses that one need. In order to clearly identify this need, you need to spend time with customers, analyze emerging market trends, and get a thorough grasp of your competitors’ products.
Focus on developing the minimum viable product
When it comes to product features, the more isn’t necessarily the merrier. Development teams often brag about features as if they were some kind of golden ticket to attracting customers and bringing in revenue. But the bottom line is that adding more features may not necessarily boost your bottom line. More features means a longer development timeframe, which could actually hurt your bottom line.
Furthermore, don’t assume that features will necessarily enhance the appeal of your product. Extra features will often make a product buggier and more prone to failure. This could mean additional troubleshooting, which in turn, means that more resources must be funneled into customer support. Forget adding every feature fathomable, and focus instead on developing your MVP: minimum viable product. Add the features your most important prospects value the most, and ditch everything else. An MVP development process will ensure that you develop a product that appeals to your prospects long-term, while also marinating a healthy ROI and mitigation risk.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with strengths in software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial design. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
