Setting Priorities

When starting work on your exciting idea for a new mobile app, one of the first things you should do is begin drafting up a list of desired features. However, a common pitfall many developers fall prey to is creating a lengthy wishlist of features that may not only be unnecessary, but could cause unneeded bloat in the finished product. That’s why it’s so important to create a minimum viable product (MVP) that can help you get a better understanding of how your targeted users will react to the purpose of your app. This crucial step can also help give you a better idea of whether the objective of your app was truly actualized.

Set Your Product Vision and Establish Strategic Goals

Before you even begin work on your app, it is important to set and understand your business goal as an organization. This helps align your team so that you may begin to lay out a roadmap to help you achieve the overall project vision and strategic goals. Once your vision and goals are clearly defined, they should act as a practical guide to establish actional deliverables for your app.

Be sure to differentiate between immediate and long-term goals when coordinating your app’s design. Ensure your target customers’ wants and needs are kept in mind throughout the process. A difficult yet essential step is acknowledging which features must be in the product at launch versus which features can be added over time post-launch.

Prioritizing Features for your MVP

Understanding which core features should be present in your MVP is not an easy task. It really boils down to the long list of what your app could do versus what it should do. Which specific features will actually affirm your app? Your biggest priorities throughout the MVP phase should include customer satisfaction, business value, feasibility, time to MVP, value to the user, and impact on the number of users. The solutions you create should always be in line with your product vision, and your focus should be on making a minimalist version of your app that validates the proof-of-concept while simultaneously taking on the lowest amount of risk.

One of the most important things to remember is that the initial features you prioritize for your app should be the ones that help it obtain market value through sheer user demand.

Understanding User Wants Versus User Needs

While it can be tricky, it is important to distinguish what your users would like versus what they really need in order to utilize your app. Meet with your team and deliberate over each feature’s importance and how best to strike a balance between what the customer wants and the bare minimum that the customer needs to use the app. Be sure to understand the optimal time to take your product to market. Releasing a product too early can bring about a confusing user experience by adding several large features in quick succession.

Consider Third-Party Services

While outlining which features are the most important for your app, you should consider just how much time and effort it will take to create and deploy them. For example, if you want your users to be able to message each other within your app, you don’t necessarily need to create your own chatting service from scratch as it would require a pretty large investment of time and resources. There are a number of third-party services whose whole purpose is to provide those kinds of features. Don’t be afraid to utilize them, particularly if you are looking to quickly build and launch your MVP.

Utilize Metrics to Steer Your Roadmap

While building your MVP, it is important to understand and monitor your key performance indicators. This will help you keep a focus on the areas of your app that can be improved upon through further iteration and updates. The stage of production, business style, and type of product you are creating will help you hone in on the most important and relevant performance indicators. Some examples of key performance indicators include user growth, adoption and retention rates, return on investment, average revenue per user, customer satisfaction, and increase in lifetime value. By monitoring these key indicators and reconciling them with your business plans and product vision, you will have a much better understanding of how users interact with your product.

Monitor User Feedback Channels and Perform Competition Analysis

In order to build upon your MVP, it is imperative to establish functional channels where users may provide feedback. Your product development team can leverage this feedback to make data-driven changes at all levels of development. User feedback can also provide insight into high-demand features that can be built for future updates. Another useful way to get an edge over your competition is by performing competition analysis. Read reviews, check blogs and their comments, and investigate support pages and forums of your biggest competitors. This can help you get an edge over your competitors by understanding what their customers find most important.

Keep Your Roadmap Flexible

Project roadmaps are liable to change several times throughout the development process. It is critical to anticipate these changes and to be prepared enough to embrace them as they come. In order to build a successful app, you must focus on your key metrics and be willing to shift development priorities around them. Once your MVP has been launched, you should be constantly tracking user behavior. This will let you see the bigger picture of what is working well versus what needs to be improved upon. Make sure your team members are consulting with one another so that everyone is aligned on the next steps in development. Any new changes should be done in correspondence with your updated roadmap and your key performance indicators.