How To Test An MVP: 5 Proven Strategies

MVP testing can help gauge market interest and potential profitability. In this blog, we’ll discuss 5 proven ways to test an MVP and build a product your target audience will want to use. Remember that MVP testing is not free, it takes time and money, but both are good investments in your MVP.

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) can help test the waters before adding bells and whistles. The idea is to engage your target audience, get quick feedback and improve the product offering.

However, creating an MVP is not enough. You should test your MVP and validate it against the core premise. This will ensure that your MVP meets user requirements and quality standards.

Top 5 Best MVP Testing Strategies

1. Customer Interviews

Customer interviews are a gold mine of actionable information. They can help you gather insights from your customers about your MVP that would otherwise be impossible to gather. So, there is no better way than to ask the customers who are going to use the MVP.

Through customer interviews, you can learn about the problems your target audience faces and whether your product solves them or not. Besides, they also allow you to show customers what value your product brings.

Another reason why customer interviews are a great way of MVP validation is that you can expect honest feedback from them. Customers can lie, sugarcoat or provide fake reviews when expressing feedback online. But they are more likely to provide honest feedback.

To make the most of customer interviews, collect a database of potential users online and offer them to try your MVP. Then, list all the problems you think your customers might face.

Once done, ask how each customer would rank each problem and whether your MVP solves them. Consider all the answers. You’ll be surprised at what you discover.

However, here are two things you should keep in mind:

Start the interview on a light note and then gradually become more descriptive.
Address all perceived issues to get honest feedback on them.
Avoid advertising when talking about MVP. Focus instead on communicating value.

You can conduct a survey to ask customers if your product has solved the problems of your target customers and what they would like to see in the product in the future.

Problems are assumed not to be critical to the customer. However, you will have enough valuable information to provide a refined product.

Find your testers

In some cases, it is more useful to identify the audience that is not interested in using your MVP. These people can serve as testers for you and give you actionable feedback on your MVP.

2. Explainer videos

We have heard that a picture speaks for itself. However, a well-designed and informative explainer video is more than just a talk. Explainer videos are one of the best ways to connect with users and grab user attention.

A simple yet interactive explainer video should include –

What is the product?

How does it work?

What functions does it provide?

Why would one need it?

At the end of the video, you can point viewers to an online form or sign-up page to receive product and registration reviews. Both of these will help you understand whether the product is headed in the right direction or not.

For example:

Dropbox’s explainer video made history, helping it garner over 70,000 registrations overnight and making the MVP trial a huge success. And that too when the original product was far from coming out.

3. Paper Prototyping

Paper prototyping is an easy and simple way of prototyping. You don’t need any fancy tools or software for that. In paper prototyping, all you need is a piece of paper and a pen or any alternative for the purpose of your MVP representation.

With paper prototyping, you can do –

Rough sketching
Flow charts or graphs
Simple changes anytime
Pre-planning for digital prototyping

This helps in two ways:

This minimizes the cost of MVP testing
It fosters collaboration and allows designers to explore lots of ideas at a low cost

4. Digital prototyping

Digital prototypes are a great way to test your MVP. By creating mock-ups, wireframes, and prototypes of your product, you can demonstrate how your product will perform in real-life conditions. You can show them to potential customers and check the user experience.

Digital prototypes can range from simple screenshot previews and low-fidelity sketches to mock-up apps that mimic the user experience. You can use tools like Figma, InvisionApp and MarvelApp for this purpose.

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5. Hallway Testing

Hallway testing is another interesting approach to testing your MVP. Approach random people walking down the hallway and ask them to test the usability of your product. For this, ask them to complete some tasks to see how they cope and what problems they face. Then take everything into consideration.

Hallway MVP Test helps you understand –

Is your product easy to use?

How does the GUI feel to end users?

What types of issues are reported by end users?

However, remember that during the hallway test, you are choosing people who know nothing about your product and are hearing about it for the first time. Only then can you get honest feedback from customers.

Bonus: Some more MVP testing strategies

The above techniques are just a few ways to test an MVP. However, here are some more strategies you can use for MVP testing:

Observe your competitors’ products and see what your MVP is missing and how you can stand out.
Use tools like OpenHallway, QuickMVP, Five-Second Test, Invision to test your MVP.
Run a PPC campaign to see your MVP’s traction and user interest.
Use SaaS and PaaS platforms to interact with your audience and observe their reactions.
Creating a paper prototype of your MVP to understand the user experience. Especially helpful in physical products like mobile phones.

The Bottom Line

Now that we have discussed the types of MVP testing, we hope that you will use this information to make the most of your development process.

Follow the right strategy according to your requirements and build your product smoothly and efficiently. The only thing that matters is your approach to testing an MVP should provide verifiable insights on whether your final product will have a fair share of the market after its launch.

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