What is Product-Market Fit?
Product Market Fit is a marketing concept that has grown to be applied by a number of start-up’s, globally.
If a product is being liked by a market that is demanding the product heavily, the product’s parent company has achieved a product-market fit.
The three confusion-clouded ways that help entrepreneurs reach the product-market fit are... Proof Of Concept, Prototype, and Minimum Viable Product.
But before you even get to the point of making a decision between POC vs. MVP vs. Prototype, there are a few things that you should keep into consideration:
Who is your target audience?
What are you trying to validate?
POC (Proof of Concept)
What is POC?
As the name denotes, POC (Proof of Concept) is an approach which businesses use to validate the idea or the feasibility of the concept. The stage comes into existence way before the mobile app development process starts. Here a small project is implemented for verifying if a concept can be implemented on the technical capability and business model grounds.
A mobile app POC is not usually shown to the public or the customers for the main idea behind it is to simply check if the idea is workable or not.
Proof of Concept(POC) Features:
Showcases feasibility & Confirm Idea’s Potential.
Developing a POC is a cost and time-effective way to validate features.
Highlights risks and errors at a very early stage.
Gives a clear yes/no right at the beginning of the project.
Prototype
What is a Prototype?
The prototype focuses entirely on showing how an app will flow from one screen to another and how it’d look to the end-users. Building a mobile app prototype is one of the most important processes of app development for it uses tools to help with understanding how the app flows, what would be its usability, and what all features must be added in the application.
Although it is not a standalone system in itself, the benefits of mobile app prototyping can be seen in the fact that it helps in getting a clear idea of how the app will look and function.
Prototype Features:
Gets early feedback on the application.
Helps in identifying mistakes in the design and development phases.
Simplification of complex ideas into an understandable format.
Application’s flow is validated by the business users.
Beneficial in getting seed funding.
Minimum Viable Product
What is Minimum Viable Product?
MVP is a functional app that comes loaded with prime features that best represent the application. It is a standalone application version containing mobile app MVP functionalities that can be sent to the users for them to play around and gauge the experience that they’ll get out of the full version of the application.
The MVP development process helps in verifying the app feasibility, teams’ assumptions about the application, and it’s usability along with the market demand. When you build a minimum viable product, it ultimately helps in developing an application that is prepared to gather the end-user feedback.
MVP Features:
Greater development readiness.
Creation of higher value for users through continuous feedback.
Attracts high retention through small investment.
Helps in the prevention of time and money wastage.
When to Choose POC, Prototype, MVP?
Choose POC When:
When you need seed-stage funding
When you have to check if the idea works, technically
When you are aiming to share internal knowledge among team
When you want to assess a project or the features’ success
Choose Prototype When:
When you want a visualization of how the app would function
When you have limited money and time but you want to show the application to stakeholders
When there is very limited technical availability
When you need an instant look and feel of the application.
Choose MVP When:
When you have to show the customers a working app
When you have to make money out of the application
When you need a bug-free app ready to be used by the world
When you need higher retention at a low cost
When you wish to know the market perception to improvise the application
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