It makes sense that to create a great business, you need a great product. If the product isn’t a good one, no amount of marketing will bring success. There are no hard and fast rules about how to create better products but there are certain principles you need to follow and questions you should ask.
If you’re thinking about launching a new product, here are some ways to perfect the new product development process and create better products.
- Fill an obvious need
Your product must address a problem in a way that no other company is offering. Through listening to consumers, and asking the right questions, you will discover more details about the nature of their pains and what type of product would benefit them.
Square, for example, enables boutique sellers such as mobile food trucks to collect payments with credit cards, something they were unable to do before.
- Develop hypotheses
By observing customer needs, you should be able to make educated guesses about product features they are likely to value. Features can be risky – you may think you know what people want but sometimes they don’t even really know what they want and this is why testing your hypotheses is so important. Adding complicated features to a product can be counterproductive.
- Build a prototype
Your prototype should be the Minimum Viable Product that is good enough to put in front of customers. Your first prototype is not likely to fully meet customer needs but you can learn a lot from making it and seeing how potential customers react to it.
You shouldn’t waste time and money on intricate details of product features or fixing small issues before you are certain that what you are building is what the market needs.
- Test with customers
Give the prototype to potential customers and observe how they use it. Ask them what they like and what they don’t like about the product. The data you collect will either confirm your hypothesis or not.
Your product should offer convenience to customers rather than complicating their lives. It should offer them a means to do something more easily, cheaper or faster.
Compare the outcome you expected with your observations. When you know why customers use a certain feature and what they appreciate about it, you can start making deliberate improvements. If there is a feature that they don’t seem to use at all, you need to consider improving it in some way or removing it.
Lean Startup Methodology recommends you ask yourself whether the product should be built rather than whether it can be built. This should be extended to the customer. There are many reasons why someone could use a product but would choose not to because of price, habit and other reasons.
- Continue iterating and testing
If the results of testing your prototype on potential customers are better than you expected, turning your current prototype into a product and marketing, it could bring success. If your results are worse than you expected, you will need to learn from what didn’t work.
It is important to keep iterating and testing based on what you’ve learned, tested and measured. This is the quickest, most cost-effective way to build a good product. Making small measurable changes, testing them and refining your product is more effective than making big changes that take more time to implement, test and get rid of if they don’t work.
To develop the best products, you need to know your industry, your competition and your potential customers.