The creation of quality software that solves business-specific or user challenges is a complicated process that requires high skills and extensive experience. There are many factors that affect product success, from creating a beautiful intuitive design to adding true value to end-users. An IT service vendor has to not just write clean code and think through a system architecture but also delve into the customer’s needs and find the best way to meet them.
The creation of quality software that solves business-specific or user challenges is a complicated process that requires high skills and extensive experience. There are many factors that affect product success, from creating a beautiful intuitive design to adding true value to end-users. An IT service vendor has to not just write clean code and think through a system architecture but also delve into the customer’s needs and find the best way to meet them.
The development itself is just a part of the entire project. In our software solutions company, we start building the app or website only after a deep analysis of the client’s requirements. In this article, we’ll show you how to make a great product in 6 steps.
How to build a great product in 6 steps
1. Validate a product idea
The creation of a software product that will let you reach your goals and earn an income needs thoughtful preparation. Today’s market is very competitive and is full of practically similar apps, especially if concerning spheres like fitness, dating, entertainment, lifestyle, and more.
If you want to produce a software solution for selling it to your clients, you should take into account that there are plenty of turnkey software that may provide the same functionality.
Therefore, the first thing to do is to validate a product idea—define your target audience, research the market, analyze competitors, and choose your desired niche.
To this end, you should find your potential rivals, use their applications, check out functionality, see user reviews and comments. Their feedback is the most important thing that reflects what they enjoy about the app and what don’t. Knowledge of strong and weak sides of your competitors will help you understand how to stand out from them. Furthermore, you will also determine the main features that you do need to have.
2. Create an outstanding UI/UX design
Design is an essential part of any software solution: if it’s inconvenient to use and it doesn’t provide great user experience, your audience just won’t install your app or quickly delete it. Concerning a website, users will just leave it after a 2-second visit. So, think through how your product should look and how its content should be organized to perform the necessary tasks in the best possible way. Doing custom software development means completing all the necessary tweaks and features to make the user happy and make them willing to use your software.
In our company, we build wireframes to visualize the product structure. Then, we move to the creation of a dynamic clickable prototype to see it working in action. In some cases (generally, when implementing the project in the B2C segment), we also engage users in testing and make improvements according to their feedback. At the end of this stage, you get the ability to visualize how the product will look and work prior to its development.
3. Adhere to an MVP development approach
MVP, or minimum viable product, is a solution with minimum functionality that is built to perform 1-2 main tasks. The goal is to start with building only the key features and receiving a working solution for further testing and improvement.
By checking the app idea on users and collecting their feedback, you get the ability to understand their needs and preferences to meet them. This approach perfectly fits startups that want to validate several concepts, show the product to investors, launch it more quickly, and save costs. Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, Snapchat, and many other world-famous companies began with MVP development, which helped them win the audience and achieve success
4. Test your product
Testing is one of the most important steps of mobile and web development. QA engineers check software for bugs and errors, estimate things such as the system performance, interaction of different functionality parts, etc., and ensure compliance with the project requirements. By fixing bugs and improving various characteristics, the product is stabilized and prepared for launch.
5. Promote your software product
Prior to product release, you should think through a marketing campaign. Even if your app or website is perfect regarding quality, user experience, and meeting user goals, it will be difficult to generate profit when having a small audience.
Say, you want to attract millions of users to your mobile application. To create a marketing strategy, you should choose advertising channels. When promoting a mobile solution, App Store Optimization (ASO) is carried out to increase app store rankings.
Customer reviews, ratings, analysis of user feedback, social media marketing (SMM), press releases are important elements of a marketing campaign. Depending on your needs, you can engage influencers to advertise your product, publish articles on relevant sources, create a landing page of a mobile app, and more.
When building your solution, integrate user analytics tools like Localytics, Mixpanel, or Flurry. They will allow you to monitor a bunch of metrics that include your audience by country, city, age, interests, life-time value (LTV), the most popular screens, app uninstall rate, and so on.
So, define the best channels for promoting your application, plan your budget, define KPIs, and track the results. This will help you gain recognition and earn income.
6. Continue improving your product
After the product release, the main thing to do is to monitor and measure the user reaction. Trace comments, reviews, and user analytics to understand what should be enhanced in your software solution. This can be a new feature that your users dream to receive, some improvement/change in design, or something else.
Concerning mobile applications, App Store and Google Play “enjoy” those with frequent updates: it is an important factor of app store rankings.
Thanks to further development according to the needs and preferences of your audience, you will dramatically increase their customer loyalty and boost sales. This will also help you take a competitive advantage.
More product success factors
1. Hire a dedicated development team
A combination of extensive technical experience, efficient management, deep understanding of the customer’s goals is the key factor of success. To unite expertise in different fields that involve design, programming, testing, project management, and business analysis, a strong team of qualified specialists is needed.
Since a dedicated development team (DDT) means picking the necessary professionals for a certain project depending on its specificity, it has become such a sought-after model.
When choosing this approach, the customer is able to fully control the work and directly participate in it, for instance, as a tester. By checking each product detail and approving each change, the client receives what it needs and wants much faster.
2. Agile workflow
Flexibility, mobility, and simple changes are those words that characterize an Agile software development methodology. Fast iterations enable to see results at the end of each small stage. This also let engineers quickly implement changes according to the customer’s requirements.
When they are made along with the project and got the client’s approval, there is no risk that you build the whole product and then have to make numerous changes. Therefore, a software solution is created more rapidly which results in time and cost savings.
3. Time and Material
Time and Material (T&M) payment contract means that a customer pays for the actual number of hours spent on the project. It is the best model in terms of uncertainty when it’s difficult to calculate the end product price and predict all possible changes.
Agile and T&M often go hand in hand, when the payment is received for each iteration (in most cases). The use of Time and Material enables to easily make changes as you don’t have to discuss and agree on each one (including cost) and conclude additional agreements. The main goal here is not to keep within a strict budget but to create the best solution possible.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many factors that affect the success of your project. Follow the six steps described above, ensure that your product adds value to end-users and provides the seamless user experience, take care of quality, make improvements according to user feedback, and think through an effective marketing strategy. Good luck!