5 Ways To Validate Your MVP With Quantitative Tests

Before you launch any product or feature, validating your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is an absolute must. It's not always clear what kind of information to collect and how much data is needed to answer questions like "Would customers find value in this attribute?" or "Is there a demand for this item?"

By taking the time to validate your MVP properly, you will have all the answers needed before moving forward with launching.

Here are five ways to validate your MVP with quantitative tests:

Landing Page

A landing page is the perfect tool to collect feedback and test all of your MVP assumptions. It will help you understand what people want from your product, as well as how interested they are in it. With this information, you can refine its value proposition before investing too heavily into development - further increasing the chances of success for your idea!

Testing a landing page is a piece of cake. Generate an incentive to encourage visitors to sign up or subscribe, and create the web page where you'll direct your traffic. If lots of people click on your "sign-up" button or head to your pricing section, it's indicative that they're interested in what you have to offer!

To give your landing page the best chances of success, check out the article I wrote a while back on conversion rate optimisation best practices.

Explainer Video

Explainer videos are an incredibly powerful tool that make use of storytelling to captivate your audience. This way, they're more likely to remember what they've seen instead of just reading something. This makes explainer videos the perfect replacement for a traditional landing page, so that you can better describe and illustrate your product.

The use of an explainer video as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Test is best illustrated by Dropbox. Their founder, Drew Houston, realized people were having difficulty understanding how their cloud-based file storage was distinct from all the other products out there. So he created a video that clearly outlined Dropbox's features and advantages in order to increase visibility - and it worked! His simple explainer video enabled customers to easily comprehend what made them different, leading to more conversions.

In the video, Dropbox showcased how it can easily solve the hassle of managing and transferring files across multiple devices. This clip was so impressive that it attracted a massive amount of registrations for their private beta waiting list!

Creating an explainer video can be as simple as installing a browser extension like Loom and recording a demo of your product or feature.

Ad Campaign

If you want to derive the most accurate test results, investing in an advertising campaign is your best bet. Paid ads are especially beneficial as they will provide a wealth of valuable data such as conversions, exit traffic, and click-through rates - all far easier to monitor when paying per click!

Google Ads and Facebook Ads are the most popular platforms to run ad campaigns and more affordable when compared to LinkedIn. Before starting, consider what your goals are and how much capital you can allocate so that you have a greater chance of attaining them.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is a tool marketers use to test two different designs and find out which version performs best. For example, you could experiment with various headlines, offers or graphics in order to determine which resonates the most with your audience. What's great about A/B testing is it not only saves time and resources but also helps identify opportunities for improvement - allowing you to improve conversions.

When A/B testing, you want to focus on one element of your design at a time. Whether it be the placement of a website button or colours in an email - change what needs tweaking and measure its performance against previous elements. Don't just mix up all aspects without any thought – that's not how successful tests are done.

A/B testing offers a scientific method to discover the most optimal design for your marketing materials. By coming up with a hypothesis, you are able to split up traffic into two different segments and observe which performs better. With this technique, you can accurately identify what resonates best with your users.

There are many tools that can help you with A/B testing, but some of the most popular ones are Google Optimize, VWO, and Optimizely.

Crowdfunding

If you want to know if people really want your product, crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo, GoFundMe and Kickstarter are a great way to test the waters. Not only do they serve as a platform to promote your future product, but they also allow potential customers to pledge money ahead of time so they are first in line when the product comes out.

You can set a fundraising goal and only pledge to build your product if it is met. This approach gives you confidence that people will be willing to pay for what you have created.

Without a product to sample, you'll need compelling and descriptive details of the benefits it provides plus high-quality videos and thorough FAQs.

Fake Door or 404 Page

Trying to anticipate what features your customers will desire in the future can be a daunting task. Luckily, you can test the interest of customers in potential new features with an easy and cost-effective method known as the fake door or 404 page test. As an added bonus, it takes no time at all to set up the test.

You'll receive quick data that clearly reveals which feature(s) are most sought after, so that you know exactly where to focus your efforts.

Customers will be welcomed on a page thanking them for their enthusiasm and explaining why the feature hasn't been created yet.

To provide more insight into what made people click on the link, you can add a form which asks how they think this feature would benefit them.

Unfortunately, this feature isn't available at the moment. We appreciate your interest in it and will notify you as soon as it is live. As we strive to make our platform even better, please let us know why you think this useful tool would benefit from being included on our page. Thank you!

Product Analytics

Product analytics provides you with an understanding of how your customers interact with and utilize your product. By finding out where they spend their time and which features are used the most, you can identify meaningful patterns that will allow you to make informed decisions when launching new features or product changes.

These insights let you test hypotheses, and track key metrics to see whether there was an improvement or not.

These tests will not only allow you to find out what your product demand is, but they will also give you insight into user behavior so that you can optimise it.