Probably no words describe modern times better than "time is money." We are constantly in a hurry to get somewhere, striving to accomplish everything we set out to do in a day, which often requires that we "never stop." It's no different when it comes to business - and the fact is that some activities, such as the IT processes involved in eCommerce design, for example, can take up a great deal of time. That's why it's becoming more and more popular to implement the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of an eCommerce store first and only then expand. If you're wondering why it's worth it, keep reading - you'll learn everything you need to know from our article.
MVP - what exactly is that?
Depending on the required functionality, an online store project can be completed in a shorter (about 3 months) or longer (even more than a year) time. However, which entrepreneur would like to wait so long until his eCommerce is created and starts to bring him profits? For this reason, more and more companies putting up online stores offer their clients to divide the work into several stages - one of which is the creation of an MVP.
MVP is a term that everyone usually associates with sports and refers to the best player in a given match or tournament. In the IT field, however, it means an online store equipped with all the functionalities that are necessary ("minimum") for eCommerce to work and be accessible to users. In this way, it means an effect that we can present to our target audience and receive feedback on whether everything works "as it should". The main goal of designing an MVP, then, is to let the customer move forward with sales in the shortest possible time.
The important thing is that the MVP is not the final version of the product (online store), as it will continue to be developed. It should also not be confused with an eCommerce beta version (in the life cycle of a product, a beta version is made available to users to detect emerging bugs) or an incomplete version of a product released by accident or mistake (it has all the necessary functionality to drive sales, and is only supplemented with additional ones to provide a better shopping experience for consumers).
What functionalities does the MVP have?
An MVP outline is usually created already during the pre-implementation analysis, when assumptions are made about what functionalities the project will be equipped with. The written down solutions should be divided into the most basic ones, which are necessary for the launch of sales (including the Minimum Viable Product version), and the more advanced ones, which can be implemented later. The first group should include, among others, a shopping cart, product search engine with a filter option, the ability to place an order, popular forms of payment and delivery, division into categories or customer feedback on products (without forgetting to take care of the most basic UX elements). In the next stage, you can decide to implement a newsletter, software supporting basket retrieval, more advanced product filtering capabilities or other solutions aimed at supporting sales processes and taking care of the end customer.<
Therefore, it can be said with certainty that the MVP has very standard solutions, but is in no way an inferior product that will be classified as unfinished or insufficiently functional by a potential customer.
Implementation of the MVP of an online store - the results
What are the effects of implementing an online store MVP? First and foremost, such a procedure shortens time-to-market, which means that you can start gathering traffic, building a group of potentially regular customers and earning within the new or restored (if, for example, you migrated your store to a better platform) business channel. What's more, after the release ("release"), you can quietly improve your store design, getting a return on the investment you've already made.
What else does splitting the implementation of an online store into several stages allow? Among the additional effects, but of no less importance, we will mention:
- Ability to find out customer feedback
By releasing the MVP of your online store, you give yourself a chance to find out the feelings of people using the offer you have prepared. The willingness to learn about customer opinions (expressed, for example, by an after-purchase survey asking about any difficulties in making a purchase or feelings about an order) is sure to be received positively by your audience. It will give them the feeling that they have an impact on how the store will look in the future, and that the seller counts with their opinion. When designing eCommerce, we must always be very careful about whether our beliefs are in line with how our audience thinks - because we are not designing for ourselves, but for our customers (e-business owners often tend to forget this).
Learning the opinions and feelings of existing users will certainly be helped by the results available in Google Analytics (regarding sales effectiveness, page rejection rate, purchase time), as well as more advanced tools for studying user behavior on the site (such as Hotjar, which records site traffic, indicates which elements drew user attention and shows clickable elements). This is how you discover which elements of the site you should definitely work on.
- Verification of primary assumptions through the market
Implementing an MVP also gives you a chance to take a thoughtful approach to all the ideas for functionality and integrations you currently have in your head. Based on the feedback you've gathered and data from user behavior, you'll be able to decide which solutions you definitely need to implement, which should be modified, and which should be discarded on the grounds that they won't work in your industry or won't suit your audience. Doing things this way will also allow you to protect your budget - and this, from a business perspective, is extremely important.
- Improving the flexibility of the existing architecture
Deciding on an MVP from the very beginning gives you the opportunity to introduce and test new solutions in a more flexible way, without a significant burden on your budget. It protects you from the situation of implementing specific modules at the very beginning, which may be difficult to change later.
In this area, also keep in mind that consumers need time to get used to any change you make to your online store, and the steps you take - if they are too rapid - may be met with much dissatisfaction. MVP minimizes this problem, as you merely add more functionality (according to a set schedule) and study user sentiment on an ongoing basis (through a 3-step process: implementation-analysis-modifications), removing what doesn't work and optimizing elements that could work better.
When is an MVP a good idea?
We have already partially answered this question by mentioning the desire to maximize the time needed to release a version of the store that will allow you to make money - but this is not the only situation in which it is worth opting for an MVP.
It is also worth deciding to divide the design of an online store into several stages in the case of limited financial resources - you can wait to implement more advanced functionalities, carry out integration with external systems (PIM, CRM, WMS, etc.) or connect with marketing automation software (supporting remarketing activities) if your budget does not currently allow it. After all, an MVP is not an inferior product, as it has all the functionality needed to start selling, and can be developed without overburdening the budget (which becomes especially important in these times of high inflation and economic recession). Designing an online store in this way is simply about prioritizing and conducting activities according to a set schedule.
Implementing an MVP is also important from a strategic point of view, as it protects you from making a bad decision. Implementing the most basic version of eCommerce protects you from inappropriate investment of funds and gives you a chance for the market to verify the ideas you had at the very beginning. Thus, you can think of an MVP as a test of your business idea.
MVP eCommerce - between time savings and financial issues
Every online store owner should strive to ensure that his eCommerce provides the best possible shopping experience for customers. Such an action is necessary to properly take care of the audience and encourage them to take advantage - and not just once - of the proposed offer. An MVP is a way to strike a balance between wanting to get the store up and running as quickly as possible (in order to start selling, which is, of course, the main goal of any entrepreneur) and trying to take care of the customer in the best possible way with limited resources. However, one should definitely remember not to stop at just putting up a minimally valuable version of the store, but to work on implementing further functionalities and integrations in a thoughtful way, building a competitive advantage in one's industry.
