An MVP is an early version of a product with just enough features to gain user feedback for future product development. 

Validating your app idea is absolutely crucial to your business success.  Asking friends, family and colleagues for their opinion can be positively skewed, so you need some genuine, honest feedback from the people that would be your customers when you launch. 

An MVP app is the perfect way of getting this feedback. 

We believe that a great MVP has the following features: 

1. Scope

2. User flow

3. Wireframe (figma)

4. Database architecture

In including all four parts, you give your developer the best possible chance of accurately estimating the full cost for your project. 

Let’s investigate each of these features a little further. 

Scope

It can be difficult to understand the deliberate limits of an MVP app.  After all, why not include as many features as possible to make a more appealing product for your customers? 

The answer is speed, which of course affects cost. 

Creating as lean an MVP as possible saves time, enabling you to present your MVP to early adopting customers to gain valuable feedback before you spend any more time on augmented features.  You need real data from real customers in order to develop your product according to actual market needs and wants, not just your perception of them. 

We utilise our experience to help you understand where you can draw the line and still have a fully functional MVP app that will achieve its purpose. 

User Flow

Also known as User Experience, a User Flow is the steps taken on an app to complete a set task, from entry point to completion. 

User flows can be for individual users, or processes, such as admin or finance.  They normally consist of scenarios of 4-12 detailed steps within the journey of the user. 

User flows are very useful as they uncover: 

• Key user pain points

• Understanding touch points

• Logic of the flow

• Highs and lows of the experience

Wireframe (Figma)

A wireframe is a 3D model designed to bring your app to life.  A wireframe can be static, showing you how the final MVP app should look.  Alternatively, it could be clickable, which is much more useful as it demonstrates how pages interact with each other and gives a better idea of functionality. 

We recommend Figma, as it integrates directly into Bubble, speeding up the conversion from wireframe to MVP. 

Database Architecture

You will have a series of databases for each persona, and it is important to think about what you’d like to store in each one. 

Working alongside your User Flow, establish the information you will need at each stage, and for what purpose.  For example,you will usually require a username and password to log in, which would be one of the first steps in the User Flow. 

The best way to do this is visually, using a spreadsheet and working logically through each step to ensure nothing is missed out. 

Our founding team has extensive experience of building high quality MVP apps for pretty much every type of industry you can imagine.  We can guide you through how to build yours in our innovative Bootcamp, or if you’re strapped for time, we can build it for you.