The Main Mistakes A Business Owner Can Make When Creating A Digital Product
The crisis has become a challenging test for the entire world, and it has also dramatically altered corporate practices. Many businesses seek to implement new technology, but the idea doesn’t always take root, or the outcome is not what they planned at the outset.
What are the main mistakes companies make and how to avoid them, we will tell in the article.
The most common mistakes when creating a digital product
#1. Blurred vision of the digital product
This leads to the fact that the client while researching offers on the market, receives from different development teams estimates of project implementation with a large discrepancy in budget and time. In the right case, this discrepancy stems from the different economics and resources of development teams, and not from vague product requirements from the customer.
Often, as a result, the customer chooses the option with the lowest possible price and the fastest deadline for completing the task. This is a classic mistake made by inexperienced clients with low IT skills. This mistake can be avoided with the involvement of an analyst from the customer or a top-notch digital product design company.
#2. Fixed estimate of deadlines and budget
In innovative projects, where the level of uncertainty is off the charts, it is impossible to evaluate the specific terms of a finished and successful product or project. Estimating time resources is most effective in the sprint model. A specific amount of work is determined, and it is assigned to the sprint. The main rule is that the ongoing sprint cannot be canceled, but the next one can be corrected or canceled altogether. This approach involves working out the maximum number of right and wrong decisions.
#3. Forgetting that the customer is the priority
Many developers simply create products that customers don’t need. Without confirmation of hypotheses and problems, each new feature simply increases the budget and development time.
How to fix it? Create a minimum viable product (MVP). In the first stage, in order to determine the minimum set of functions, we recommend using a priority matrix.
The main criterion for a successful MVP is that it should cause a desire to buy. And the fact of speed remains important, including the speed of failure. For many business models, speed is key. And this is almost impossible to implement with a product with a large set of functions. And it is impossible to build a trendy product without communicating with customers.
#4. Too early brand development
The difference between a digital product and a physical one is that every action of a user (customer) in a digital product model can be tracked and measured.
The majority of the teams are so tired of uncertainty that they turn on a massive ad campaign to get new users aka customers. Or in the process of development, they create a brand, while not knowing what will happen at the end.
In practice, it is really difficult to run an experiment or MVP without a name or in its raw form, but the essence of the digital world also comes down to narrow targeting. This means that your experiment will not be seen by all your customers or millions of users.
In the case of a massive advertising campaign, we usually get just traffic and, at best, new customers. And as soon as the advertising campaign ends, there is an outflow of customer users. A brand should be created only when you have received confirmation of growth or found a market.
How to avoid mistakes in creating new digital products?
It is impossible not to make mistakes, and the faster and more we make them, the higher the probability of success. In any case, it is worth starting with the formation of a key project team, separating it into a separate direction.
In order to speed up, and attract service teams to the project, which will help in building the first version of the product with the gradual recruitment of its own team. And there is no need to harbor illusions that you can assemble the ideal team configuration already at the first stage: you don’t know what it will be and what it will need in the process of work.
And most importantly, achieve a common understanding of the culture of the experiment within. Let’s create more digital products that customers will love!
