When it comes to creating the best product, there is so much that you need to get right. A good idea with misguided marketing can be a fiasco and bringing the right product to the wrong audience can bear equally devastating results. Before a product hits the market, tons of research and development efforts go into that journey.
The development stage starts with an idea upon which your product is built. What makes this stage unique is that it's not entirely about creating a product but exploring the possibilities. You're not focused on marketing or sales but work on other different aspects such as research, prototype development, testing, pricing, and strategizing the launch. Here are a few things that happen during the development stage of most products.
Conduct Market Research
Before creating a product prototype, it's vital to conduct adequate market research. That will help you refine the idea and test the product before it reaches the marketplace. An important part of product development is concept testing. It involves measuring market demand for a product and refining its features via customer feedback. That way, our company can go to market with confidence.
Run a Competitive Analysis
Running a business is not just about improving, but rather being better than the competition. For this reason, running a competitive analysis during the development stage is vital in launching a successful product. A competitive analysis is a process of identifying and evaluating your competitors based on a given criterion. Running a good competitive analysis can help your company identify gaps and potential growth opportunities in the market.
Test the Product on Real Consumers
Once the product is ready, it’s important to test the concept on real customers and gather feedback. Conduct interviews and create prototypes to gather feedback from potential (and existing) consumers. The feedback can help you understand the issues with the current product and develop a product that meets the user's expectations.
Protect Your Intellectual Property Rights
You also need to work towards protecting your intellectual property rights. Before launching your product, get it patented and trademarked to stop competitors from copying it and bringing an alternative to the market.
Bring in the Investors
Due to the high costs incurred while developing a new product, many companies seek investors during this stage. To both investors and customers, you need to show them something like a brief sketch of the product or a prototype. All you need is to show them that your product is viable and has market potential. Validating your marketing potential can be really helpful in raising funds during this stage.
The end product of the development stage is the minimum viable product (MVP). It’s a product that is not yet perfect but has enough features to attract early customers and validate the product’s market potential.
