One of the most important elements of app development is the product strategy. Product strategy not only positions the app within a market, but it also ensures that the production process itself leads to successful outcomes. Mistakes at this stage can prevent the app from achieving business objectives and performing up to certain standards.
Positioning mistakes
A common positioning mistake is to confuse customer requirements with product requirements. Customers are not always in the position to understand their full range of requirements and opportunities, and as such, product requirements have a larger, better-defined scope. In other words, product requirements take into account the current market, emerging technologies, and upcoming trends.
It is also important to get as many experts to participate during this stage of the process as possible, including, engineers, designers, developers, managers, product owners and others. This will help generate a multifaceted view of the product and its path to success.
Finally, one of the biggest positioning mistakes is misunderstanding or ignoring the competition. Industry and competitor research should hold a prominent position in your product strategy. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors? How do they define their customers’ needs, and how do they plan to address them? Where is the industry headed as a whole, and how can our product succeed in it? These are the questions that will help you better position your app.
Production mistakes
One of the first production mistakes is spending too much time in a pre-market hustle, where you either plan, develop or design for too long without any customer/end-user interaction. Instead, it’s best to approach production from a lean perspective, with rapid prototyping, minimum viable products, and a consistent iterative process based on feedback from the market.
In a similar vein of thought, you do not want to confuse features and functionalities for value to the customer. If you use an MVP-based/lean approach, the market will tell you which features appeal most to your customers. This will not only help you save a lot of money and development time but will also increase the ROI for your product.
The best way to ensure that a product is successful is by properly understanding market needs. With an optimal positioning and production strategy, a product can reach the market faster, at a lower cost, and at a higher level of quality.
