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Ask HN: Minimum Viable Product?

7 pointsFreebytesSector5 comments

I have created a web site at www.sipen.com that helps companies and individuals keep track of their time tracking. This would be helpful for invoicing and other such features, but I have not marketed it yet or even mentioned it much. (This was created using PHP using the Yii Framework.)

The individual side is free but is missing many of the features offered on the business side. I think this may be resulting in people getting the wrong impression about the product. I have not added credit card processing to it yet or anything because I have almost given up on the whole project altogether due to a lack of interest from people I have shown.

I am asking the community here if they could give me some input on this. Should I change it and give a fully featured option to businesses on a time based trial instead? Should I keep the 'free for individuals' option? Also, what features do you think are missing that would be necessary for this to truly be a minimum viable product? I get the feeling that if I was to put this out there, it would flop because there is so much competition from similar products (even if they are not as easy to use.)

Any criticism would be appreciated as long as it can help make the product better.

Lastly, when the product is really a MVP, how can I possibly sell it? What marketing and advertising steps do you recommend?

Also, if you want to test out the company features, I have added an account for that. The username is "demoadmin" and the password is "testaccount" and there is already a basic user set up named "test" and the password for that is "testaccount" even though no information is filled in for it, and the user has never been marked as clocking into the time clock.

I appreciate any feedback.

I've said this, or variations of this thing a few times in the past, so I'll try to be brief here.

Mainly, MVP is an overused term. An MVP should mean "a completely barebones product that solves a problem to test the market." Time tracking is a proven market, and it's no mystery that you can make money in the time tracking market. There are probably hundreds of companies doing exactly that.

Your MVP should then be to test what you are doing differently in that market to see how people respond to it. If you were, for example, tracking time through a Tweet-like-system (like IDidWork.com, for example), then build the barebones system that does that and see how people respond. If you can get them to sign up and keep using it, you know you have a winner.

If you have a winner, then you need to progress beyond MVP as quickly as possible, and into a more fleshed out project. Add the other features that you think are necessary to the goal, but only if they're absolutely needed. Figure out what users are asking for, or if they're leaving, find out why. If they're staying, find out why. Respond to that feedback, but be careful of taking everybody at their word -- look for kernels of commonality in the feedback that speak to a bigger truth than what people are actually saying and try to implement.

Add polish. Add all the polish. Make your product inviting, enticing, attractive, gorgeous if you can manage it.

Figure out what use cases your product excels at (based on user feedback) -- target THAT. If your product is better at tracking time spent on customer work than say, other products who are better at tracking time spent for the same project or company, accentuate that. Everybody has a need, and if you have a number of users for which you are solving that need, then play it up and find more.

Then, charge. Figure out the relative value you add. Split-test pricing. Read books on pricing. You might ask your users what they would be willing to pay for this service, but that comes with risks too.

Profit.

When you create an MVP you shouldn't be thinking about the products success in terms of it's sales. An MVP is basically an experiment, you should be looking at feedback you're getting from it and how that feedback can be used to improve the product.

Do people like the product's goal but not a certain aspect of it? Great! Now go change that aspect and see what they think now. Repeat and repeat until the product is financial success.

If you're not getting sales that's fine, focus on just getting people more people to try a free account. Maybe change the homepage around one day, see how that affects the rate of sign ups. Keep experimenting and improving.

Create an MDP (Minimum Desirable Product) as opposed to an MVP.

ugh, sorry, but why go into such a saturated market already full of dozens of niches?

I actually could not find exactly what I wanted years ago so I created some time clock software for a company where I worked in some of my spare time. They became the first 'customer', but I allowed them to use it at no charge.

I got one paying customer for it a while later so I decided to go ahead and make it more asthetically pleasing. That is the reason I decided to focus on this instead. I am working on numerous projects, but this is the only one that I actually have some people using so I thought I would put more effort into it and wanted some feedback.

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