How do you decide when to validate your product idea?
Hello everyone, as someone just starting to get into everything related to starting a Saas, Bootstraping, etc.. I keep reading about validating your idea as quick as possible, talk to the users as fast as possible and iterate on the idea. I also heard in the Indiebites podcast that some of the people being interviewed just created a LandingPage and bought some targeted adds to see if it was a hit or miss.
Being a developer by trade I have a hard time not diving into the implementation straight away, and I know that's not the route to take.
So my question is, how do you decide when to validate your product idea?
Do you create a landing page and try to get traffic to it, see if people sign up,
Or do you build some minor prototype that allows people to test it?
Anything that can help me in the right direction from what has worked for other Bootstrapers / IH'ers would be greatly appreciated.
Feedback should be obtained at each stage to see if you are still going in the right direction. The Lean Startup approach is "fail fast, fail cheap". It's no use if you've spent XX money on a prototype, but miss the target audience's problems. I personally find design thinking a good approach to develop products and services. Otherwise check out the book "The Design Thinking Toolbox
A Guide to Mastering the Most Popular and Valuable Innovation Methods", it contains many good templates.
Basically, I would first discuss the idea myself with friends and family. However, since they are sometimes not honest, I would quickly move to the target audience. With a first landing page or just a lo-fi prototype in Figma you can then approach your target group and get feedback. An advantage would be if you already have contacts there. Try to find out exactly what the need is there. Most of the time people pivoting away from the first idea because the need doesn't match the solution. The further you are in the development process and you realize that the customer need does not match your idea, the more money or time you have to invest to change the direction.
Okay so you suggest either building a landing page or going figma first, reach out to the target audience and then get feedback? I kinda like the fact that reaching out for feedback before developing and then to find out if it solves their issues as a main course of action, didn't rly think about that part before. My plan was to create a landingpage for signups and then get into development, not really verifying if the design or product would solve their issue.
Cheers for the book tip, Never seen it before but will def look into that one.
Validation refers to testing your ideas against real customers and the environment. This helps you determine if your idea will be successful in the market.
If you don’t validate your idea, you risk wasting time and resources on projects that won’t succeed.
Start by defining your audience and their problems. Once you have an understanding of who they are and what problems they face, define your ideal customer persona. Then, create personas and scenarios to test your concept through user stories. Finally, test your prototypes and evaluate them against your goals.
Hope this is helpful!
Thank you Arthi, this seems to be a bit of a different approach, to me this seems geared towards really understanding your customer before actually doing any testing. This seems like something that might be a great approach to try out before actually releasing a prototype for people to try out. Have u tried this approach of first defining personas, and conceps through user stories? :)
also any good book recommendation for this? I'm a developer by trade so this kind of research is fairly unknown to me.
When developing a product, it is essential to get feedback from potential customers. After all, they are the ones who will ultimately decide whether or not to purchase the product.
I don't think books can alone help you out! You can check out few blogs and also check out some competitive websites.