CB Insights recently did a report on the Top 20 Reasons Startups Fail and the number one reason at 42% is no market need.
What does this mean? Basically, 42% of startups fail because they don’t solve a big enough market problem. It’s not about creating the next Airbnb with a bit of Tinder and a spark of Spotify. You need to know who your audience is and test your idea with them. It’s easy and tempting to fall in love with your ideas and think they are invincible but you need to take a step back and just test.
Easy! No-code prototypes + product design methodologies. You need to undergo a phase of observation, understanding and analysis of comparable concepts to test and validate hypotheses with real users and minimize the risk that exists while building a product. This doesn’t need to take months. You just need to take a couple of weeks and build a no-code prototype to get things right.
Remember: the longer you take to test a product, the more expensive it will be to repair mistakes. A test implemented at the right time will provide you with the tools you need to justify future decisions and define the product’s roadmap.
Apart from helping you solve technical and functionality issues and detect the strengths and weaknesses of a product, user testing will definitely help you get to know your target in depth. This way you won’t have to limit yourself to a stereotype of an ideal user but actually, get to know real ones and how they behave in your market.
There are plenty of no-code tools out there. Choose wisely and save tons of time. Building a web? Webflow. Building a platform? Bubble. Building an app? Bravo Studio. Building a one-page? Carrd. Check no-code directories to get more information. There’s a tool out there that’s built right for your prototype.
Before you test your ideas, you need to identify the main needs or problems you believe the product addresses. Remember, your no-code prototype doesn’t have to solve everything right away. You need to establish priorities.
What users say and how they act don’t usually match. You ought to read between the lines while you conduct user testings. Detect their real needs and not what they think they need or what they tell you just to be polite.
Jakob Nilsen, the expert on research-based user experience, suggests that the right amount of users for a test is 5. He claims that testing a prototype with more users is a waste of resources and time. As you add more and more users, feedback starts repeating itself.
You need to document the results during and after a test. Each and every piece of feedback you collect will help you build arguments for and against every option you need to consider.
Results will let you discover patterns, coincidences, and differences. You’ll also get outliers that you need to save and analyze later since they may hide important information. Plus, you’ll need to check your data with other existing investigations, papers, essays, and so on.
Most importantly, testing your no-code prototype will allow you to move fast and firmly and continue to build your MVP or fully functional product.
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