Improving an existing product or creating a new product that will satisfy the
customers is not an easy game. It requires considerable resources and a lot of
critical decisions to lower the chances of failure.
Before we start, have you heard the saying "Product Development is the life-blood
of any product development company"? If yes, you might have wondered
why right? And if yes, then this topic is just for you.
In this lesson, we will cover everything there is to know about product
development. And by the end of this lesson, Surely you will fully understand why
product development is the life-blood of any product development company.
With that said, here are the list of topics we will cover in this lesson:
First, let's understand what product and development are.
A product is a good, service, or idea that satisfies consumers and is received
in exchange through money or some other unit of value. A product is
produced by labor or through a series of automated processes.
Development is a process where continuous progress or a positive change of
something is being achieved.
Product development refers to the complete process of creating new
products or improving existing ones to satisfy the target customers' needs.
Product development is a creative and systematic process that involves idea
generation, screening, designing, developing, and marketing newly produced
or newly improved products or services.
To put it simply, product development is the product's entire journey.
Product development can be costly and time-consuming, also carries the
possibility to fail and the reward if it succeeds. But no one wants their product
to die, right?
Thus, to succeed, one must follow a structured development and launch process.
PART 2.
What is the Product Development Process?
As the name suggests, the product development process consists of all the
necessary steps to take a product from concept to market availability.
The product development process includes identifying what kind of market is
needed, researching, conceptualizing, building a minimum viable product,
developing a product roadmap, etc.
Companies and organizations have their own different approach in the product
development process. Some companies use the five stages method, while
others will break it into six, seven, or eight stages.
5 Stages of Product Development Process
Ideation and Brainstorming
Idea Screening
Concept Development and Testing
Prototyping and Evaluation
Product Rollout
Stage 1
Ideation and Brainstorming
It is the first stage in the development process, where you gather your team and
generate different ideas.
Coming up with a product idea is easy, but coming up with a great product
idea is another story. This stage's primary goal is to give significance and think
of something that could solve the customers' problems and cater to their needs.
There are several methods to generate valuable ideas. The following are two
great ways on how to create valuable ideas for your product:
SCAMPER method
This method helps you generate ideas for your product and services by asking
yourself or your teammates these seven different types of questions; Substitute,
Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put, Eliminate,
and Reverse.
This method will help you understand how you can innovate and improve
existing products, services, problems, and ideas.
To put it simply, you take an existing product and create an even better product.
Mind mapping
Mind mapping is also a handy method for generating a product idea. It helps
organize brainstorming sessions efficiently and document results in an
easy-to-understand manner.
Usually, mind maps start with a simple idea or product description and
eventually form a visual representation of everything a product must do or that
customers want it to do.
In fact, there are certain circumstances that mind mapping that will give you
unexpected solutions.
Once ideas are generated, the next stage is to screen those ideas to determine
whether they will succeed or not.
Stage 2
Idea Screening
Idea screening is a very crucial stage in the development process. Product
ideas that do not meet the company's objective should be eliminated.
The idea screening process helps you narrow down irrelevant ideas into an
acceptable amount. In other words, it is the process to eliminate the number of
product ideas without screening out the potential ones.
If a poor product passes through the screening stage, it would be a waste of
money and effort in the subsequent stages and even worse if a worthwhile
product idea is screened out.
But through successful idea screening, the company can focus the whole
product development process with a higher chance of achieving success of
their product.
During the screening process, specific criteria are prepared in which a product
should meet. Some of the primary factors are:
The product's feasibility
Budget
Company's values
User needs
Competition
If the product does meet the screening process's requirements and objectives,
it will move on to the next stage: produce a clear product concept and test its
viability.
Stage 3
Concept Development and Testing
At this stage, a few and realistic product ideas remain. You will need to describe
the product in a way how the customer would use it. This involves a detailed
description of the product idea and the customer's perspective.
In other words, you need to develop a product concept. But what exactly is a
product concept?
What is a product concept?
A product concept is like a blueprint of your product idea. When developing a
product concept, certain things are needed to consider:
Describe your concept from your customer's point of view
Thorough research to determine your target audience
Conduct focus group and in-depth market research
Resources needed for designing, manufacturing, and delivering the product.
Also, a product concept should describe and highlight the best features of the
proposed idea. These features are:
Quality (Does the functionality of the product will meet
customer's needs and expectations?)
Pricing (How does the customer willing to pay for the product?)
Usability (Is the functionality easy to understand?)
Convenience (Does the product saves the customer's time and effort?)
After you develop your product concept, you need to test it with a customer to
test its viability. But first, let's understand what concept testing is.
What is a concept testing?
Concept testing is a way to assess your customer and determine their reaction
towards your proposed product or service before introducing it to the market.
Concept testing typically involves surveys to your potential customers and asks
their opinions towards your product's concept.
You may ask them specific questions like if they are interested in the product or
how much they like the product.
You can also present several other concepts to determine which among them
the customer finds most fitting.
After the concept and testing are evaluated and confirmed, the next stage in
the process would be prototyping and evaluating your product.
Stage 4
Prototyping and Evaluation
In this stage, you are finally giving life to your product. This stage aims to create
a finished product and use it as a sample for mass production, using surveys
and research results from customers as a guide to creating a prototype with
designs and features that the customers desired.
Prototyping helps you explore your product idea and demonstrates its features
before investing in its complete development. Also, prototyping is a common
practice among many companies since it saves time and money.
A product prototype must be built as early in the process as possible so you
can evaluate the product and gather feedback from your clients or customers.
At the same time, you are thinking of ways to improve or make your product better.
Thus, it makes sense to create a prototype product first rather than spending
thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours creating a finished product and
then realizing that it still needs modifications.
From web development companies' perspective, they usually spend time
making prototypes for their clients to illustrate how the website will work and
what its features will look like.
In that way, if the client desires to make some changes, modifications can be
made quickly since none of the back-end code has been implemented yet. And
when the client is satisfied with the prototype, only then will the developers
invest time to make a finished website.
Stage 5
Product Rollout
This stage is also known as commercialization or market entry. This is the stage
where your product enters the marketplace. All information collected
throughout the previous stages is utilized to produce, market, and distribute the
final product.
At this stage, your product will be launched, full scale to the market. Thus, this is
the point where the highest costs are sustained. Other than the costs, other
factors must also be considered. This includes both when and where your
product should be launched.
Promoting your product is also essential to your product's success. If possible,
promoting must be done before product launch to pique customers' curiosity.
Social media is the biggest, if not the most influential channel for advertising
and marketing. The fact that it is easy to interact with people that got
fascinated with your product. It is the most effective way to reach the most
customers as quickly as possible through sharing and word of mouth.
With everything in place, your product is now available to everyone and the
"product development life cycle" begins.
Since you made it this far reading, surely you already know that product
development has several stages.
From producing an idea to distributing the products to the target customers,
each stage has a strategy implemented to make the product successful and generate revenue.
PART 3.
Product Development Strategies
Before introducing some product development
strategies, you must first understand what a product
development strategy is and how it is essential in
product development.
What is a Product Development Strategy?
Product development strategies are methods and actions to develop new
products or innovate existing products to appear new and offer those products
to the market.
A product development strategy can reveal certain areas for improvement and
which methods are most suitable for your product. And to gain the most
benefits from your product development strategy, you should consider how
various techniques would work.
Moreover, having a clear product development strategy can help your product
turn into a profitable one and modify it to stay competitive within the market.
That said, the following are some product development strategies:
1. Modify an existing product
Modifying an existing product and improving it is an efficient strategy in product
development. This strategy focuses on determining which features the
consumers wanted to improve and then make those changes.
2. Create new products
This strategy is risky since you don't know how the customers will respond to
something new. Thus, in this strategy, you should always be mindful of what the
customers are looking for.
3. Change ideas
If the market does not respond to innovation, this strategy should be helpful.
The company should consider focusing its resources on researching what the
market wants.
Since not all ideas will result in a successful product, changing ideas when
needed can be an effective strategy.
Each company has its own approach to product development strategy. A
company may focus on adapting to its current products, while others may
create innovations.
Regardless of what path the company may choose, a product development
strategy is essential to its product's ongoing growth and success.
PART 4.
Examples of Product Development
1. Netflix
Netflix started as a DVD rental platform and eventually became the largest
streaming service in the market. Netflix's decision to shift to streaming media was a
great success in evolving alongside market trends.
Each decision that Netflix makes always focuses on what the user needs. Netflix
iterated on the product experience, content, and pricing model as they continued to
add value to satisfy the user's needs.
With a solid product development strategy, Netflix achieved the ability to capture
more revenue as the company continues to grow. Thus, being able to anticipate the
market trends and customer expectations makes Netflix grown into one of the most
over-the-top streaming platforms on the market.
2. Popsocket
David Barnett, the founder of the product, first created the PopSocket for him to hold
and store headphone cords with his phone.
Eventually, PopSocket became a popular, removable smartphone grip as Barnett
marketed the product as an easy way to hold smartphones with one hand as a
kickstand for a smartphone so it can stand upright.
Personalization of the product gained more value, and it gave rise to a completely
new revenue stream for the company. Now, Popsockets offers a wide variety of
promotional items, and each can be customized based on what the customer wants.
PopSocket became famous because of a clear understanding of market trends and
intensive research implemented during the planning and discovery stages in the
product development.
When you have a clear understanding of how the market perceives your product, it is
easier to build features to provide customers needs and meet their expectations.
3. Houseparty
Houseparty is a face-to-face social media app for connecting with individuals and
small groups. Houseparty is a great example of how product development happens
in small, gradual changes.
To illustrate the value of Houseparty to their customers, they needed a way to
increase their usage engagement as their platform grew. Thus, they ran A/B testing
to gather data and understand where customers experienced issues with the app.
Through their continuous tests, Houseparty understood the cause of the decrease in
user engagement and identified an opportunity to change their onboarding process.
By making gradual changes to the onboarding process, they successfully increased
user engagement within their app.
In developing a new product, you must understand how to target specific customers, fix their problems, and position
your products or your product's features correctly. Because when you are creating value for your customers, that
also translates as giving value to the business as well.
PART 5.
Product Development Companies
Are you perhaps planning on making a
product? Then, you might be thinking of hiring a
suitable company for the job. So here are the
best product development companies to work with:
Are you planning on making a mobile or web application as your product for a
successful startup? If so, then Bootyard will be more than happy to help you turn
it into reality.
Bootyard is a mobile and web app development company that is based in the
Philippines. The company's core focus is to develop startup ideas into software products.
Thus, if you have a great startup idea, Bootyard will develop and design your
idea in a way that it will stand out against the other competitors. Moreover, the
company will set up your startup app and infrastructure on where it will live and grow.
If you want to know more about Bootyard, feel free to visit
Bootyard.
The company has over 45-years of strategic consulting and research
experience in uncovering opportunities to improve products and services based
on customer feedback.
They help their clients make product development decisions confidently by
providing component-based customer feedback from concept optimization to
prototype testing, packaging design, pricing, and launching.
Target Research Group Inc. is a global, full-service, and consumer insights
research company. Some of the largest brands rely on them for food and
beverage, healthcare, personal care, legal research, household products, and
many more.
The company is well-known for its strategic product research expertise,
including sensory, advanced modeling, segmentation, and packaging.
Have a startup idea?
Email me about your project idea and I’ll provide you with a plan on how we can build an MVP version of it in a month.