Reasons Why You Should Prototype Your Idea Before Developing It

Reasons Why You Should Prototype Your Idea Before Developing It

Starting a new business is always challenging. Therefore, the entrepreneurs should make all the efforts to decrease risks and guarantee the success of the product. The creation of a prototype is one of the factors that define the success of your business ideas. Although some business people consider that prototyping is a waste of time, they should try this method to understand the benefits of it. If you still do not know the reasons why you should prototype, let us explore them. Ten reasons why you should prototype your idea before developing it demonstrate the benefits of the creation of a version of the product that might contribute to your success.

The creation of a prototype might help you understand the values and benefits of your product. Since the competitive ability plays a crucial role in the market, the development of the product that differs from the other items and can satisfy the specific needs of the customers becomes the decisive factor in the success of a business. As a result, the creation of a model helps you determine the strong points of your idea to enhance them further and contribute to the improvement of the product.

The prototype provides the chance to notice what shortcomings and drawbacks your product has before you spend a lot of time and money for the development. In business, understanding what weak points might impede the success of the product influences the ability of it to attract the attention of the target audience. Consequently, you should focus on the disadvantages to guarantee that you considered all the possible cases before launching the product. Thus, prototyping helps you save costs that you might have spent on the readjustment and the development of your idea.

You should prototype your idea before developing it because this method might help you save money. The process of launching the new product is complicated and expensive. Therefore, you should not put your idea under risk and start the process before trying your concept in the form of a model. Since this sample helps you determine the problems and drawbacks before the introduction of the final product, it saves your costs. Mainly, the visualization plays a significant role in the evaluation of different factors that influence the interest of the audience. Consequently, having visualized the product, you may use it to avoid the problems in the development of your idea.

The introduction of a prototype might help you save time. The central claim that influences the benefit of this method is the understanding that the creation of a prototype requires less time than the creation of the final product. The additional proof concerns the fact that the prototype might help you remove the defects before you launch your product. All these components show that the creation of a sample saves a lot of time and helps you to promote your idea faster because it is polished and improved.

Prototyping helps you to convince the stakeholders to invest in your business idea. Funding is an essential element of the introduction of a new product. However, recently, with the emergence of a large number of inventors, finding and gaining the confidence of the investors becomes more and more difficult. Thus, visualization becomes the instrument of persuasion and demonstration of the uniqueness of your product. When the stakeholders try your product themselves and judge its benefits by their own senses, they start trusting it more and feel freer to invest.

The other reason why you should prototype your idea before developing it concerns the ability to use the model for testing, getting feedback, and improvements. The introduction of a new product is always challenging because the inventor might know little about the ability of it to win the loyalty of the target audience. Therefore, in this case, the prototype becomes a valuable tool that helps to test the product to define its specifics and issues to avoid them in future development.

The creation of a prototype provides the chance to compare your product with that of the competitors to allow you to understand how to exceed them. The visualization offers the chance to “touch” and “feel” your product. Besides, you may compare it with the other items according to different criteria. The identification of these differences is a significant contribution to the ability of the creators to modify the product according to the information that they get during the process of comparison.

You may create multiple prototypes to choose the best one for future development. The low prices of the models enable the creators to produce several samples to test them all and choose the most appropriate variant. The inventor may define the advantages and disadvantages of all of them, compare and contrast them, ask the colleagues and other users to try the product to eventually decide which one of them deserves to enter the market.

Everyone knows that experience plays a significant role in business. The design of a prototype might become the contribution to your experience. Mainly, the more samples you produce, the more skilled you will be in the development of the product. Indeed, you gain a lot of new knowledge and understand your concept better when you try something rather than just think about it. You should prototype your idea before developing it because this practical knowledge might add to your experience.

Finally, your attempt might demonstrate the others the seriousness of your intentions and convince the investors that you are a serious entrepreneur and approach the idea with responsibility. The creation of a version of your product might show that you are determined to achieve success and apply all the possible measures to reach your goals. Besides, the prototype makes the others understand that you definitely know how business works and what steps to take before risking the money.

The creation of a prototype is an essential step in your business. It determines how effective your strategy will be and what results it will yield. Ten reasons why you should prototype your idea before developing it explain the most significant aspects that might contribute to the value of your product. In particular, the creation of a version of your product might save your time and money, show the investors the benefits of your product, and convince them in the success of your ideas. Besides, it might help you determine the problems, shortcomings, and advantages of your product before you launch its development. In addition, it might allow you to improve the product, get feedback, and test it. Therefore, before developing your idea, you should always design a model that might become the instrument of your success.

5 Actionable Tips for Scaling Your Small Business

5 Actionable Tips for Scaling Your Small Business

Growing a business past a plateau is not always an easy task. Once you’ve exhausted your leads and your sales are stagnating, scaling your business is the next logical step.

In order to scale, you are growing your business but without doubling your budget. Here are five key ways to scale your small business.

1. Think big

A whopping 90% of startups fail. That means that only 10% of business ideas from entrepreneurs actually gain traction and make money. Failure is always par for the course when you take a risk but enterprising people make the best from it, by learning what they did wrong and not repeating those mistakes in their next venture. The fastest way to success is to fail often and you do this by thinking big. What do you want from your business and where do you want it to go? Rather than thinking in micro-steps, think about the macro. Set goals for one year, five years and even ten years. If you are only focusing on what you can do today, you’ll never get to tomorrow. By taking big risks, you are set to have big gains.

That said, don’t risk your entire business on one growth plan. Scaling your business means continuing to do what you do well, but also taking risks to increase that success in new and different ways. This is where you need to think large. If the data is telling you that your plan isn’t working, find a way to change course or jump ship and move on to the next dream.

2. Learn to say no

Like many entrepreneurs, your great ideas are probably consuming your waking and sleeping hours. You most likely can’t have a shower without thinking about a product modification or a new way of running your business. Your great ideas are what got your startup off the ground and they may also be the way you are going to get your business to scale. But, in the words of Steve Jobs, focus is “saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are”.

Think of a white board, filled with scribbles of ideas, connecting to one another. In the frenzied madness of idea creation, not all of your ideas will be good enough to come to fruition. Learn what to say no to so you don’t invest your business capital haphazardly. By saying no to key ideas that seem amazing, you are leaving room for even better ideas to make waves in your business. The best restaurants have very small menus, because the few things they do, they do incredibly well. Your business should follow this line of thinking, so you shouldn’t just dive into every project that seems appealing.

3. Let your customers do the talking

Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. Your ideas, your products, and even your beautifully-designed website mean nothing if you don’t have customers. Your startup may already have a great customer base, but how do you keep them loyal to your brand? Too many companies focus their time and effort on customer acquisition, when in actual fact, it costs 7x the amount of capital to acquire a new customer than it does to retain one.

The most ideal way for you to keep your customers is to find out what they want and give it to them. It really is that simple. Get your customer’s feedback on

  • what products they’d like to see sold in your store
  • what frustrates them about your product or user experience
  • what’s stopping them from buying more
  • what value you can truly give them and aren’t currently doing so

Getting customer feedback is very simple. Create a customer feedback survey and send it to your email list, or ask your customers to complete the survey after a purchase on your site. The goal is to keep it short and valuable for the customer, so they want to provide their feedback. Offer an incentive to complete the survey, like a discount off a future purchase, which inevitably is also a great sales tactic. Use your social media channels to ask your customers what they think about your brand. If these methods don’t prove fruitful for you, check your site’s analytics for more information about how long customers stay on which pages and where they stop themselves before purchasing.

4. Gather some data

Your site analytics are a great way to find out about your customer and lead behavior, but by having a goal in mind for your data, you’ll find that you can increase the results you get. For example, by taking a look at what links your leads are clicking on to get to your site, you can increase your effort on creating similar links for them to click on. If guest posting is getting customers to your site, do more of that. If your blog posts are giving your customers enough value that they decide to spend more, increase the amount of valuable blog content on your site. One of the best ways to scale your business is to find out what you are doing well and do it exponentially.

5. Become an authority

As a startup, you may not believe you are a leader in your industry. That assumption is undoubtedly false, because if you have already started seeing success, you definitely have knowledge to be shared. By becoming a thought leader or an authority in your industry, you’ll gain the trust of your customers and provide them more value than just selling them a product.

The best way to do this is to get published and often. Start small with your blog, espousing thought leadership content that relates to your products and services. Then, get the word out by engaging in guest posting and seeking publication on larger and more authoritative sources. Your content does need to be innovative and give audiences something different from what they’ve already read 1,000 times over. You can do this by being controversial, taking a different tone or stance from what’s generally seen as acceptable and adding actionable ideas.

Scaling your business by using your existing resources, like your thought knowledge, your customer base and your existing data is the best way to grow without an increased spend. Don’t underestimate what you already have in place for your business to help you grow and scale.