Well crafted products are sure to generate interest among targeted audience and drive sales. It attracts customers to visit your business site repeatedly. However, inception to launching a product is undoubtedly a huge undertaking. Proper market research will also be required for product development.
About Product Development Life Cycle
Product life cycle describes the different stages through which the product undergoes right from launch to that of discontinuation. Four phases are present in this cycle, namely:
- Introduction: Product is newly launched in the market and carrying out marketing campaigns.
- Development: With time, product gains traction and gains popularity.
- Maturity: Product over time touches peak market penetration.
- Decline: Market share is lost and it is eventually discontinued.
About Product Development Life Cycle
It explains clearly generation of new ideas and its introduction in the market. Ranging from concept to that of conceptualization, aspiring builders get proper guidance through the product development stages. It helps to them to optimize odds of identifying traction and minimizing risks.
Different stages
1. Ideation:
It is the first step that involves generating new, innovative ideas. Objective is to identify and solve problems or to seize potential opportunities. It is undoubtedly a challenging phase, but a great branding strategy. Frameworks and strategies implemented can help jumpstart the process. At this stage avoid judging idea feasibility. Creativity should flow.
2. Validation:
It identifies those worth pursuing ideas and the ones that should be scrapped. It is also an effective key performance indicator. You may use interviews, online surveys, A/B tests or focus groups to evaluate if your newly developed products have potential market or not. Such initial insights can help narrow down your focus and help select and implement promising ideas.
3. Prototyping:
Once product idea is ready, the next is to develop a prototype that offers customer lifetime value. Determine key functions and features to be included in it as is likely to be your product’s foundation at launch. Hence it is to be based on user feedback during validation. Then develop product working model or mockup using wireframing tools. You can visualize the final product’s function, feel and look.
4. Marketing:
Market research is an absolute must once prototype is completed. Identify target audience, develop buyer personas, formulate product USP and determine potential competitors. Such insights can help create strong branding strategy. Established businesses may consider promoting new products on different social media platforms and through email. Determine the channels to use for filling up your sales funnel. It could include word-of-mouth, blogging, social media or paid advertising.
5. Development:
Key performance indicator should be taken into account throughout the development stages. Kick off MVP (minimum viable product) development. The objective is to learn from potential users and reach the market quickly. Completed prototype is likely to offer sufficient details for the engineering team to develop the product.
6. Launch:
Everything should be in proper place when trying to launch the new product. Marketing campaigns should involve smartly devised strategies that tap targeted audience in different platforms. When product is concerned, it includes setting up billing, finalizing integrations, implementing user analytics and tracking. Also schedule press announcements, post on social media and plan launch event.
7. Improvement:
The fact is that product development is termed to be an ongoing journey and not the destination. It should also offer customer lifetime value. Valuable feedback from real users will enable you to launch it well. Note their behavior. This data can be used to customize the product to make it more marketable and acceptable.
Thus, Product Development Life Cycle can be stated to be continuous process involving research, improvement and implementation.
