Here are some reasons from our experience why businesses may not achieve product-market fit they are hoping for:
Hence, sometimes we see new software products not delivering their intended business value. At Fabric we define product market fit as the right product adding value to the right audience at the right time. To achieve product-market fit, make your users the center of everything you do, design the product with them, not for them. And that's probably the most effective way to stand out in the currently over-saturated digital market.
Identify and validate all critical assumptions and test out the business ideas you have. The sooner you test them, the less you risk your software. At Fabric we believe in collaborative product design and validation, therefore, usually run a few product discovery workshops to align the business on their vision of the business idea, target market, customer needs and competitive advantages we would love to see in the final product. These collaborative workshops allow us to identify and prioritize the assumptions to validate, as well as answer the most critical questions.
If you believe "everyone," ask again! Your user base has to be specific. For example, if your users have to define your business, ask yourself, "Who will be interested in buying this software? How big or small are they? The more specific and personalised you are, the better you can understand your customers and their needs. At Fabric, we apply a number of practices such as customer personas and empathy mapping to bring together all the stakeholders and align on the common vision of the target audience, identify our key assumptions and validate them through user research and testing.
Shift the focus from product to problems your potential users are facing. Be explicit about the problems your software can fix, write them down, and test if your potential users also see them as problems. We usually rely on user focus group, user research sessions, user surveys, test ads, and other creative ways to engage your audience to validate your business ideas.
Now, since you know the problems your potential users are facing, you can secure the value of your software directly to the user problems. Ask, how might this software make their life easier and better? Does it fit into your potential user budget? This allows your to quickly ideate and iterate on multiple ways to solve the problems and shortlist the most business viable solutions that you can prototype and test with the users to get their early feedback before investing in the final product build.
Once you have tested the business ideas, know if your business case is realistic! Fixed and variable costs, such as software design and development, quality assurance, application support, licensing, hosting, marketing and other costs, depending on your project needs. We try to use historical data and our expertise to forecast future expenses and help to guide you through understanding what it takes to build, launch and provide ongoing support for your digital product.
Fabric Group helps different companies across multiple industries validate their business ideas before building them, helps you identify and validate the most critical business assumptions, ideate and test out different digital solution options and build your business case to leverage the market opportunity you have in mind. Contact us today for enquiries!
