How to Build a Successful Digital Product?

Studies suggest that today, every brand is involved in digital product development virtually, whether it’s about marketing your products or services via mobile app or utilizing a CRM system to streamline your business processes. In this era of cutting edge technology, we are overwhelmed by such digital experiences, and they are playing a strong role in catalyzing business growth.

Irrespective of this significance of digital products in businesses, companies have very limited information about the process of developing a successful digital product. Many of them aren’t even sure of those components that are essential to a digital product’s success. In most cases, businesses will simply outsource the development work to freelancers or a team of developers claiming quality solutions at cheapest rates.  However, creating a digital product from scratch needs a systematic approach and high expertise that set you up for nothing less than a massive success.

You need an expert technology partner by your side to realize your mobile initiatives, who guides you through the step-by-step process and build a state-of-the-art digital solution. Your technology partner has highly proficient team of designers, developers and a product manager, who collaborates with your team, assists you in every stage of product creation from idea to launch and offer post-development support to scale the product with needed advancements.

Businesses who don’t look for such experts and rely on inadequate and unskilled resources, face following big challenges:

• Limited knowledge to refine an idea: Without having the skills and experience of creating digital product, your team lacks the ability to validate and refine the idea from the initial phase itself, leading to failure of the product.
• Time Frame: Majority of the app ideas get stuck in the process of endless product enhancement phase, that will never let you launch the product within planned time frame and your digital product never get to market for years.
• Process: Flawed processes are adopted, and they adversely affect your product.

To avoid such errors and challenges, you need to first understand what are the primary components of creating successful digital products. And how your technology partner should assist you with right skills to realize your vision.

Need Identification: Every digital product needs to address an unfulfilled need of its target audience.  Additionally, your product needs to be relevant today and should be developed to scale in future as well. You can’t take your hands off after developing product that fulfils current demand of customers. You need to keep tap on the changing technology trends, the new innovative ways consumers engage with your product and upcoming trends that are redefining your market place. Based on such transformations, your product should be enhanced or sometimes re-envisioned totally.

The Audience: Determining the audience for your digital solution is a vital component of the process.  In the first place, it is imperative to identify your niche target audience.  On the basis of your audience, you will be able to position your product with right set of message and channels. Your positioning strategy helps you answer three questions: Who + What + Why; your product’s target market, the need it will address, and why one should buy your solution over another.

The Process: Following a systematic process with lean approach for building your mobile solution, helps you embrace agility. The fundamental idea of lean approach is failing fast to learn fast and succeed fast. Continuous improvement with validated learning, smart work and developing an MVP by following this approach yields various returns to the organization.  In this approach, you pass through multiple stages, starting from the strategy to design, development and launch. At every stage, you build, measure the outcome and learn to rebuild the better version. Moreover, you get to implement right techniques at every stage, that help you achieve your final goal with less iteration and reduced cost.

Well, I have covered the most prime components of the product development in this blog, but if you would like to learn more, grab the e-book that I have written to help businesses transform with digitization.

I have been actively involved in empowering many startups and enterprises in building disruptive digital platforms, ranging from mobile apps, API platforms, scalable web products and data visualization tools. And my interactions with such diversified entrepreneurs from all over the globe, have always enriched me with new learning, which I have penned down in a comprehensive e-book on digital product development. Click below to seize your free guide towards developing a great digital product.

Samir Motwani

As an engineer turned entrepreneur, I like to mix artistic and technical things with business activities and try to produce something innovative. The motto at work: Be a rockstar at your place and don’t be robotic!!!