Do you have an idea to come up with a product that will add value to people’s lives? Before you invest huge amounts of money into product development, it is vital to ensure that you validate your idea first to find out if your potential users would be willing to pay for it.

New businesses usually fail when entrepreneurs fail to look into the practical aspects of their idea and end up with a product that doesn’t attract attention. 

In this detailed blog, we have done our due diligence to come up with a thorough guide to help you validate your product idea. Let’s dig right into it! 

What do you understand by validating an idea?

Not every idea related to product development that strikes your head needs to be a hit among customers. This is where the process of validating an idea comes to play. Product validation is used by entrepreneurs to ensure their product will be well received by the customers before it is launched in the market.

The product validation process also helps you take customer feedback and mold your idea to develop an effective product. Moreover, the process allows you to ensure the quality and safety requirements of the product are in check. 

To begin with, you must check whether the product you’re planning to develop has a market or not. Idea validation will allow you to change your idea in case you realize the product you’re trying to build isn’t required by anyone. This process will help you determine if there is going to be appropriate demand for your product. 

It would help if you also contemplated whether it would be feasible for you to go through the product development process. Once you know people will be willing to pay for your product, you need to ensure whether you can effectively develop it or not. Doing so will help save you energy, money, and time. 

Who are your potential customers? Identifying target market!

As a first step to validating your idea and starting the product development process, you need to do a thorough analysis of who are going to be the people interested in buying your product. 

To do so, you can make a list of companies selling similar products to look into your target audience. It would be best if you analyzed the factors such as the majority gender buying those products, the geographical locations of those people, how much they’re willing to spend on such items, etc. Doing so will help you understand who your customers are and what they are looking for. 

Is your product going to add value to people’s lives?

What if you have an idea to build a product you think people need, but nobody actually wants it? Before you build a business, including huge investments that go into product development, you must ensure that the product you’re building will actually be bought by people. 

This is where market research comes into play. “Ineffective market research can lead to a waste of ample critical resources, and the best way to execute market research is by analyzing previous data on the sales of similar products.” 

You can conduct market research by taking out surveys and interviewing potential users. There are various tools available on the web that can help you conduct effective market research. Moreover, you can also put social media to use for the same. Doing so will help you ensure that you make informed and smart decisions for an effective product development process. 

Conduct solid competitor analysis

As a next step to validate your idea, you need to analyze your competitors to see how they’re running their businesses and how you want to place your business’s position in the market. 

Analyzing your competitors will also help you understand the weaknesses and strengths of your competitors as well as your own. Doing so will allow you to build a solid business strategy as well. 

Competitor analysis also helps with building a strong SEO strategy while also allowing you to look into more business opportunities. If you want to rank well in search engines, you need to understand what your competitors are doing and how they are ranking. 

Building an effective prototype and pitching your business idea

If your idea has been validated through market research and competitor analysis, it is time for you to build your product’s prototype. A prototype will allow you to ensure that your product is feasible and make necessary changes to the product before you start developing it.

A prototype will also help you analyze the production cost of your product and what your profit margins will look like. Doing so helps gain the attention of potential investors as well. 

Additionally, it would help if you simultaneously started pitching your product’s idea to potential customers to see how they react to it and convince them to buy it. Here, you will have to help the customers understand why they would want to buy the product by listing down the reasons they need it. 

You will need strong planning and presentation for the same while also being ready to answer any questions that may come your way. Effective planning before pitching your product idea and a strong presentation will ensure that potential customers understand what you’re trying to sell and why they should be willing to purchase it. 

Start making sales

Successfully selling your product to a few customers can help validate your idea in the best possible way while also helping you determine the pricing for your product. 

Doing so will help you gain confidence in the fact that people are demanding your product, and it will also help your business gain investors’ attention. Making a few sales will also create demand for your product while subtly making an announcement of a new business in the market. 

Final Thoughts

It is incredibly easy to come up with new ideas for product development, but developing products that add value to people’s lives is the tricky part. 

Entrepreneurs often fail at developing products that people want to use because they don’t practice idea validation and directly start the product development process. If you’re well-versed in the concept of product validation but don’t know how to practice it, you can count on Siam Computing to help you ace it.  

At Siam, we believe in falling in love with the problem first before jumping to build a solution, and we always start with why instead of how. That’s why the products we develop are loved by the users.If you want to partner with us to validate your idea and build your dream product, contact our team of experts right away!