It appears that it doesn’t matter how much experience you have in the UX/UI, market analysis, or coding. You still can build your first product prototype using one of the 10 free tools to build an MVP. The MVP development provides you with a set of solid data about your product that you can use to further develop your idea. Take a look at the available tools and start accelerating your growth today!
In the beginning, you don’t need much. Just a prototype version of the end product that offers only the core functionality. It’s supposed to be simple, clear, and based on a minimum budget. It’s enough to collect valuable feedback that will help you further develop and improve the product.
The process of building an MVP
Start by constructing user flow
What you need to do is to outline the customer journey – the way a user navigates through your product. The reason why it’s important is that the path leading to goal accomplishment (purchase, sending a message, registering an account) has to be clear and not confuse the users.
Great tools to construct user flow:
Xmind
The greatest “mind-mapping” tool with very intuitive functionality. It lets you build ideas on visual structures and organize them to create one consistent flow. Very useful when you want to show your idea to the team and..there’s a free version 🙂
App.moqups.com
Another very simple and useful tool where you can wireframe your idea and share it with the team. Moqups helps you create and collaborate on wireframes, diagrams, and prototypes to speed up the workflow and visualize what’s you have in mind.
Design user interface
You don’t have to be a graphic designer to show your vision on paper. User interface (UI) is the design of your product that’s visible to the eye of users. Same as the path that leads users to goal accomplishment, the UI should be clear and not too complicated (that also depends on the aim of your product).
There are multiple free tools to build MVP mockups:
Sketch
Every good designer knows what Sketch is. But you don’t have to be a designer to get the advantage of its functionality. The app lets you design a product using dynamic components and animations that makes your final design more alive. No worries, it’s not complicated:)
Pronto.io
Using the app you can create a fully-interactive prototype of your product without writing a single line of code. It offers a 15-day free trial that is just enough to build your MVP prototype. Check this out!
Bubble.is
Here you have two in one! Bubble.is is a visual programming tool but it also offers cloud services. Choose one of the free plans and start building your MVP!
Interview customers and collect feedback
At this stage, you should engage your audience in the process of building your MVP. Who’s better in providing feedback than people for whom the product is intended? Exactly. There are many interviewing tools that will help you collect and organize feedback from potential customers. This way, you’ll have the solid numbers gathered just before starting work on the production.
To interview the target audience you can try out:
Typeform
Using Typeform you can easily create an online survey and collect feedback from your audience. It’s very user-friendly and comes with a lot of esthetically pleasing features, fonts, colors that will attract the attention of target users. You can also upload videos and images to your forms. However, it has some limitations. There’s always a Typeform link at the end of the survey and the solution is available only for the web platforms.
Google Forms
The most convenient way to collect data is through Google Forms. It’s a completely free tool that simplifies the process of gathering and organizing feedback to the maximum. It stores the data in Google Sheet to analyze the results faster. It’s not that extra when it comes to custom design options but it’s a more practical solution.
Direct traffic to your MVP landing page
The landing page is to be a homepage for your MVP. It’s a place where people can test your product, read more about the concept, leave their email if interested. In general, landing pages serve one purpose – to sell. You build it to generate leads, promote your product and provide customers with an easy way to test it out.
Quick, cheap, and easy way to build your MVP landing page:
Instapage
Although it’s a paid option, it offers a free trial so no worries about the costs. Instapage lets you build your landing page from scratch without coding skills. If you prefer, you can choose one of the ready-to-use templates and speed up the process of building a website even more. It requires minimal effort to create your first landing page and accelerate lead generation.
Analyze your results
Leverage a proper analytic tool to your landing page. This way you’ll be able to monitor traffic on your website and have insight into visitors’ details. It’s well full of data! And what’s best is that you can get access to users’ data without investing extra money.
Free analytic tools that are great:
HotJar
Use it to understand the behavior of your website visitors and their preferences. It offers tracking features that capture everything you need to know about your users. The app comes with session recordings, a built-in editor to show messages to your visitors, and detailed analytics reports.
Google Analytics
If you have a website and you don’t use GA, you miss a lot of valuable information. The platform provides you an insight into customer traffic, conversion funnel, bounce rate, number of sessions and users per day, and many, many more. It’s an all-in-one solution that will help you draw the right conclusions for absolutely zero costs.
Coming up with an idea is half of success
The biggest challenge is to transform your vision into a physical product. Building an MVP is the first step in your product journey and it may look like a serious undertaking – and truth be told, it is quite a big deal. But with the help of one of the 10 free tools you’re able to build an MVP without spending a single penny. Good luck!
Andrzej Kopera • Sep 05
