How to make a new business idea successful? The role of UX / UI design in business development (Part 1)

Let’s bet, there was an idea in the mind of each of you that at least once you thought you would be 100% successful and you said, “If I could do that, I would make good money.” You may even have started a business idea or startup project, but failed for some reason or other. Don’t get upset, as they say, “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” I would like to share with you another of my favorite quotes for motivation:

“I did not fail. I found 10,000 methods that didn’t work. “ — Thomas A. Edison

In this article, I wanted to share with you my experience. Where to start to realize an interesting business idea, how to test our idea and what to do to make it successful.

I am a Product designer of the new Kvik mobile application, and I want to share with you the experience I gained while working on this project.

Where do I start?

Let’s say you have a very interesting idea and you want to turn it into a business and make a profit. The first thing you need to do is find out if you need the product you want to create.

Why is it important to test a business idea?

Did you know that 42% of startups close because there is no need for that product in the market? If you don’t want to get into that 42%, you should definitely check if people really need the product you think is perfect, and you should do it first, that is, before investing your time and money in your project.

“Every new idea is an assumption , and this assumption must be either confirmed or refuted. “

Even the world-famous companies whose logos you see below came up with a failed business idea, launched a product, but saw no demand for that product and closed the project.

How should I test my idea?

Each product is designed for human use, so talk to people to find out if they need the product.

How did this process happen in our country? We came up with the idea of a product that we thought would work. To test this idea, we first conducted user interviews with people. We invited our friends, colleagues, and family members to the interviews. We took the numbers of their acquaintances from our acquaintances, called them, and talked on the phone.

We didn’t ask anything specific, what kind of payments they make in their daily lives, what difficulties they face during those payments, how satisfied they are with the mobile applications they currently use, and so on. we were talking about.

“You have to test your idea, not sell it.”

You need to pay special attention to one point: you need to test your idea, not sell it. That is, you don’t have to tell the person you’re interviewing about your idea, because people don’t want to hurt anyone, so if you say, “I came up with a great idea, I want to implement it,” or “Would you buy this product?” If you do, it is likely that the person in front of you will praise and support you so as not to break you. In that case, you will be hurting yourself.

By the way, I want to recommend a book that will teach you what right questions to ask people to test your business idea: Rob Fitzpatrick — The Mom Test. The book’s summary reads: “Don’t ask your mom if the idea is a good idea to test a business idea, because she loves you and will lie to you.”

When we started our interviews, we had a completely different business idea, and that project was more about combining payments with mobile operators. But after talking to people, we saw that they needed something different, and we changed direction.

Calculate the numbers

Face-to-face and telephone meetings give you more quality information. However, when the number of potential clients is large, it is difficult to conduct interviews in this way. In this case, the customer can hold your inquiries.

Sites like Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, Survio are convenient tools to create an online survey in a short time. Make sure your query is not long. Try to have no more than 5–6 questions, because people do not like to answer long questions.

For our project, it was important to clarify the reasons why people prefer cash payments. Therefore, we decided to conduct a survey. 351 people took part in our survey, and the results were as follows:

According to the results of the survey, Azerbaijanis also use more cash in transport (54.1% of respondents), markets (53.3%), cafes, and restaurants (52.4%).

Thus, it became clear to us that our main focus was to change the habits of people accustomed to cash payments, to give them more convenient ways of payment than cash.

Investigate your competitors

So we had already figured out which direction to go, and we could start exploring the market. Another statistic: 19% of startups close because they can’t compete in the market.

It is important to know your competitors well. You need to know if someone has already found a solution to the problem you are trying to solve, to what extent that solution satisfies people, and what advantage your competitors are missing can make your product more successful and demanding.

As our product is related to payments, we researched local banking and fintech mobile applications, looked at the services and tariffs they offer.

At the same time, we researched what people wrote about our competitors on social media channels. The image we encountered was not very pleasant.

The pictures above are real customer reviews. The number of such negative opinions is too high, and I can say that many people do not trust the banks, they feel the possibility of removing additional interest and commissions.

These opinions gave us another idea: we need to create a “friendly” product that creates a sense of trust in people, and we need to feel it at the level of service we provide.

Please, meet: MVP approach

We already had a prototype of the product we wanted to create. We started compiling an MVP to see if the product we were thinking of was really successful.

MVP? What is it?

Have you ever heard of the Agile philosophy? This philosophy originated in 2001, and its basic principle is — create whatever product you create, quickly launch a version with minimal functionality (MVP) to test whether the idea is successful.

Long story short, let’s say, you want to create a super website. Agile philosophy is that you spend months and thousands of USD, build a full-featured website and then spend a minimum of time and a minimum of money instead of seeing that the site isn’t interesting to anyone. see how interested you are. You can never know with 100% certainty which function will “explode” without showing your product to real people. In many cases, the functionality that startups think is “so” is more popular with customers than other, higher-performing features. Therefore, the sooner you enter the market, the sooner you will face reality and you will not waste your time or money.

You can do research on the internet to learn more about Agile’s philosophy. I also highly recommend that you read Eric Ries’ Lean startup. Take the time to read it.

Our MVP has been commission-free money transfers and affordable online payments among Kvik users. Our goal was to find out if commission-free money transfers are really interesting for people.

Find your own audience

First, we thought about who we would test our idea with. It is very important that you test your product with minimal functionality with the right category of people. If you test your business idea on the wrong users, you will most likely fail.

Create your persona. Test your business idea with those personas.

Let’s say you release a mobile app with recipes and you want to test how interesting this type of mobile app is to people. Do you think you would get better results if you took the test with a 45-year-old soldier, or with a 26-year-old housewife? The answer is obvious.

Therefore, think in detail about your personality, that is, the people who may be most interested in the product you create. Who are they? Woman or man? How old are you? What are they doing? What are your interests? Where do they live? Are they married or single? Do they have children? and so on. The better you can imagine your potential customer, the more successful your product will be.

We chose 2 personas for our product. First persona — people who prefer to make daily payments in cash and are more focused on digital products. For example, a bank clerk. Our second person, on the other hand, is accustomed to cash payments and knows that the most convenient way to pay in cash is that they are not so good at digital products. In short, “Can I transfer money to your card?” If you have an acquaintance who says, “I can’t afford my card, I only have cash,” then that acquaintance is our second person.

Our first persona:
- Women and men aged 20–35;
- smartphone users;
- users of any banking product and (or) mobile application.

Our second persona:
- Women and men aged 35–44;
- smartphone users;
- People who do not have a broad understanding of banking products, but at least are familiar with social networks.

You might say, “Why do you need the second persona? let them pay in cash“. If you remember, I’ve shared the results of the survey we conducted above. And again, if you remember, almost 50% of people pay in cash because the service provider receives only cash as a payment method. For this reason, as a team, we have undertaken the mission to change the habits of Azerbaijanis who love cash payments. We knew it would be difficult, but someone in the country had to do it. Why aren’t we?

Hey, it’s not a finale. Read the extension of the article here:

https://ngrkzm.medium.com/how-to-make-a-new-business-idea-successful-a4077dd92505