Have you ever thought about the impact digital products have on our lives? For example, most people find it easier to shop online in ecommerce and supermarkets and pay with digital wallets. These digital products enable users to shop from anywhere and anytime! But, bringing a user-centric product idea to life is not easy. Consider that only 40% of finished products reach their markets, and only 60% of them generate actual revenue. That's why understanding what digital Product Development entails is so crucial. Without further ado, let's dive into it!
What is Digital Product Development?
Digital Product Development brings business ideas to life, ensuring they provide value to their target audience. It involves the creation of digital products and services, including desktop platforms, mobile apps, Web Apps, IoT apps on wearable devices, smart home systems, and even Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) apps. Developing digital products entails the creation of a Unique Value Proposition, Product Design, and Software Development. That requires the collaboration of multiple teams to blend business goals and users' needs into a single digital solution. The goal is to create products that are functional, easy to use, desirable, enjoyable, and accessible to those with disabilities.
There are different approaches and methods to Product Development depending on project requirements, product concept, and budget. Some are Design Thinking and Design Sprints for UI/UX Design and Scrum, Waterfall, and Agile approach for Project Management. Depending on the project’s scope, there are other steps such as Quality Assurance (QA), Testing, Continuous Integration (CI), and Continuous Deployment (CD), which can help with scalability, helping ensure top-notch quality and continuous improvement.
Business Benefits of Digital Product Development
1. Digital Product Development for Productivity
Businesses can use task-management tools to improve efficiency and yield better results. These tools can help teams improve collaboration, track progress, and prioritize goals. For example, a marketing agency can use digital technologies like Airtable or Trello to have a calendar and a record for each piece of content. These tools give teams a clear representation of current projects and their respective deadlines.
2. Digital Product Development for Scalability
Digital solutions are almost, by definition, highly scalable compared to physical products. They have way lower production and distribution costs, making it much easier to iterate, refine, and customize a digital product based on user feedback. A great example of how digital products can help with scalability is the use of Cloud services compared to on-premise solutions to expand business operations.
3. Digital Product Development for Validation
User feedback tools can ease data collection and analysis for businesses to quickly validate strategies and reduce exposure to financial risks. Digital tools make it easier to find and reach out to potential users and implement useful user testing methods such as surveys to make a huge difference in terms of Customer Experience (CX).
4. Digital Product Development for Personalization
The Digital Product Development Process allows businesses to offer personalized experiences as digital tools can help better understand user behavior and preferences to tailor products to their needs. For instance, streaming platforms like Netflix and Spotify can offer personalized recommendations. Similarly, social media platform algorithms harness user activity to show specific content on feed pages.
Stages of Digital Product Development
Note that the following stages can vary depending on multiple factors, like business goals, culture, budget, target audiences, and industry standards and regulations.
Market and User Research
User Research aims to collect meaningful data to understand users, focusing on their pain points, wants, desires, and problems. Exploring the competitive landscape will help you understand how viable it would be to develop a certain solution to solve their problems. Developing a product without understanding users and markets, such as industry standards and market trends, can translate into huge financial losses. At this point, Product Designers also create user personas and user journeys. That allows them to visualize how the product will solve a problem for users.
Conceptualization and Ideation
Define a specific problem you want to solve based on previous findings from Market and User Research. Create a problem statement that focuses on users' needs so that design teams can brainstorm and ideate potential solutions and refine them. Teams think outside the box and challenge their assumptions, considering ideas from everyone in the team. Once they have come up with a few ideas, they narrow down the list until there’s only one potential solution.
Design and Prototype
Having defined a single potential solution, Product Designers create sketches that display the layout and User Interface (UI) elements of the finished product. These sketches are called wireframes. Creating wireframes helps design teams understand how users will interact with the product to find what they need. Wireframing begins with rough sketches that Product Designers progressively refine by adding colors, images, fonts, and interactive elements. Then, they can use the refined wireframes to create a usable prototype they can test with real users.
Testing and Validation
Before investing in Software Development, you must ensure that your product is viable. Hence, Product Designers must gather a group of potential users to test the prototype. It's common practice to conduct Usability Testing to evaluate how easy it is for users to navigate through the app. Testing must answer questions like "How do users feel when interacting with the prototype?" "Can they find what they need easily?" "Does the prototype have the features users wish it had?" "Can they complete their task in a reasonable amount of time?" Based on the findings, Product Designers may have to go back to previous stages to refine the prototype. Note that Usability Testing is also used to support other stages of the Digital Product Development process, such as the initial User Research and the development of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Development
Developing a product requires defining a stack of programming tools to get the job done. It’s important to consider specific product requirements such as speed, performance, security, and reliability when selecting the stack. Software Developers commonly build products in fast-paced iterations called sprints. These iterations or sprints can last anywhere from one week to a month and involve incremental requirements. Software Developers add gradual improvements to the product on every sprint until they’ve built an MVP they can launch. The Development Process requires close collaboration with Product Designers to ensure that the final product addresses users’ needs.
Launch
Launching the product implies making it available to users. When it comes to web apps, teams deploy the product to an online server that can host it and make it accessible from web browsers. For mobile apps, developers submit the app to the Apple and Google stores. It’s common for businesses to launch their products as a beta version. Launching the product allows product teams to get feedback from a larger number of users. That’s key to identifying potential room for improvement.
Iteration
The work isn't done after businesses launch their products, there will always be room for improvement. It's crucial to work on continuous iterations and regular maintenance to ensure great quality. Also, it's important to monitor how the product is being used and the value it delivers, paying attention to metrics such as bounce rates, conversions, time spent on every page, etc. Some of the best tools for that include Amplitude, Heap, and Google Analytics.
Why is Digital Product Development Important?
Digital Product Development helps businesses bring even their most disruptive business ideas to life. It allows them to expand their reach, making their products and services available to all users who have access to the internet or a smartphone if the product is a mobile app. Digital Product Development also helps businesses adapt to evolving requirements and meet users’ needs and expectations.
Conclusion
Digital Product Development involves multiple stages and collaboration between several teams to deliver the maximum amount of value. Moreover, it brings several significant benefits to businesses, including productivity, scalability, validation, and personalization. As a UX-driven, Full-Cycle Product Development Agency with 14 years of experience, we'll be pleased to help you with your digital Product Development initiatives. Don't hesitate to reach out!
