The process of determining whether a product concept or idea has the potential to meet the needs of customers, consumers, and stakeholders is known as product validation.

It is defining whether your new or existing product will gain traction in the real world and whether your target market will be as enthusiastic about it as you are.

Product validation ensures that what you're creating is in high demand in the market. This can increase your dedication to your company while keeping you laser-focused on the actions that will get you to market faster.

Let’s get this straight and focus on what really matters in a Product Validation strategy. 

Product Validation: Key Factors 

The first thing you must confirm is that there is a genuine problem that your potential customers are experiencing from your product and that it needs to be solved. 

What are the Keys to understanding your product? 

• User interviews

The goal of User Interviews is to understand your potential users' motivations and needs and then use their feedback to build the best solution.

Ideally, you should have both an interviewer and an observer present during interviews. The observer takes notes while the interviewer asks the questions.

• Market research 

Includes looking at studies on your target demographic, user questions in forums, and product reviews in app stores.

• Industry reports

Deep focus on similar problems to the one you're attempting to solve.

• Surveys

You can use surveys to collect quantitative data on the problem you wish to validate.

Why is product validation so extremely crucial?

It could be easy to answer this question by a real case example: Meta (yes, former Facebook). 

Meta's recent entry into the Web 3.0 space comes as no surprise. In 2021, the company announced publicly that nearly a third of its workforce was working on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) projects, preparing for a shift in consumer trends to a digitally immersive world previously only seen in Sci-Fi films. The company's official name change to Meta indicated its commitment to this transition from advertisements and social networking into the metaverse.

The lack of consumer adoption of AR and VR hardware has resulted in a number of difficulties for Meta. In February 2022, the company's public shares fell more than 26% in a single day, wiping out approximately $230 billion of the company's value and resulting in the largest single-day decline in history.

Product Validation Methods 

According to Hotjar, there are 4 common methods for product validation: 

Assessment

This step is all about determining quickly, with no outside research, whether an idea is worth pursuing at this time. These methods will serve as important filters to help you evaluate your idea objectively and methodically, taking into account: alignment of objectives, business simulation. stakeholder evaluations, mapping of assumptions

Facts and Data  

Look for available facts and data that support or refute your idea. These key fact-finding techniques include: collecting feedback on use cases, user expectations, and improvement ideas.

Tests 

Now is the time to put a version of your product in front of users and see how they react. The structured process of testing your assumptions will save you time while also confirming that each component of your work adds value to users. Types of tests include: usability studies, programs for early adopters, large-scale trials

Experiments

Experiments are tests that include a control element to prevent false results from being produced by chance. An A/B test, for example, is an experiment, but a usability test is not.

Product experimentation, as a form of validation, allows you to assess the impact of a change before implementing it. Experimentation tests include the following: A/B split testing, multivariate analysis, separate testing, experiments with percentages.

Product Validation: From Concept to Roadmap

Here is the step-by-step guide on how to verify your product. Be sure, following these steps will benefit the release of your product. 

1. Modification of your product concept

If your product concept is still hazy, flesh it out before sending it to your product designers and engineers for prototyping. Whether you're starting from scratch or modifying an existing product, narrow down your concept to its essential components. Examine your value proposition carefully and identify the net benefits you hope to provide to your customer.

2. Prototype Building

Using an MVP allows you to maximize validation and market understanding while minimizing work, and it is an excellent way to achieve a fully optimized product. 

It's important to note that minimum viable does not imply that your team must do all of the coding and build a backend that makes your front-page sing. You can make a front page that appears to be automatic, but everything behind the scenes is handled by an 'invisible hand' (an emulator or even manual data processing). And, of course, you can use tools in place to prioritize features you would like to have in your app. 

3. Testing

Once your prototype has been approved by internal testers, gather a sample group of users from your target audience. Request that they spend a certain amount of time experimenting with your mock-ups.

While close acquaintances are a common fallback, a random sample is preferable. Consider using online forums and communities to recruit users. Set a context, assign a task, and solicit feedback once you have your market sample.

4. Ask for feedback

User feedback can be gathered through reviews, surveys, or user interviews. Avoid leading questions and concentrate on user behavior rather than user opinion. Instead of asking users, "Would you use ‘this’?" ask them, "When would you use ‘this’?" and how they would complete a given task rather than whether they like a specific part of your solution.

5. Feedback analytics 

After gathering user feedback, you must analyze it to identify actionable insights. If you have a user pool of ten or fifteen people, you can do this by hand with a little time and an Excel spreadsheet.

However, if you're working on a large project, you should use customer feedback analytics software. It is ideal to use software that employs AI and natural language processing (NLP) to identify trends, themes, and key ideas in a large number of user reviews (like Thematic, Citizen.io etc)

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