Product Validation
What is product validation?
Product validation is the process of checking if a product or product idea meets its intended purpose, achieves specific requirements, and addresses the needs of its target audience. It’s a check to make sure that the product is suitable before you go and blow a whole load of money developing and launching it to the market.
In simple terms, it’s your safety net – your way of confirming you’re on the right track before committing significant resources to build, launch, or scale the product.
At its root, product validation makes sure you’re not guessing about what your customer needs, but are instead building your solution based on evidence. It’s about asking: Is this product solving a real problem? Is it suitable for the market? Will it deliver the value it promises?
Product validation is a key stage in the Product Management lifecycle. It sits between your product discovery phase (when you identify the problem) and the build phase (where you execute the solution). It’s the phase when you’re testing out your possible solutions to make sure you land on the right one.
Think of product validation as a scientist testing a hypothesis. Imagine you’re designing a rocket to go to space but don’t know which fuel will safely get it there without causing an explosion. Would you risk building a full-scale rocket just to find out? Of course not! You’d conduct smaller, controlled experiments to identify the best solution. The same principle applies to product validation: small-scale tests to verify ideas before taking them to the next level.
While there’s a spotlight on product validation after the discovery phase, it doesn’t end there. The truth is that you’re going to be validating your product multiple times during your development process. It’s not a one-and-done deal. You should be validating at:
- The idea stage: To confirm the problem exists and the solution is viable.
- The pre-launch stage: To fine-tune features or messaging.
- The post-launch stage: To validate updates or new features.
Why is product validation important?
If you want to be a data-driven Product Manager, you need to be validating your ideas. You can’t always rely on a hunch, so product validation gives you a chance to check and see if your idea is actually any good and if it’s resonating.
You don’t want to be doing expensive and time-consuming things without research and evidence that proves it’s worth your time and money. It’s like throwing a dart in the dark from 10 yards away. Yeah, you might hit a bullseye if you’re lucky, but you’re more likely to miss the board completely. Product validation turns the lights on and allows you to stand a bit closer to the target before making your throw.
For Product Management, validation is critical to success. Here’s a look at all the key benefits that make product validation a key part of your overall process:
Reducing risks
Product validation makes things less risky. Studies show that over 35% of startups fail because there’s no market need for their product. That’s a staggering number and something that could have been avoided with reasonable validation. It’s better to not make a product at all than a product that doesn’t work.
By validating early, you ensure your idea solves a real problem that people actually care about. Think of it as your insurance policy against wasting time, money, and resources on something that doesn’t hit the mark.
Validation also reduces technical and execution risks. By testing ideas on a smaller scale, you catch issues before they become costly development disasters.
Building user-centered products
Remember: everything you do to your product is for your users. Product validation helps ensure that you’re constantly thinking of them when making new features. By stepping into their shoes and assessing your product from their perspective, you get a clearer view of whether things are working.
By gathering insights through interviews, prototypes, and customer feedback loops, you’ll uncover their real needs and pain points – things you might not catch in a brainstorming session. Insights from validation can reveal surprising opportunities and stop you from becoming a feature factory.
Saves time and money
You probably know this already, but developing products is expensive, and marketing isn’t cheap either. By doing product validation, you’re making sure that you’re spending resources on ideas that have an increased chance of success.
By validating bad ideas, you’re prevented from pouring time, budget, and energy into something that might fall flat on its face.
Improving stakeholder buy-In
Some stakeholders can be a bit frustrating to deal with. One day they may ask you to drop everything and prioritize a feature idea of theirs just because it came to them in a dream, then the next they’re demanding more evidence before moving ahead with something you proposed.
Whenever you want to convince others that your ideas are worth focusing on, you’re going to want to present hard data to back you up. A validated concept can turn skeptics into supporters, aligning everyone around a shared vision.
It can also help you strengthen your relationships. If stakeholders consistently see validated ideas based on evidence from your customers, it gives you a hell of a lot more credit in the bank.
Product validation can also be your friend when it comes to saying no to those stakeholders who have great confidence in their new idea. If you put their bright idea through product validation and the data shows it not to be a worthwhile project, then you can go back to them with that evidence. Suddenly your ‘no’ is far less likely to be taken personally and you can maintain a good relationship with that stakeholder.
Fostering innovation
You always want to be learning as a Product Manager, and innovating and improving your product and understanding of your customers. Validation is great for this, as it not only confirms assumptions but also challenges them.
When going through the product validation process – which we’ll get into in a bit – you may unearth some insight that you’ve never considered that knocks your socks off. By focusing on validation, you often end up with more creative and impactful outcomes, helping you stay ahead of your competitors.
What is the Product Validation Process?
A solid product validation process isn’t just throwing a customer survey into the wind and calling it a day. It’s methodical, data-driven, and user-focused, and there are a lot more steps and things to consider to get it right.
Follow this process to make sure that you’re validating your product properly and gaining insights to help ensure that your solutions work and that you’re creating something that is valuable, and frankly, wanted by your audience.
Step 1: Define your product idea and customer needs
You can’t really validate a product idea if you don’t know what it is. Take a second to seriously define your idea with as much detail as possible. Include things like its purpose, the problem it’s addressing, the problem it should be addressing (you may find that these are two different things), and its benefits.
Ask yourself:
- What is the product?
- Who is it for?
- What pain points does it solve?
- How does it align with your product goals?
While doing this, think about what customers actually need. At this stage, this is based on your assumptions to form a hypothesis. The next stages involve you testing this.
Step 2: Conduct market research and audience analysis
Dive into market research to understand your industry landscape and confirm demand for your product. There are many ways you can gather information, but some standout options include using tools like Google Trends, industry reports, and competitor reviews to gather insights.
Evaluate your:
- Market size and demand.
- Competitor strengths and weaknesses.
- Pricing strategies and opportunities for differentiation.
This helps you validate your solution and ensure that it’s a good fit for your market. Simultaneously, profile your target audience. Create detailed user personas that include demographics, behaviors, pain points, and potential use cases. Start small by focusing on a specific segment – like a particular profession or age group – to narrow your scope. This focused approach helps uncover the audience with the highest potential interest and purchase intent.
Step 3: Engage with potential customers
Steps 1 and 2 lay the groundwork and help you understand the problem your customers have and the solution your product is trying to address. Now comes the start of finding out if it’s actually doing that.
Validation begins with talking to your audience. Conduct interviews, surveys, or focus groups to understand their needs and get early feedback on your product idea.
Popular methods include:
- Surveys: Great for gathering insights at scale.
- Interviews: Ideal for detailed discussions on challenges and expectations.
- Focus Groups: Useful for testing ideas and gathering group perspectives.
Even if you don’t have an audience yet, leverage social media, online communities, or similar platforms to connect with potential users. The goal is to gain actionable insights and refine your product idea based on real-world input.
Step 4: Create a minimum viable product
Turn your idea into something tangible by creating a prototype or minimum viable product (MVP). An MVP should include only the core features necessary to solve the main problem and provide value. With this MVP, you then test it with an audience base to see if it’s catching fire. If not, it’s time to tweak it.
Why build an MVP?
- It’s cost-effective and faster than full product development.
- It allows for direct user testing and feedback collection.
- It minimizes the risk of creating features no one wants.
Release the MVP to a select group of users and measure adoption rate, engagement, and feedback. This will help validate both the product’s appeal and usability.
Step 5: Refine through iteration
Use the feedback and data from your MVP to refine your product. Analyze qualitative and quantitative insights to identify areas for improvement. This could mean enhancing usability, fixing bugs, or even pivoting to a different direction if user responses indicate a need.
This approach keeps your product aligned with user needs and reduces the risk of investing in features or changes that don’t add value.
Step 6: Align validation with business goals
At this stage, you should have a validated product and have a better sense of if it’s going to land or not. The last thing you need to do is ensure your validated product aligns with your business objectives. Compare the feedback, usage data, and market trends with your overall strategy. Ask yourself:
- Is the product financially viable and scalable?
- Does it align with your brand and market positioning?
- Can it integrate seamlessly into your business model?
If there are misalignments, revisit earlier steps to adjust your product or positioning. Product validation isn’t just about proving the product works – it’s about confirming its long-term potential within your business context. There’s little benefit in shipping out a profit if it doesn’t align with your product vision.
What product validation methods are there?
You know the process to follow, but what specific things should you be doing when conducting product validation Well, it turns out, there’s a lot that you can get up to. We’ve mentioned a couple already, like testing an MVP and using surveys for customer feedback, but your options are endless when it comes to validating your product or feature idea.
Here’s the rundown of some core methods you can adopt, and how to add them to your product validation process.
Market research
Think of market research as your product’s first reality check to understand the playground you’re stepping into. This is all about figuring out your product positioning. How big is the market size, and is there a slice for you? You’ll need to gauge demand for your solution to see if there’s room for your product to thrive.
You’ll also want to understand your competitors and learn what they’re doing well and what gaps they’re leaving out. Does the market have a major player that’s going to be impossible to usurp unless you do something different? SWOT analysis is a great approach to learning this.
Surveys and interviews
When it comes to getting into the heads of your target audience, surveys and interviews are unbeatable. Use survey tools or embedded forms in your product to ask your users pointed questions about their preferences, challenges, or habits. Keep the questions concise and structured to get quantitative data that’s easy to analyze. You could even incentivize participation with a discount or freebie.
If you want deeper insights, nothing beats a good old-fashioned chat. One-on-one interviews let you dig into user motivations, pain points, and workarounds. Keep the conversation open-ended and let your users steer – sometimes the best insights come from unexpected tangents. If you have a good group of early adopters who believe in your product, it might be a good idea to invite them to become part of your Customer Advisory Board. From there, you can organize CAB meetings to better understand their thoughts and feelings that can guide product development. Learn how to unlock the power of a CAB below:
Prototyping
A prototype is like your product’s rough draft – it doesn’t need to be perfect, but it should give users something to react to. Prototypes can come in two types:
- Low-fidelity: Sketches or wireframes are great for testing the basic flow or concept without sinking time into design.
- High-fidelity: Ready to test usability? Tools like Figma or InVision let you create interactive prototypes that mimic the real deal. Share these with potential users or stakeholders and ask for detailed feedback on usability, design, and functionality.
This prototype is a great way to get a proof of concept. Here, you want to build your prototype, test it, and analyze and evaluate what you’ve learned to come up with the next steps.
MVP Testing
Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the initial version of your product that offers just enough features to solve the core problem and test the waters. It’s like building a car with just a frame, engine, motor, and steering wheel – the essential things needed to get it moving. All the other supplementary features can come later.
Focus on the one thing your product must deliver to prove its value. Strip away all the extras for now. Once you have one, put the MVP out there to a small, targeted audience. Watch how users interact with it, track metrics like sign-ups or retention, and pay close attention to their feedback. Use what you learn to refine and add features incrementally. MVPs are all about validating the core idea without blowing your budget.
Beta Testing
Beta testing is where your product or feature gets out of the lab and into the hands of real users. This is where you throw the product out of the nest to see if it knows how to fly.
You want to use real users for your beta testing. Invite a mix of loyal customers, potential users, and people who fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) Offer them early access in exchange for honest feedback.
Decide what you want to learn – are you testing for bugs, usability, or overall satisfaction? Make sure testers know what to look out for. From there, you want to collect feedback: Use surveys, interviews, or even analytics to understand how beta users interact with your product. Your beta testing program is your last chance to fix issues and polish the experience before the main launch day.
A/B Testing
Sometimes you’re torn between two options. A/B testing is the way to settle it with data and see which solution works best.
Focus on just one variable to test at a time. Testing too much at once will make it hard to actually know what was the driving factor for the results you’ve gotten.
When A/B testing, you want to do it to a small proportion of your total user base, usually 10%. Split this chosen audience into two groups. Show version A to one and version B to the other. Use analytics tools to track which version performs better. The winning option becomes your go-to, and you can keep iterating from there.
Usability Testing
Usability testing, or user testing, isn’t just about spotting bugs – it’s about understanding how real people use your product. By seeing how users engage with your product, you may be able to spot issues in the user journey and bottlenecks that cause users to bounce off without seeing your value proposition.
Give users specific scenarios to complete, like using a certain feature or reaching a particular output. You want to see how users go about doing this and if your product is intuitive and easy enough to use. Observe quietly. Resist the urge to help – they’ll show you what’s intuitive and what’s frustrating.
Use what you learn to refine workflows, improve designs, and make the experience seamless.
Product validation best practices
Product validation only works when you do it correctly. Here are the golden rules you need to follow to make sure you’re completing this process properly:
- Set clear goals: Validation without purpose is like a map without a destination. Define measurable outcomes, such as user engagement rates, willingness to pay, or pre-determined interest levels, so you know when you’ve hit the mark.
- Engage real users: Your investors and stakeholders might be great cheerleaders, but they aren’t your target market. Get validation from actual users who represent your audience to ensure your insights are grounded in reality.
- Iterate relentlessly: Validation isn’t a single step – it’s a cycle. Test, collect feedback, refine, and repeat. Each iteration brings you closer to a product your users will love.
- Foster cross-functional collaboration: Don’t validate in a silo. Involve team members from beyond your product team structure, like Marketing and Customer Support, to bring diverse perspectives to the table. You’ll uncover insights that a single team might miss.
- Stay adaptable: Validation might reveal surprises and flaws you didn’t anticipate or opportunities you hadn’t considered. Embrace flexibility and adapt quickly to build something that truly resonates.
- Focus on solving problems: Don’t just validate ideas for the sake of it. Validate against real user problems. Make sure your product addresses pain points and delivers tangible value.
- Track metrics religiously: Pay attention to quantitative data during validation. Whether it’s click-through rates, time-on-task, or sign-up conversions, numbers provide clear evidence of what’s working and what’s not.
- Don’t fear rejection: Negative feedback is a goldmine. It tells you where your idea might miss the mark, giving you the chance to refine it before launch.
- Communicate outcomes clearly: Share validation findings with your team and stakeholders in a way that highlights the actionable insights. Clear communication ensures alignment and drives smarter decisions.
Validate or fail
Product validation isn’t a step in the Product Management lifecycle you can ignore; it’s the strategic edge that separates successful products from the rest.
By investing the time to validate your ideas, you’re making sure it solves real user problems, aligns with your business objectives, and can stand the test of market demand. This step not only saves time and money but also builds confidence in the choices you make throughout your product development.
Whether you’re shaping a new idea, refining features, or enhancing a product post-launch, product validation keeps you grounded in the needs of your customers. It’s a constant check-in, making sure you’re on the right track to create solutions that truly hit the mark. The insights gained from validation can be transformative, ensuring every decision moves you closer to delivering value that stands out.
If you’re ready to take the guesswork out of product development, ProdPad has your back. With tools designed for collaborative validation and a smarter way to refine your backlog, you can confidently create features and products that land perfectly with your customers. Start building with confidence, because when your ideas are validated, your success is inevitable.
Give ProdPad a go to see what you can.
Try ProdPad for free today.