The Best Low Investment Strategy to Test Your Ideas Easily

Do you believe that your idea is the next best thing to sliced bread? First-time entrepreneurs might believe that their revolutionary new baguette is perfect for everything, but in this French toast-crazy world, it might not work out as well as they think!

There's a time when every entrepreneur believes that they've stumbled upon the next big thing. However, it is not too soon until reality hits, and that idea does not seem to be as good as they initially thought.

This reality check usually hits many entrepreneurs midway through product development. Testing the viability of an idea and analyzing its true potential is crucial for every entrepreneur before investing resources in it.

This guide will cover the importance of testing an idea and six affordable ways to test your idea.

Why is it so important to test an idea before investing resources?

You cannot evaluate the success of an idea without testing it. Making blind assumptions about the success of a product puts you and your company's time, money, and resources at risk—causing businesses to fold prematurely.

Here's why testing is so important before you start working on your business idea:

• Prevents the wastage of resources
• Helps you to strategize for the future
• Helps you create an improvement and feedback channel
• Helps you assess product demand

How can I effectively test an idea?

Testing your idea is crucial to its success and will help you figure out if the idea is ready for production or if you need to get back to the old drawing board to work on it further. Here are some ways to efficiently test your idea and see if it is ready for the real world:

Proof of Concept (PoC)

Cost: Low

Time Taken: 1-3 weeks

A PoC tests your idea or assumption by demonstrating the intended product's functionality. Creating a product concept is a cost-effective way to ensure that you can validate and develop the product further.

Prototype

Cost: Medium-low

Time Taken: 4-6 weeks

While PoCs showcase that you can develop the product, prototypes tell you how it could work. A prototype is an early sample of the product built to test a concept. It is a tangible model that you showcase to end customers and gather meaningful feedback.

Minimum Viable Product

Cost: Medium-high

Time Taken: 4-12 weeks

An MVP is an early version of a product with only must-have features built to test your product strategy. MVPs are a highly effective way to determine your business idea's practicality and help identify critical flaws in your product before launching it to a broader audience.?

Building an email list

Cost: Low

Time Taken: 3-6 weeks

Email lists are the most cost-efficient way to test your idea's viability. As you reach out to prospects directly through emails, you can gather data and customer feedback by asking the right questions to improve your offering.

Email lists are easier to build and set up, as long as you consistently find an interested audience.

Consumer Surveys

Cost: Low-Medium

Time Taken: 1-2 weeks

Surveys are a great way to interact with your potential audience. Using questions in the survey, you can quickly determine if your audience identifies with the problem the same way you do. This helps you figure out if the problem you're trying to solve is a real problem for your target market.

Landing Pages: The Best Low-Investment Idea Testing Strategy

Cost: Low

Time Taken: 1 week

A landing page is a great way to test the waters before you begin development. Landing pages are standalone web pages built to market your offerings.

Why create a landing page?

It's simple. You create a single web page, add your value proposition to this page and see if your page gets traffic or sign-ups.?

You can use your social media channels and email lists to drive traffic to your landing page and see how people feel about your upcoming product or service. You can learn more about??

Examples of landing pages used for idea validation

Checkmaid.com: Checkmaid-a platform for cleaning maids validated their business model using a landing page with a booking form and a phone number. After driving traffic to it, it was easy to understand their product's conversation rates using analytics.

Limeberry: Limeberry, an on-demand home services platform, used a landing page to showcase its on-demand home service platform to customers and partners. They drove traffic to the page to gauge customer interest and used analytics to validate their product assumptions. This helped them build a better platform for their home service partners, customers, and service providers.

Buffer: Buffer is a social media tool that helps customers create, collaborate, and publish to 7 platforms in one go. The buffer used a landing page to gauge demand for various features and pricing plans of their product. They ran analytics to measure the visitor's interest in their product and gave their team real-world data that helped them

Things to keep in mind while creating a landing page

Mind the layout

Start simple and ensure that your landing page is not overtly complex. The layout of your landing page must be consistent and have a clear CTA, headline, and body copy. Optimize the page for mobile devices

Over 70% of users visit websites on their mobile phones. Ensure that your landing page is mobile-friendly and responsive.

Remove all distractions

Remember that you created the landing page to transform visitors into leads. Remove any extra links that may lead a user away from your page, and draw your visitor's attention to your CTAs.

Focus on the copy

Your landing page must clearly communicate what your product or service is. The best way to do this is through clear, concise copywriting.?

Tools for Landing Page Creation

Landing pages often have newsletter signup sections, competitions, giveaways, and more. Although you can code a landing page from the ground up, some tools can make the whole process much easier.?

Here are some tools you can use to create world-class custom landing pages.

Leadpages: Leadpages connect small businesses with audiences to collect leads and quickly close sales. Leadpages features easy A/B testing, a drag-and-drop UI, and mobile templates to help you get your landing page up and running quickly.

Hubspot: Hubspot is a marketing suite that helps you easily create and test landing pages. You can even share multiple content types based on visitor demographics and upload leads directly to your CRM.

Unbounce: Unbounce's powerful page builder helps you to quickly create landing pages from scratch using its highly customizable templates. Additionally, you can drive user interest through targeted pop-ups and optimized campaigns.

Lander: Lander is a trendy landing page builder with a load of templates for users to choose from. It integrates with popular marketing tools out of the box and the basic version is free to use.

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Final Thoughts?

Idea testing helps you conserve resources by only investing in viable ventures that your customers may need. Additionally, validating your business idea does not need to be overtly complex or resource intensive. You can use landing pages, MVPs, PoCs, and other popular idea testing and validation methods before you launch a full-fledged product in the market.

If you're still unsure about what strategy to use to validate and test your startup idea, we can help.?

Volumetree's world-class team of experts has helped dozens of entrepreneurs test the waters before creating successful products. Schedule a one-on-one meeting today to know how we can help you launch a successful product!

This article is written, edited, and published by the creative team at Volumetree.