--- title: "Website 101: MVP Strategy for Effective Web Development" date: 2019-09-10T05:30:00-04:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-7/minimal-viable-product/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 02 Episode 7 – Sep 10, 2019 21:16 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## Website 101: MVP Strategy for Effective Web Development  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-02/S02-E07-MVP-master.mp3) In this episode, learn about the MVP approach to web development. Hosts Mike Mellus and Sean Smith discuss the benefits of launching a website with minimal features and gradually adding more over time. ### Show Notes We discuss what an MVP is as well as the pros and cons of taking an MVP approach to your company website. We also talk about examples of MVP sites we've worked with including this very podcast site. ### Show Links - [The Why and How of Developing a Website MVP](https://designhammer.com/blog/website-mvp) - [What is an MVP Website?](https://sagapixel.com/web-design/what-is-mvp-website/) - [How to Redesign Your Website Using a Minimum Viable Product](https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/how-to-create-an-minimum-viable-product-without-sacrificing-ux) - [MVP (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product) - [Thomas Yu](http://thomasyu.ca/) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Mike:** Hello and welcome to the website 101 podcast. We're back. This is Mike Mellus speaking and you'll probably notice that I sound a little strange. It's because I'm on vacation in beautiful Prince Edward Island where I have a little cottage here and I'm recording from my office, which is not my pro studio. I usually use, but we're going to try to get by with it the way it is. And with me, as always, is Mike Coho's Sean Smith. **\[00:34\]** **Sean:** Sean, how are things back in Toronto? Whether it's beautiful, it's nice and cool, and happy to be here, Mike. Glad you could make time on your vacation to record an episode. **\[00:46\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah. It's no trouble. So what we're talking about today is something called MVP, and it's not most valuable **\[00:55\]** **Sean:** player. It is something we're not talking about, Kauai Leonard. We're not talking about Kauai Leonard. **\[01:00\]** **Mike:** We apparently lost them and we he's no longer on the team and that's too bad but I think we still have a chance next year which we're not going to get into that at this point. Anyways, of course. So Sean tell us what MVP means in the context of web development. **\[01:17\]** **Sean:** All right, so first before the episode, I went and I did a little bit of research to look at what other websites were calling in MVP. And what the letters stand for is minimal viable product. So not most valuable players we stated. And there's one website that has a good paragraph that I want to quote from. This website basically is summed up exactly how I would say it, but they said it a little bit better. So designhammer.com says, an MVP in the development industry refers to a functional website delivery comprised of the least amount of money, time and effort, yet still fulfills the mission and requirements of the project. completing the MVP. If there is more time or money, additional features can be added either before or after the initial release. So that's how they define it. And basically what this means is that you get your website out with the minimal amount of information and features that you need to engage with your customers. **\[02:42\]** **Mike:** OK, so this is something that you might, an approach you might use if you are not able to get your website 100% ready and complete as your design brief and whatever would have you be able to do. So in a perfect world you'd have your website with all the features, all the bells and whistles that you're planning to build, But in reality, sometimes there are reasons that that can't be achieved at the outset when you first launch the website. So in that case, you might use an MVP approach where you release the website in the minimum amount of functionality and features that you can while still having it worthwhile to release at that point. **\[03:28\]** **Sean:** Exactly. And the reasons you might want to do the MVP is it's time sensitive and you need to get something out there. So you get out the minimal that you need. Could be budget. What if you have this very grand plan for your website and it needs to be really large with lots of features and it's going to take months or even a year to develop. But you don't have a website now or your existing website is really, really bad. What do you do? You launch the MVP. You get the key features out. You get your landing page, your home page, maybe a contact page and a belt. And then over time, you would add in each new feature according to your priorities and your budget. **\[04:19\]** **Mike:** Okay. So, what do we talk about more of the pros for doing this? of the good, some good reasons to approach things this way from a web owners perspective. What are some of you mentioned budget already that if your, you know, your budget may not allow you to get every single feature in at the launch. So, you know, you could pay only for the features that you're, that you're building for that time and then add the rest later. What else, what other reasons might we have for doing an MVP version? **\[04:55\]** **Sean:** So, budget is the big one. The other thing that I see as being very valuable is that you can get information out quickly and then gather feedback from your users on the website. So what if you put out something and your users keep telling you, oh, hey, why don't you add this? Well, now you know that's a priority and you add it in. or maybe you put out the minimum needed for a particular feature, but nobody's using it. Is it worth continuing the development? So what you're doing in this case is getting the feedback from your users and visitors to help you determine where you should put your priorities and your existing budget for the remainder of the site. **\[05:46\]** **Mike:** Right, so it's like, it's almost like a way to have usability testing on a live site that would actually inform how that site evolves as you get the time and availability to finish the site in the form that you want to defend, right? **\[06:06\]** **Sean:** Exactly. So we can do some AB testing, usability testing. We can add in new features or adjust existing segments of the website to improve them and more actively engage with your users. And the other thing is that even if you don't launch as an MVP and you put out your full site or what you feel is your full site, eventually you're going to want to make changes to it. That could be adding in a new section because your business has evolved or pivoted or removing content that is no longer relevant because it's dated or you know things have changed in your industry or whatever. So a website is never truly finished. You need to continually evolve it. Why not do that from the beginning? Get used to having an unfinished website so that you're more adaptable and more agile in engaging and working with your clientele. **\[07:15\]** **Mike:** Yeah, it gets you into that mindset of thinking that you always need to continue working on your website It's not you know one and done and once it's launched you can forget about it for a while Yeah, we've said on this show a number of times that you should always be working on your website It's never complete. So doing an MVP version gets you into that mindset early on **\[07:39\]** **Sean:** Hey, thank you for listening to this episode I hope you're enjoying it. We're always looking for topic suggestions. So if there's a topic that you would like us to discuss, please let us know. **\[07:51\]** **SPEAKER\_01:** Yes, and we're also looking for guest suggestions. Is there someone you'd like to have on the show and have interviewed? Is there someone who's been on the show that you'd like to have back? Do you think you would make a good guest? Visit website 101podcast.com slash contact to get in touch. **\[08:06\]** **Sean:** Right. Right. So Mike, we talked about the pros. What are some of the cons or negatives of working with an MVP? **\[08:17\]** **Mike:** Yeah, well, the biggest, I guess, obvious one, and this would be something that's probably more important. If you're working in an organization or a company with multiple stakeholders and people at different levels of senior management that have a stake in the website, the obvious The first thing would be the website just doesn't feel ready yet. It doesn't feel complete. It's like, they're probably people are aware of features that are missing because they were in the planning stages earlier on, but they're not there in the early, the first version of the site. So it just feels like it's not ready. And that can be an uncomfortable feeling for senior management, as they say, especially. **\[08:59\]** **Sean:** Yeah, especially if something is particularly important to one or two members of the board, but in the grand scheme of things is not as important. And so it gets a lower priority and isn't released initially. That may make those board members feel like they're losing out or that, you know, the wasting their time and money on something that's not done. **\[09:24\]** **Mike:** Yeah, exactly. Right. Another one I guess would be, it can be difficult to decide which things to put in which phase. So with an MVP approach, the idea is there's a phase one, that's the initial launch of the site, and then there's going to be say a phase two where you add features A, B, and C or whatever. It can be difficult to decide which ones go in which phase. What is the most important thing to put on the site? And as I say, that can be compounded if you have more stakeholders involved in deciding **\[09:58\]** **Sean:** those things. Oh, yes, definitely. Prioritizing anything is quite difficult. I actually have a client that I worked with last year starting in April and their website was supposed to launch in September of last year as well. did not because they wanted it to be perfect. Yeah. They didn't want to do the MVP. So we built it. There were some delays on their part in getting content or answering questions. So it got delayed even further. The site was finished at the end of December. It still has not launched. It is now as of recording almost the end of July. It hasn't launched yet because they've been spending the the last seven months, inputting content. I know they got a small staff, so maybe it's difficult to get the content in or whatever, but it still hasn't launched. I did get an email from them today that we're theoretically going to launch at the end of August. I'm hoping it's a really great site. But in my opinion, and this is something I pushed for early in the process, this client would have done well to have gone with an MVP because their existing site is, well, it looks like it was built in 2003. It's not mobile friendly. There's a lot of, it's missing a lot of basic features. It's not editable. It just doesn't work very well at all. But for whatever reason, they've decided that they want to launch with perfection. So as you can see, it's been almost a full year since the target date and seven months since the site was actually ready to launch. And we still haven't launched. Right. So, you know, it's kind of hard to say, do you have any clients who've taken the MVP approach or have a similar story to this? **\[12:11\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I have a few examples of this. Actually, one just came up recently, a site that I'm building. I'm sure I've mentioned this on other episodes for a friend of mine who is a piano player on the side. We've been working on that site for a long time. I was just about to make a final push into the last few features. I learned that he doesn't really performed during the summer. He kind of takes the summer off from performing and does his day job stuff. So he wasn't really available to continue working on it. So, well, we've decided, and actually the fact that we were going to do this episode is partly what made me get the idea to do this, was to launch an MVD version. The site is almost ready, and it's not quite finished, but it's finished enough to have something launched. It will be worlds better than the site he's on now, which I built for him, I think, six years ago. So we're going to launch that in the coming week or two, I think. And then add things. Oh, excellent. Yeah. We're going to add stuff later, you know, into the fall as he starts ramping up his shows again. So that's one example I have of a. **\[13:27\]** **Sean:** And what is the name of the site? Can we can we include a link to it in the show notes? **\[13:33\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so his name is Thomas U, Y U. And so it's Thomas U.ca, I believe. So that's probably where this one end up. And oh yeah, if it's not that, we'll correct it in the show notes. Check the show notes over there. **\[13:49\]** **Sean:** Well, the, yeah, his website should be launched well before this episode gets released. I think this episode will be released sometime in September. So great. I would expect that it's, it's ready to roll. Another example of an MVP site is actually this podcast site. So the podcast site is something that I started myself because if you've been listening since season one, you know that it was just me. Mike was a guest in one episode, but I was your soul host and I built the website, planned everything out. But I didn't get all of the features in that I needed when I built the site initially. The first thing I did was set up a landing page with a mailing list subscription while I was working on getting content ready and planning everything out. So that was the initial MVP. Then I started building out the site for launch when all of my content for season one was ready. And when I launched that, there was no way to organize seasons. Because I only had one season. I figured, all right, I'll worry about categorizing seasons and setting everything up to work nicely with that when I have a season two ready to go. **\[15:06\]** **Mike:** Yeah, season two, season three is like a phase two thing, something that happens later later. **\[15:14\]** **Sean:** Phase three. Yeah. So, you know, we recorded most of the content for season two without having a way to separate season one and season two on the website. That is now set up. Season two, the first two or three episodes have been released. Other things that needed to be done is, you know, I brought Mike in as a co-host and I needed to reorganize the way I set up showing the hosts and the guests on the individual entries. So that was a little bit of additional work as well. And that's part of how any website evolves over time. And you need to be ready to adapt and grow and change and accept that you might not have the perfect version. But each iteration of your changes will bring you that much closer to perfection until you come up with some more changes. Right, that's right. **\[16:12\]** **Mike:** I wanted to mention another example. So this is another case study I guess I have for MVP. And it's a good example of where it could come in handy. And that is I had a client who was a nonprofit organization. And they had a conference coming up, which they do every year. And they wanted to build a full website, kind of a micro site, to promote this conference with all the speakers and the schedule and registration and all this stuff. So they had me start working on it. And then right before it was sort of ready to launch, they realized, you know, we don't have time to really put all this effort in to building this site in time for the conference. So why don't we just build a one-pager kind of thing, like a full page that has everything on it, not quite as robust as the website was going to be, but it will do the job. So we ended up sort of pivoting and doing an MVP version instead, which ended up being just the one page thing. So that's another example of where it could really be a useful thing if you're timelines for events that you're trying to meet, say a conference or whatever. Don't allow you to get the finished product out, try an MVP. And then as the event is rolling closer, just add a new feature here and there if it's an option. **\[17:37\]** **Sean:** That is a perfect example. I have one last example. So I have an older client that I've had for a few years and they have an old site that needs some love. It's a little bit dated. It is responsive but the design is not so great. It could be modernized. However, he's a little bit tight on his budget. So he can't do the whole thing. So whatever we decided to do, we're going to revamp the homepage. page. So we're going to modernize the design on the homepage, launch that out, and then you know in a couple months or when he's got a little bit more budget, then we'll work on another section of the site or we'll wait until he has enough money and it becomes a priority to fix up the other parts of the site design. So again, it's not necessarily all about the launch of the site, it could be an MVP of working on modernizing an existing **\[18:38\]** **Mike:** site. Right. That's a good example. And also, you mentioned something in there that I think is important. I have a big fan of when a client is building a website, assuming they're not working with an internal web developer on staff, if they're hiring a self-employed developer like you and IR, I really feel like they should form a relationship with that person and sort of get to know them rather than just hire them as a service provider that they never work with again. Doing an MVP approach really nurtures that kind of relationship because both of you work on the initial phase, you launch it, both of you learn the customer feedback, that kind of thing that happens after that, and then both of you are able to add. your developer will end up learning more about your company or your organization as the development phases progress. **\[19:33\]** **Sean:** Oh, yeah, exactly. You want to have a partner relationship, not a vendor relationship. **\[19:39\]** **Mike:** Yes, precisely. **\[19:40\]** **Sean:** Yep. Yeah. So, I think that's a wrap for this episode. It's a little bit short. I hope that everyone has found it useful. Mike, do you have any final thoughts on anything? No, I think that's pretty good. **\[19:55\]** **Mike:** We're not going to have a really lengthy episode today, but I think there's some really valuable stuff in there. Consider MVP for your next project if it looks really daunting and overwhelming. **\[20:09\]** **Sean:** Thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed this show. I'm Sean Smith, your co-host. You can find me at my company website, caffincreations.ca. On Twitter at CAFFEIN, CRE8, ION, on LinkedIn, and my username is caffincreations, or you can search for Sean Smith, based in Toronto. You should be able to find me there. **\[20:34\]** **SPEAKER\_01:** And I'm Mike Mella. You can find me at my website, belikewater.ca. Or on LinkedIn, my username is Mike Mella. that's M-I-K-E-M-E-L-L-A, and I'm on Twitter, Twitter.com slash Mike Mella. **\[20:49\]** **Sean:** And don't forget to subscribe to the show and share it with your friends on social media, such as Facebook or LinkedIn. You can find us on Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you **\[21:00\]** **SPEAKER\_01:** subscribe to your favorite podcasts. And we're always looking for a topic and guest suggestions, So if you have any, hit us up at website 101podcast.com slash contact. Excellent. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for listening. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 02 - 1 [ Season 2 Introduction](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-1/season-2-introduction/) - 2 [ Web Hosting 101](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-2/web-hosting-101/) - 3 [ How to Choose a Web Developer or Agency](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-3/how-to-choose-a-web-developer-or-agency/) - 4 [ How Much Does a Website Cost](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-4/how-much-does-a-website-cost/) - 5 [ Web Jargon Part One](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-5/web-jargon-part-one/) - 6 [ Web Jargon Part Two](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-6/web-jargon-part-two/) - 7 [ Website 101: MVP Strategy for Effective Web Development](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-7/minimal-viable-product/) - 8 [ Copy Editing and Copy Writing](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-8/copy-editing-and-copy-writing/) - 9 [ Photography and Stock Photos](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-9/photography-and-stock-photos/) - 10 [ Ecommerce with Shopify](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-10/ecommerce-with-shopify/) - 11 [ Season 2 Recap and Season 3 Teaser](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-11/season-2-recap-and-season-3-teaser/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>