In an earlier post, I briefly touched upon what goes into a MWP (Minimum Wow Product). There are a few aspects which I want to detail out to provide more clarity.
I believe there are 5 attributes that are a MUST for a MWP before it is launched.
1) End-to-end experience
The product's promise of solving a particular problem for the user should provide a complete experience. The user shouldn't feel that there is something broken in the whole flow. Take the core feature and ensure you think through the flow step-by-step from a user point of view. For example, a content publishing product should not only support composing, editing and publishing the content but also support social sharing.
2) Unexpected surprise
This is where the "WOW" factor comes in. As you talk to more potential users and gather enough insights about the problem, you will get an idea of what the users' expectations are. Brainstorm possible ways by which you can exceed the expectations. Think through other factors which users would have least expected but are bound to delight them. The "excitement" attributes of Kano model talks about this unexpected delight.
"The beauty behind an excitement attribute is to spur a potential consumers’ imagination".
Instagram was positioned as an app to click and share photos with friends but the various filters that enhance the quality of the pictures provide the surprise factor for the user.
3) High quality
The core functionality that's part of MWP should be free of bugs that users can easily spot. The product should work as expected, without any glitch. App crashes, NullPointerExceptions, Internal Server Errors - all have the potential to stop "new users" converting to "returning users".
The other important factor that many products overlook is the quality of the content/copy - spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, punctuation etc. It's a big turn-off for me and am sure for many users as well. It gives a feeling that you don't care about the details.
4) Analytics
Having been a fan of quantitative insights all along, I have noticed that enabling analytics has always been given a low priority and until enough follow-ups are done, this activity doesn't get the required attention. My firm belief is that any launch irrespective of the size of the audience MUST have the required analytics enabled.
"If you don't measure, you can't manage". This is even more important in the case of a MWP where you want to *validate* your idea/hypotheses with actual users. Validation cannot happen without gathering insights about usage. So do ensure you invest some time and effort in getting the instrumentation of analytics code right, setup third party analytics either through Google analytics, Flurry or other tools that you might find useful.
5) Feedback
Qualitative insights are equally important too and your users should have a quick and easy way to share their feedback or concerns if any. If you are developing a mobile app, please make sure there is an in-app feedback integration rather than through email clients. It also makes sense to let the user share their issues within the app rather than through app store reviews.
Is there anything else you would like to add to this list? Do let me know.