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How to develop your online idea into product of value

How to develop your online idea into product of value

Online is the new economy. It is the new market place with global consumer base with competitive products fighting for a share of the market. Online is redefining how we live, do business and reach consumers.

It is changing the fortunes of economies as well as individuals because of the value it delivers when an idea is developed into a product of value powered by the Internet. The online product can be a website, an app or hardware providing solutions to some problems in any economic sector.

Facebook, the online social media platform started by Mark Zuckerberg, now has 1.32 billion global users as of June 2014 and is worth US$200 billion in value; more than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of many countries. 

Alibaba, the biggest e-commerce portal in China founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, is now worth US$231 billion after its Initial Public Offer (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange: the biggest IPO ever in American history. 

Nick D’Aloisio, a 17-year-old high school student, developed Summly, a news summarisation app which was acquired by Yahoo for a reported US$30 million in cash and stock. There are success stories in Ghana and Africa of people who developed their online ideas into products of value.

From idea into product of value

You can consider these seven ways to help you develop your online idea into a product of value.

If you have an online idea of what people need or want to use, you must consider some factors to test your idea and develop it into a product of value. 

Some of these factors are included in my Seven Fs of Idea Development (or Idea Development Hexagon) as follows:

1. Family – Define your idea category and industry:

Since your online idea must solve offline (actual) problems, you must categorise it into any of the industries: entertainment, education, sports, agriculture, finance, tourism, sports, governance, fashion, arts and culture, or politics. 

You can categorise into multiple sectors or industries, if possible. Your idea can be an e-commerce portal, social media platform, mobile app to stream videos or audio, an SMS solution for businesses, a messaging app for consumers or an app for children to learn a subject. But be clear if you are treating your idea as a website, a mobile app or SMS app. 

2. Facts – Find out more about your idea:

Do some facts finding to know if there are available reports, materials or statistics on the industry or sector of your idea as well as your idea itself. 

It is necessary to be guided by available information so you will be sure your idea have value and how to develop its unique features to give the best of user experience. 

Your idea can be for a saturated market, a growing market segment or you will be the pioneer of that particular industry. Get your facts right and focus on what you will work for your target industry. 

There must be proof or pointer that your idea is relevant and has a market value from your research.

3. Features – Focus on attributes and uniqueness:

After research, develop the attributes for your idea which will make it better than the existing ones or will give the highest user experience. Whatever form you are treating your idea, you must focus on the attributes that will make your idea work better. 

Some attributes can be similar to existing ones but you must find a way to make yours unique. For example, your idea can be an e-commerce platform but you can focus on products for only children, ladies or golfers. 

Your uniqueness can also be in the processes of purchase and delivery time to make it faster and easier for your customers. If your idea is a payment solution, introduce features which will give the best of user trust and experience during the process of transaction.

4. Functions – Develop user experience and usefulness:

The features must inspire and inform the development of the functionalities for your idea. It is the functions that make the idea useful or gives it consumer value. This is when you translate your idea into a consumer product. 

It requires that you develop a prototype (or beta version) of your idea. Contract a professional developer or a team of developers if you cannot do it yourself. Since the product will run on an Operating System (Android, iOS, Windows or other OS) and on various devices (such as mobile phones, tablets or personal computers), you must know which ones to start with before scaling to others.

A prototype helps you to know if your features can be translated into optimal user experience based on the functionalities. Test the prototype with selected members of your target users for over a stipulated testing time. You will discover if they love the product, their level of interaction with the functions and user experience over time. 

You will also know what they dislike about the product so you will know if you must remove, change, or improve some of the functions.

5. Followers – Know more about the consumers and target market:

Your consumers and target market are crucial to your product, since they inspired the idea, the features and functions you have built into the product. Find out more details about them: their demography, purchasing power, product preferences, technology savviness, devices they use, access to the Internet and local markets. 

Though the idea is powered by the Internet, you must know where your consumers are to know how to deploy after testing and the marketing strategy to implement. You must know how you can reach them; whether by word of mouth, online advertising or through traditional advertising. 

You must know if what you are selling is actually your online product or the free users of the product. Magazines or newspapers typically are sell readers and not printed contents, just as TV stations sell viewers and not just programmes. Social media platform owners have the users as their products and not the platforms being used.

6. Finance – Be clear about your investments and revenues: 

Having a great idea is good. Developing it into a prototype is better. But knowing its business or social value is best. But most people get it confused when it comes to finance or raising capital.

Know the value of the product at the discovery and development stages so you have a clue of how much you must invest in its development and deployment. Investors are interested in investing in products and not ideas. 

That is why it is important that you develop your prototype so people can have tangible evidence of how useful and valuable your product is or will be. 

You must know how profitable the product will be. Your product can also be of social value which will be paid for by third party partners (or advertisers). 

Profit is what makes a business worth doing or product worth investing time and money in for the future.

7. Future – Have a plan for product evolution and relevance: 

You must have a detailed plan on how your product will evolve based on user preferences and usefulness to the target market. Online products are developed and deployed frequently. 

This is a threat to existing products which do not improve by introducing better functionalities and enhanced user experience to fight competition. 

Being the first to be on the market does not always make a product the best nor will it remain relevant over time. Find out what your consumers want, what your competition is offering which is drawing more consumers to them, and anticipate what the market will need in the near future to enhance your product. 

 

Technology consultant, digital marketing strategist, social media expert and trainer.

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