Paper plane being launched into the sky

Will it fly? How to determine if there's a market for your digital product

Think you have a great idea for a digital product? Before you roll up your sleeves and start developing it, you need to make sure you have a clear vision and strategy, including figuring out if there is actually a market for your idea.

Josh Smith

23 September 2024

3 minute read

Whether you're a seed funded start-up or an established organisation, having a clear product vision and strategy is the foundation of your product. This first step is to define the market for your product and develop a 12-18 month strategy for how you plan to get it into that market. 

Getting your product vision right will provide a solid roadmap for your product design team. 

Digital product design, not to be confused with industrial product design, is a relatively new discipline that has emerged from agile development and start-ups. Unlike traditional web design, a product is typically an entire team's singular focus. 

A digital product will most commonly be a native app, a web app, or bespoke software. Digital products are typically high-use tools, often facilitating a weekly, daily or even hourly task. 

Delivering your vision 

Your vision statement should fully capture your idea, including the problem, the benefit it creates, and the opportunity within the market. Geoffrey Moore created this vision template as a guide. An alternative, working backwards, is used heavily by Amazon and asks you to look into the future and craft a press-release for your new product. 

Product-market fit

Now you have a well-articulated vision, it’s time to think about your strategy. And this starts with establishing a product-market fit. Maybe you're looking to build your first product? Maybe you’re adding a new product to expand your business? Or, you might be trying to extend your current product with new features. Finding a fit is a critical risk mitigation strategy, as approximately 40 percent of digital products fail without one. 

To understand a market, you need to first specify a target audience and conduct the research to find their underserved or unmet needs. In other words, the market opportunity. No single product is a product for everyone, and trying to make it so will dilute it for those who actually need it.

To design a product that fits this market, you then need to find all the ways in which your business can align with this newfound opportunity – in other words, your value proposition. This is the foundation of your strategy and only once in place, is it time to define a product's features and design and build an exceptional user experience so that people want to come back to it time and time again. 

Delivering your strategy

A great strategy should be simple, distilled down to just three-to-five key pillars and based on market knowledge, data and research insights. There is no right way of writing a strategy. But the longer it is, the less likely anyone is going to read or remember it. A single page is a good goal. The development of your strategy should involve all of the people who will be involved in creating the product. 

The best strategies come as no surprise to your colleagues, manager, team and leadership, as they should be involved in bringing it to life. With your vision and strategy in place, you can then move on to planning and delivery. 

Want to know more?

This article is a short excerpt from our Digital Product Design Guide. Head over to the guide to find out more about the stages of product development, what roles and areas of expertise you need on your product development team, principles and best practices for product design, and how to successfully go to market with your product.

Image credit: Rakicevic Nenad on Pexels

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