Minimum Viable Product: How MVPs Work (2026)

A minimum viable product (MVP) is the simplest version of a product a business can release to test an idea with real customers, before investing more time or money. The initials borrow from “most valuable player,” the sports award for the athlete who did the most to help their team win.

Store owners often start with a hunch. A Shopify survey found 57% of store owners validated their business idea with personal experience.* An MVP tests that hunch against real customers: it shows store owners what works and what doesn’t before they roll a product out to everyone.

This guide covers the different types of MVPs, how it differs from a prototype and proof of concept, and how to develop a minimum viable product for your business. 

What is a minimum viable product (MVP)?

A minimum viable product (MVP) is the simplest usable version of a product that lets you test a business idea with real customers. It has just enough features to work and feel complete, so you can see how people use it before you invest in a full launch.

What is the purpose of a minimum viable product?

An MVP helps businesses learn whether a product idea is likely to work before they build it out in full, because they can gather customer feedback of how people actually behave with a real product, versus reactions to a hypothetical.

Entrepreneur Eric Ries popularized the concept in his book The Lean Startup. Ries described an MVP as a “version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least amount of effort.” 

An MVP is a core part of the lean startup methodology, and companies such as Airbnb and Buffer validated their ideas using MVPs before deciding to launch.

In tech and software, an MVP is usually the version of a product with just enough features for someone to use it. That usability is important for useful feedback, but the real question an MVP answers is whether customers want the product, use it, and come back to it.

The same idea works outside software, too. A founder selling a physical product or service can build an MVP to find out if people will actually pay for it, before spending heavily on inventory, storage, equipment, or a full launch.

Testing an idea this way has a few practical payoffs:

• Fewer wasted resources. Businesses can put money toward ideas that work.
• Faster real-world feedback. Businesses learn how customers respond while there’s still time to change course.
• Data over guesswork. Instead of relying on a hunch or anecdotal evidence, businesses see how people actually behave.

Core characteristics of an MVP

“Minimum” doesn’t mean the cheapest or least functional version a business can put together. A useful MVP balances three things:

1. Value. It solves a real problem or meets a real need for the customer, even in its simplest form.
2. Usability. Customers can use it without confusion or extra explanation.
3. Feasibility. A business can build and support it with the resources it actually has.

Types of minimum viable products

A minimum viable product evaluates the appeal of a product to real users. Consider a few different varieties of MVP that may be useful for studying your business’s products:

Low-fidelity MVPs

Some MVPs require little more than a basic website. These low-fidelity MVPs still require polish, focused audience research and analysis, and high levels of execution, but don’t actually need a functioning product to be in the hands of users. Some types of low-fidelity MVPs include:

Landing page MVP

If you already know your product, target market, and value proposition, you can test demand with just a landing page, before building the product itself. A page that describes the product and its features lets you gauge interest, attract followers, and collect email sign-ups. This builds a list of warm leads or trial users once the product is ready.

Divyansh Ojha, founder of Odd Bunch, used this approach to get a landing page design live in a single day. 

“I called a buddy of mine who was, at that time, he had finished up his first year at [University of] Waterloo in [software engineering],” Divyansh says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “I called him. … Got there with my laptop. I’m like, ‘Look, I’ll pack the rest of this. You just do this. … Get me, get me a landing page by the end of the day.’ He did it. Simple landing page, couple of products, few photos, checkout, good to go.” 

Shopify Forms lets store owners create forms you can add to a landing page, so you can grow a list of marketing subscribers and learn more about the people visiting it. There you can capture leads to follow up with once the product is ready.

Explainer video MVP

This is similar to a landing page MVP, but in video form. It’s exactly how Dropbox got started: creating a short video to explain the product’s concept and benefits. Potential users can weigh in with interest, feedback, and concerns before product development begins.

Smoke test MVP

Smoke test MVPs create a little smoke to see if a fire will catch: running marketing campaigns to a landing page with a Buy Now button for a product that doesn’t exist yet. This usually leads to a waitlist or a pre-order instead of an actual purchase. The number of people who click through and commit helps indicate real market demand.

Cat Goetze, founder of Physical Phones, used this approach when she posted a prototype video to her audience of several hundred thousand followers. The post led to $100,000 in pre-orders in three days, before she had any supply chain in place.

Store owners can set up preorders directly through Shopify, or use a dedicated preorder app from the Shopify App Store, to capture this kind of demand before a product is ready to ship.

Crowdfunding MVP

Crowdfunding sites and platforms like Kickstarter offer another way to gauge interest in a product, securing funding and a loyal following along the way. 

Fly By Jing Founder Jing Gao used this approach to launch her Sichuan chili crisp. The campaign raised $120,000 from nearly 1,700 backers, well above its original $35,000 goal. That early funding and customer base helped launch the brand, which has since grown into thousands of retail stores including Target and Whole Foods.

High-fidelity MVPs

A high-fidelity MVP requires building an actual product that’s usable by real people. High-fidelity MVPs can help companies with novel business ideas gauge public interest and test behind-the-scenes feasibility before scaling the product or service out more widely.

Single-feature MVP

A single-feature MVP tests how one key feature or functionality of the product resonates with users. Before Facebook became a juggernaut, for example, it was a simple way to keep track of friends. Once this functionality proved popular, other features were added over time.

Wizard of Oz and concierge MVPs

Both of these MVPs look automated from the surface, but a business is actually doing all the work by hand behind the scenes. 

Think of the Wizard of Oz: He seemed powerful and automatic, but he was really just a person pulling levers behind a curtain. Customers see something that looks smooth and automated, while the business handles everything manually.

The difference between the two is what’s being tested. A Wizard of Oz MVP hides the manual work so it looks like a working system. 

Say you’re testing a pet-food delivery app: instead of building the tech, you could just drive the deliveries yourself. Once you see there’s real demand, you can then start automating parts of the process, like matching orders with drivers or opening a warehouse.

A concierge MVP does the opposite: instead of hiding the manual work, you show it off to give customers a personal touch. 

Food on the Table Founder Manuel Rosso used this approach early on, sitting down with individual families to build custom meal plans and grocery lists by hand, before building any of the software, according to Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup. 

Minimum viable product vs. prototype and proof of concept

An MVP is one of several tools businesses use to test and refine a product idea before a full launch. All are perfectly appropriate, they just map to different stages of development. 

Minimum viable product vs. prototype

A prototype tests a product’s design and technical functionality. It’s usually a working (or partly working) model used internally, or with a small test group. It checks whether something can be built and how it holds up. A prototype doesn’t need to be ready for real customers.

An MVP tests whether real customers want the product, will use it, and would come back to it. It has to work well enough for a real customer to use, not just well enough to demonstrate an idea internally.

Minimum viable product vs. proof of concept

A proof of concept checks whether an idea is technically or practically possible at all. It answers a narrow, internal question, like “Can this actually be built?” and isn’t meant for customers to see or use.

An MVP is a usable product released to real customers, built to test demand and gather customer feedback, not just confirm that something can technically work.

Minimum marketable product and minimum marketable feature

A minimum marketable product (MMP) tests the minimum set of features a business needs to actually bring a product to market and sell it. It’s a later step than an MVP: An MVP validates the underlying idea, while an MMP builds out enough of the product to sell it for real.

A minimum marketable feature (MMF) applies the same idea to a single feature rather than a whole product. It’s the smallest version of a new feature a business can release that still delivers value to customers and can be marketed on its own, without waiting to build every planned addition first.

How to develop a minimum viable product

1. Identify your product and audience
2. Select core features and products
3. Create the basic product
4. Launch and collect user feedback
5. Iterate and enhance

The process of developing a minimum viable product varies widely depending on the complexity of the product, the maturity of the business, and what the competitive ecosystem looks like. There are a few steps most MVPs go through, and following them can help you keep the project on track:

1. Identify your product and audience

You likely already have a specific product or niche market in mind. Start by thinking through what you’ll need to build an MVP, and who it’s for.

Your target audience is the group of people most likely to want your product, based on things like their age, interests, location, or habits. Think about their needs, pain points, and preferences: what problem are they trying to solve, and what would make your product the answer?

2. Select core features and products

Figure out which products or features align most closely with your niche and your target audience’s needs. What are the essential elements needed to credibly gauge audience enthusiasm?

It’s tempting to add more before testing, but the goal isn’t to ship the smallest thing possible. It’s to build the smallest version that answers the question you’re testing. So, if you’re testing whether customers want a subscription box, you need enough of the product for someone to truly experience it.

Choosing that first product is key, even if it’s not the product a business ultimately wants to be known for. Bandit Running Cofounder Nick West describes this thinking behind the brand’s first product, a running sock.

“The Run sock is a trust Building Product; it’s a repeat product, it’s got great margins, like it’s got all the hallmarks of a great initial product but we never wanted to be a sock company,” Nick says on an episode of Shopify Masters.

3. Create the basic product

In software, this might be an app with just one feature, or a few basic ones. In ecommerce, it might be a simple website with a small, well-chosen set of products.

But “bare-bones” doesn’t mean sloppy. Your product still needs to work well enough that a bad experience doesn’t get in the way of what you’re testing. If the checkout is broken or the site looks untrustworthy, you won’t learn whether customers want your product. You’ll only learn that they didn’t trust the page enough to try.

You can even source products from other brands to test demand before buying any inventory yourself. Shopify Collective lets store owners import products from other Shopify stores and sell them with no upfront inventory costs, so you can build a product lineup to test before committing to stock.

Or you could try a Wizard of Oz approach, where you fulfill every order by hand at first, and add automation later once you know the idea works.

4. Launch and collect user feedback

Launch your product to a small group of early adopters first, so you can work out the kinks before going wider. Once you’ve addressed early issues, launch to the public.

Before you launch, decide what result would count as success. This will depend on what you’re testing: 

• Demand. Track page traffic, sign-ups, waitlist joins, or social shares. These show whether people are interested enough to take a first step.
• Willingness to pay. Track completed orders, pre-orders, or deposits. Interest doesn’t always translate to payment, so this measures something more concrete than page traffic alone.
• Actual product use. Track repeat orders, usage frequency, or return customers. This tells you whether people who tried the product kept coming back.

Alongside these behavioral numbers, collect qualitative feedback directly from users: what they liked, what confused them, and what almost stopped them from buying. The cold, hard numbers will show you what happened, but direct user feedback helps explain why.

Selling out is one of the clearest signals a business can get. Bandit Running Cofounder Nick West points to this kind of demand signal from the brand’s early product drops. 

“Every time we did a drop across the first year everything was selling out faster at bigger drops and knowing that we weren’t like paying for the audience that was coming. It was just clear that there was something special about it,” Nick says.

5. Iterate and enhance

Refine your MVP based on the audience response. In ecommerce, this may mean refining product descriptions, offerings, and site design.

Use the evidence you collected to decide what happens next. There are three possible outcomes:

• Continue. Customers responded well, and the behavioral data and feedback both support the original idea. Move forward: roll out new products, expand the offering, or prepare for a fuller product launch.
• Change. The response was mixed, or feedback points to a specific problem, like the wrong audience, price, or product feature. Adjust that piece and test again, rather than scrapping the idea entirely.
• Stop. The evidence doesn’t support the idea. Demand was too low, customers didn’t return, or feedback revealed a problem you can’t reasonably fix. Stopping here can also be a successful outcome. The MVP did its job: it kept a business from investing further in an idea that wouldn’t have worked.

Whichever direction the evidence points, look at all of it, not just the bits that confirm what you expected or wanted. It’s easy to focus on the positive comments and explain away the negative ones, but feedback that contradicts your original idea is often the most useful sign you’ll get. 

*Based on a 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with two or more years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.