What is Digital Product Development?
Digital Product Development is the process of creating a better user experience enhanced by digital products, such as web pages, mobile apps, web apps, and digital dashboards. Digital products are code-based business assets that involve interactive value propositions to the user. Digital product development involves improving the customer journey by designing and developing digital products with an intricate user interface.
The stages of digital product development are varied, depending on proposed functionality and product strategy, but there remain three areas of focus. A successful product development process includes the idea stage, the design and development stage, and the growth stage. These product development stages include several substages performed by software development, product management, and product development teams, including varying degrees of prototyping and quality assurance (QA) testing.
Prototyping examines the actual process of building a digital product, seeking to visualize the user interface and user experience (UI/UX). After additional testing and beta releases to collect UX feedback, the minimum viable product (MVP) version is deployed. The MVP version includes the UI and basic functionality and also collects user feedback. Once all feedback is collected and adjustments are made for a bug-free product, QA testing begins. QA testing involves performing several tests to eliminate any remaining bugs and purify and perfect the final digital product.
Another important part of digital product development is the ongoing development and product evolution. After a digital product is launched, there will still be further development, including updates and new features to keep up with the evolving technologies and continue to meet user needs and expectations. At a high level, digital product development also aims for agile development with the ability to adapt to the consistently changing digital climate while still meeting the long-term customer requirements of security, quality, price, and performance.
What are the benefits of Digital Product Development for your business?
- Digital products utilizing the latest technologies and methodologies enhance the user experience and can extend the product lifecycle.
- Digital product development is inherently scalable, adapting to ever-changing user needs and software capabilities.
- Today’s consumers are empowered and increasingly knowledgeable of industrial products and services which heightens customer expectations and the need for ever-evolving customer experiences.
- Digital product development processes reduce workflow friction by keeping the entire team up to date and on the same page. This clear visibility into the status of the product and the stage of development allows for rapid decision-making and higher team efficiency.
- Early detection and resolution of bugs and product issues through digital transformation can enhance the final product and reduce downtime.
- Product adoption levels increase dramatically when bugs and issues are found and fixed before release. Utilizing connected testing, both sampling time and cost can be reduced, expediting the product turnaround time.
- Digital product lifecycle management solutions lead to better margins and improve profitability by negotiating better prices and reducing overall costs.
- Customer-oriented product development leads to success and sustainability, essentially future-proofing your digital products.