“Which tool do we need to test this business model?” This is the most frequently asked question since we started implementing innovative business model ideas with our clients. The answer? There is no perfect tool for your test. There are a lot out there and the key is to select the one that best suits your needs.
When it comes to the validation of your business model idea, never forget that the tests you want to run should be efficient and as cheap as possible. The higher the uncertainties are, the lower your validation budget should be. The current COVID-19 pandemic adds another challenge to the already complicated validation process: how to test a “Minimum Viable Product” in times of lockdowns and remote work? As the digitalization of our world accelerates, lots of new businesses are going digital. To help you with that process, you will find a large number of digital tools in this article.
The (non-exhaustive) list below is the result of a running monitoring in the past two years: discussions and projects with our clients, projects with incubators, blog articles of famous entrepreneurs, meetups, tech listings by journalists, and more.
The goal is to help you create, launch and grow the MVP that will validate the underlying critical hypotheses of your business model idea. To start as quick and easy as possible (we all know the bureaucratic process of paying for new tools), we have been looking for options that are free or offer the possibility to upgrade via a freemium model further down the line when you have shown their value. The tools are bundled to best fit certain types of tests, so feel free to jump directly to the ones you need help with!
We hope you will benefit from this list –please do not hesitate to share, post, comment and send us further tools you know that we may have forgotten or are unaware of!
Landing pages and websites
Most ideas today require an online presence for promotion, for getting feedback from potential users and customers, and for validating their interest (or your problem/solution fit). To build a professional landing page or website, WIX and Landingi (use the 14-day trial if needed) are two tools we recommend. They are easy to use with drag & drop functions, cheap and offer the possibility to connect to your CRM or mailing system. Strikingly, Unbounce and Lander are also good options. For those who don’t know how their website should look like, Heek is a bot that can build your website by simply answering questions. Webflow has the same functionality with the added benefit of having a working back-end code – so your company/team can take it further.
Every landing page or website needs a domain name. If you are looking for one single domain name, Bluehost is an interesting option. If you plan to buy and manage more domains, have a look at Domain.com, Namecheap, Google Domains or checkdomain for Germany.
Sometimes, you need to add small tools to help you validate your hypothesis. For example, if you need an integrated calculator page, go check ConvertCalculator. Embedding interactive content such as quizzes, polls, forms, or giveaways can help you boost your marketing and get feedback from your visitors. Our recommendation: Typeform, Outgrow or Apester. If you prefer to engage in a conversation with your visitors, Landbot is the tool you are looking for.
In the early stages of the validation, you often don’t have the product/service yet. A good way to validate the interest of your customers is to offer the possibility to pre-order it. If you aren’t using Hubspot and its forms, you can try Celery.
SEO is a wide and complex field. As your job is not to become an expert but to know some basics, start with searching for new keywords. The best free tools to find new keywords for your SEO: AnswerThePublic, Ubersuggest, Keyword Tool and Kparser. However, at this point, we advise to not be too optimistic: if you go with a strict landing page, organic SEO doesn’t really work. You should try to go with paid ad campaigns if you want to reach a wider audience (for B2B solutions, that might look different).
Check the basic SEO parameters of your landing page/website with the Moz plugin for Google Chrome. You can also do a short (and free) SEO technical analysis with Hubspot’s Website Grader.
If you have the ability (or someone you know who will make you a good price) to program your website on your own, analyze the speed of loading pages to find out how to improve them: Page Speed by Google and GTmetrix.
If you don’t know how much you need to invest for your website showcase and your sponsor is asking for numbers, go to How Much Does A Website Cost.
Digital prototypes
Every digital prototype (but also a physical one) starts with a brainstorming. The goal of the brainstorming should be on the one hand to make sure you have identified all the assumptions you want to validate (check here to learn more), and, on the other hand, to decide which type of prototype suits the validation best (check our magic tool here) and how it looks like. If you are not working with BMI Lab yet, there are other simple ways to brainstorm online, for example with Bubbl.us, Creately, mindmeister, Sketchboard or Google Drawings.
Before you start building, you need to conceptualize your solution. Tools like Miro and Mural offer the possibility to do pretty much anything you need (plan, flowchart, fault tree, mind map, diagram…). The advantage of these digital collaboration workspaces is that they enable you to think and also work remotely with your team and/or partner(s). Other tools such as SmartDraw or Draw.io, are alternatives to plan your prototype.
When creating your concept sketch (so really drawing your concept), if you are working with an iPad, we recommend Procreate. Otherwise, Concepts is a powerful tool that offers an infinite canvas.
Once you have finalized your concept, you can start building your prototype. There are a lot of tools on the market that will help you doing so, and you should select according to your capabilities. To build an animated prototype, Figma, Overflow, Moqups, Proto, InVision or Marvel are some of the best platforms you can use.
If you plan to implement your prototype and don’t know how to code, you can create a simple app very easily & quickly with BuildFire, Apps Builder, AppMachine, Glideapps or Lightwell.
Development skills and resources are difficult to find. Here is an interesting model: Devy is an unlimited solution to get developers working for you for a monthly subscription.
Hardware prototypes
A software to build hardware? Yes, that is possible and this is what Blokdots offers.
To build an IoT prototype quickly and easily, Tessel and NXP offer IoT development kits for everyone. For more advanced prototype (that also demand advanced skills), we recommend to build your idea on Raspberry Pi.
If you need to build a simple prototype, the possibilities range from paper, polystyrene, moldable plastic, to 3D-printing, laser cutting and mechanical processing. If you don’t want to buy the tools, just go to the FabLab or MakerSpace next door.
Visualization (Design – Photos – Videos)
Design
Forget about Paint and Photoshop: Canva is a must have if you plan to share content/your prototype online - and need beautiful slides. Another tool to create amazing mockups is Artboard Studio. We also found good alternatives with Dunnnk for mockups of your idea on wearables, smartphones or laptops, Pixeden / GraphicBurger / Place it for mockups of all kinds.
Photos
There is no MVP that doesn’t require nice pictures and images. Here are some of the best known free photo stock sites: Pexels, Unsplash, StockUp, 500px, StockSnap, New Old Stock. If you are looking for stock photos in .png only: StickPNG.
Automatically remove the background from an image using Remove.bg and improve the loading time of your page/website by making images lighter with Compressor, TinyPNG or TinyJPG.
Videos
An explainer video is often useful when combined with other tests from our 22 business model tests. To easily create great videos online, Biteable is the tool you need. Other options include Directr, Promo, Animoto, wave.video, Powtoon, Moovly and Renderforest.
You can also add videos to your landing page/website without editing them. Find professional, beautiful and free “cover videos” on Coverr, Pexels Videos, Mazwai, Videoblocks and Videvo.
Sometimes, you just need to record your screen while explaining or demonstrating your idea: Loom is the tool you need.
And more…
You need to design an infographic about your idea? Go to Piktochart or Easelly.
You are looking for the right fonts? Google Fonts and FontSquirrel will help you find it.
Nothing looks better than nice icons. Before buying expensive licenses, go check Flaticon, The Noun Project and Iconfinder.
Some specific libraries offer flat illustrations of humans: Humaaans or Undraw.
A good video without good music is not a good video. Find royalty-free music on FUGUE, Jukedeck or Youtube Audio Library.
If you need guerilla marketing on social media, create specific short videos with Lumen5 or PlayPlay.
For a first MVP, you don’t need to hire expensive designers to create the perfect logo. Just use Logojoy.
Generate traffic (and feedback)
Building an MVP is not enough. If you don’t promote it, potential users and customers will never find it. This is the reason why it is important to think your business model test through and not forget the communication/marketing or recruiting channels you need. Here are some of the tools that will support you setup the best test promotion possible.
Mailing
If you already have an existing CRM, sending an email to communicate about your MVP shouldn’t be difficult. Ask your internal administrator or specialist for help by explaining what you need, what you want to achieve and how you would like to proceed.
If you don’t have any tool, here are some useful emailing campaigns provider: Mailchimp, Mailjet, SendinBlue and MailerLite. All of them offer a free (but limited) model. The same way as an innovative business model can be designed using existing patterns, a marketing email can also be copied from existing successful companies: get inspired by scrolling through Good Email Copy.
As your MVP traction grows, you will have to deal with increasing customer contacts, often via email. aText is a typing accelerator that will revolutionize the way you write emails and improve your efficiency.
If you are using Gmail, you should start using Streak. It is an easy-to-use built-in CRM from Google that enables you to follow up on customers, see who opened your email and when, etc. If you are thinking about implementing a CRM tool, Hubspot Sales and Pipedrive are the best providers on the market.
Before sending emails to potential customers, you will have to find their email address: GetEmail.io, Apollo and Email Hunter can help.
Social Media
To reach out to your future customers and present them your MVP, you need to be where they spend most of their time: social media networks. From professional networks like Linkedin or Xing, to the most famous platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok or Youtube.
Starting on social media is not easy. Have a look at current trends on your topics and what type of content performs best on BuzzSumo. If your MVP is a B2C product/service, it can make sense to use local or global influencers to target the audience you need: Hypr (expensive) is an extensive platform that offers broad influencer marketing support. Alternatives are Klear and Neoreach. Similar to the search for influencers, finding the right hashtags for your posts is not easy. Later or this Hashtag Generator can solve your problem.
If managing the posting and performance analysis is too time-consuming, Buffer.com, EverGreenFeed and Postify can be good solutions for you.
Instead of searching for external tools and waste money, don’t underestimate Facebook’s own Ad Manager, which, by the way, manages Instagram ads too. Similar to the what Google offers, Facebook’s ad manager helps you plan, optimize and analyze your campaigns. If you are working on a B2B MVP, Linkedin’s Marketing Solutions are a great tool to start with.
Online Ads
The place to be for online ads? Google! The most powerful searching engine also offers it own advertising services, called Google Ads. Combined with Google Analytics, you will be able to learn about your visitor’s behavior, the performance of the ads and find ways to improve your ad test. Be aware that this quickly becomes a job on its own, so make sure to either strictly define what you want to achieve or get some external help.
And more…
To gather basic feedback, you can follow two strategies: polls and surveys. Google Forms is probably the easiest tool to use, as it offers a wide variety of forms and questionnaires. Other good options (but for a really professional survey you will need some budget) are SurveyMonkey, Typeform and Poll Everywhere.
Get feedback from and acquire technology early-adopters by posting your idea on Product Hunt.
Automate and connect your actions, tools, social posts with Zapier or IFTTT.
Generate banners within minutes automatically with Abyssale.
Integrate referral options into your test with Viral Loops or Referral Candy.
Take-aways
To validate a new business model idea is not easy and it requires time, budget and dedication. On the other hand, building and testing an MVP has never been so easy and cheap!
Don’t be overwhelmed by this very long list of possible tools. Instead, here are the 3 things you should take from this article:
You don’t have do everything by yourself. Don’t hesitate to ask experts for their support. A lot of companies and platforms offer one-stop-packages for MVPs; if you don’t have the skills and resources, rely on specialists!
Do not spend weeks analyzing and evaluating which tool is the best for you. Have a look at a maximum of 3 and chose according to your budget and the goal you want to achieve. These tools are not going to be part of your final business’ process landscape anyway. One helpful question to make such decisions: “If I was a startup founder, how would I decide?”
Just do it. Ask for forgiveness, not for permission.
You can find more details to our business model testing cycle here to learn about the steps that will guide you through the validation journey of your idea.