Involve your target group actively in the development
People are finding each other online more and more often. Partly because of COVID-19, people are used to working together online. These people ultimately form the target group of your platform and determine to a large extent whether your platform will be a success. How crazy is it to build a platform without input or participation of the people who have to work with the platform? Involve your end users intensively in the design and realization from the beginning of the project. The sooner the better. In this way, everyone is already behind the idea before it goes live and you are already building the community. You can do this yourself, but you can also call in professional help.
- Notify your users of your plans and talk to them
- Map the customer journey of your end users
- See what data sources there are and how to use them
- Share the roadmap / features that are on the planning actively and let your target group think about it
- Test the design and ux concepts using wireframes with the target group
- Go live as soon as possible with a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) so you can test assumptions
In this way, the platform fits in well with the needs of your (future) end users and deploys (existing) data in an efficient manner. Involvement of the target group in building the platform is one of the most valuable aspects you can guarantee in the development of a new platform.