How to Fill Out a Value Proposition Canvas for Your Mobile App [The Definitive Guide]

Henn Akimov

Marketer, Startup Advisor

Ihor Polych

CEO at Devlight

Both start-ups and long-established organizations face the problem of finding their place in the market. To find it, they need to have a good understanding of what problems the customer is trying to solve with their product or service, what difficulties it presents, and what will bring the buyer the most joy from the purchase.

Value Proposition is a short and simple list of benefits that a consumer receives when buying your product. The Value Proposition Canvas template is great for developing Value Proposition for your mobile app. This is an algorithm that allows without additional expenses:

• objectively evaluate the features and parameters of the product;
• visualize the value you create;
• study the motivation of customers;
• consistently consider all options for achieving compliance with the needs of customers and your product;
• create a unique value proposition;
• to determine priorities and emphasis when promoting the product;
• achieve Product-Market fit.

Let’s find out what a value proposition canvas for a mobile app is and how to formulate one.

What Is a Value Proposition Canvas for a Mobile App?

A value proposition of a mobile app succinctly explains why customers should select your app. It significantly facilitates the search for the most suitable proposition for the market. The purpose of the VPC is to help you find a match between your product’s value proposition and the needs, wants, and challenges of your customers. This is what startups call product-market fit or problem-solution fit.

Writing it from scratch is challenging, though. Luckily, we’ll share  value proposition canvas template below that you can follow along with the rest of the article.

Why Is It Important to Fill Out a Value Proposition Canvas?

Value Proposition Canvas is a simple but powerful framework that helps businesses understand their customers better, develop products that meet their needs, and communicate their value proposition effectively. Let’s look at the key benefits of the value proposition canvas for a mobile app:

• Customer Understanding

Being customer-oriented is the secret to getting people interested in your brand and product. This method prioritizes customer happiness as the most crucial aspect of product creation. An overview of a value proposition canvas for a mobile app shows how needs are recognized and met. The advantage of this framework is that it enables you to concentrate on the qualities that clients find most valuable. Resulting in significant customer interaction.

• Better Product Development

With a better understanding of your customers, you can develop products and services that are tailored to meet their needs. This leads to the creation of more valuable products that are more likely to succeed in the market.

• Highlighting Competitive Advantage

By filling out the Canvas, you can identify gaps in the market and develop unique value propositions that set you apart from your competitors. This can help you gain a competitive advantage and attract more customers.

• Effective Communication

VPC helps communicate your value proposition more effectively. You can craft messaging that resonates with the target audience and convinces them to purchase your product.

How to Fill Out a Value Proposition Canvas for Your Mobile App?

The Value Proposition Canvas is formed around two building blocks: сustomer segments (profiles) you are targeting and value propositions that your product. Here are the steps to complete the canvas:

Step 1. Define the Customer Jobs

First, you need to understand what the buyers are aiming for and what they are trying to achieve. These may be jobs that they must complete, problems that require solutions, or needs that must be satisfied. To better understand these questions, try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

There are three types of Customer Jobs:

Functional-specific: they can be both personal and professional, for example, playing sports or writing a monthly work report.

Social: related to the formation of the desired image in society.

Emotional: receiving certain emotions, for example, feeling safe in the home.

Questions that will help you identify Customer Jobs:
· What is the one thing that your customer couldn’t live without accomplishing? What are the stepping stones that could help your customer achieve this key job?

· What are the different contexts that your customers might be in? How do their activities and goals change depending on these different contexts?

· What does your customer need to accomplish that involves interaction with others?

· What tasks are your customers trying to perform in their work or personal life? What functional problems are your customers trying to solve?

· Are there problems that you think customers have that they may not even be aware of?

· What emotional needs are your customers trying to satisfy? What jobs, if completed, would give the user a sense of self-satisfaction?

· How does your customer want to be perceived by others? What can your customer do to help themselves be perceived this way?

· How does your customer want to feel? What does your customer need to do to feel this way?

· Track your customer’s interaction with a product throughout its lifespan. What supporting jobs surface throughout this life cycle? Does the user switch roles throughout this process?

Step 2. Lay out the Customer Pains

Describe the negative emotions, unwanted costs, or risks that your customer experiences while performing their tasks. Identify obstacles that prevent the client from completing them. Buyer problems can be divided into serious and moderate. When you understand the seriousness of the consumer’s pain, you can choose the best ways to help him. To include the most beneficial products and services on the value map side of the value proposition canvas for a mobile app, you should consider these pain areas.

Questions that will help you identify Customer Pains:

· How do your customers define too costly? Takes a lot of time, costs too much money, or require substantial effort?

· What makes your customers feel bad? What are their frustrations, annoyances, or things that give them a headache?

· How are current value propositions underperforming for your customers? Which features are they missing? Are there performance issues that annoy them or malfunctions they cite?

· What are the main difficulties and challenges your customers encounter? Do they understand how things work, have difficulties getting certain things done, or resist particular jobs for specific reasons?

· What risks do your customers fear? Are they afraid of financial, social, or technical risks, or are they asking themselves what could go wrong?

· What’s keeping your customers awake at night? What are their big issues, concerns, and worries?

· What common mistakes do your customers make? Are they using a solution the wrong way?

· What barriers are keeping your customers from adopting a value proposition? · Are there upfront investment costs, a steep learning curve, or other obstacles preventing adoption?

Step 3. Uncover Customer Gains

Think about the gains that the consumer can receive. These include product features, social success, and cost savings. What are the gains:

• necessary – without them, solving problems and problems does not work;
• expected – your buyer expects to receive something else, but in principle, he can do without it;
• desirable – often, the consumer himself talks about such gains;
• unexpected – you can pleasantly surprise the consumer by giving him something that he could not even think of.

Questions that will help you identify Customer Gains:

·  Which savings would make your customers happy? Which savings in terms of time, money, and effort would they value?

·  What quality levels do they expect, and what would they wish for more or less of?

·  How do current value propositions delight your customers? Which specific features do they enjoy? What performance and quality do they expect?

·  What would make your customers’ jobs or lives easier? Could there be a flatter learning curve, more services, or lower costs of ownership?

·  What are customers looking for the most? Are they searching for good design, guarantees, specific or more features?

·  What do customers dream about? What do they aspire to achieve, or what would be a big relief to them?

·  How do your customers measure success and failure? How do they gauge performance or cost?

·  What would increase your customers’ likelihood of adopting a value proposition? Do they desire lower cost, less investment, lower risk, or better quality?

Step 4. Outline the products and services

To understand the value proposition, look again at the 3 components above. Now list all the products and services that your value proposition is built around. This is the place to list all the features, products and services you’ll provide. You can also list the version of the product you are producing, like freemium, trial. Focus on how the features and products will help customers get their job done.

Step 5. List your Pain Relievers

How do you know that your products and services are creating value? Describe how they alleviate customer pain:

·  remove or reduce negative emotions, unwanted expenses and situations;

·  reduce the risks your customers face or might face while performing jobs.

These relievers should be relevant to the pains mentioned in the customer profile. Here are some questions to help you define customer pain relievers. Can your product or service:

·  produce savings? In terms of time, money, or efforts.

·  make your customers feel better? By killing frustrations, annoyances,

and other things that give customers a headache.

·  fix under-performing solutions? By introducing new features, better performance, or enhanced quality.

·  put an end to difficulties and challenges your customers encounter? By making things easier or eliminating obstacles.

·  eliminate risks your customers fear? In terms of financial, social, technical risks, or things that could potentially go wrong.

·  help your customers better sleep at night? By addressing significant issues, diminishing concerns, or eliminating worries.

·   limit or eradicate common mistakes customers make? By helping them use a solution the right way.

·  eliminate barriers that are keeping your customer from adopting value propositions? Introducing lower or no upfront investment costs, a flatter learning curve, or eliminating other obstacles preventing adoption.

Step 6. List the Gain Creators

Describe how your products and services bring gains to the customer. What benefit do they provide, and what does he expect to receive? How to achieve this: through the benefits of the product, positive emotions, and financial benefits?

Your value proposition needs to solve customer pains and be unique. Each potential consumer determines for himself two key points:

1. Which of his problems does your product/service solve?

2. What is the unique value of your offer, how do you stand out from the competition? You can stand out with price, service, usability, new products, etc.

A correctly formulated value proposition retains customers and attracts a new target audience. Here are some questions to help you define customer gains creators. Can your product or service:

·  produce outcomes your customers expect or that exceed their expectations? By offering quality levels, more of something, or less of something.

·  outperform current value propositions and delight your customers? Regarding specific features, performance, or quality.

·  make your customers’ work or life easier? Via better usability, accessibility, more services, or lower cost of ownership.

·  do something specific that customers are looking for? In terms of good design, guarantees, or more features.

·   fulfill a desire customers dream about? By helping them achieve their aspirations or getting relief from hardship?

·  produce positive outcomes matching your customers’ success and failure criteria? In terms of better performance or lower cost.

·  help make adoption easier? Through lower cost, fewer investments, lower risk, better quality, improved performance, or better design.

Step 7. Test Your Value Proposition With Your Customers

Each of these strategies will have been developed in-house by your team. Therefore, it’s important to gather feedback from your intended audience. Your website, social media accounts, video, audio, and in-person interactions are just a few of the marketing channels used to spread the word about your value proposition for a mobile app. 

You may use each of these channels to test your proposition with members of your audience (both current customers and non-customers). You can speed up this feedback process with the aid of tools like UserTesting, making adjustments rapidly, and completing your value offer. Here are our final three pieces of advice:

• Investigate your competitors’ value propositions by conducting research.

Investigating the value propositions of your closest rivals is critical because they serve as the differentiator between your company and the competition. If you focus on your competitors’ strengths, you’ll better understand where your product or service belongs within the market, so be honest here. 

• Focus on what customers need the most

Before developing the Value Proposition Map you must keep in mind the following. Not all customer pains and gains can be addressed. The best approach is to target key factors that customers consider as the topmost priority. This will help your team concrete goals to focus on while developing the product.

• Continuously update your canvas

Your value proposition canvas should not be a one-time exercise. Continuously update it as your app evolves and your target customers’ needs change. This will help you stay ahead of the competition and continue delivering value to your customers.

Value Proposition Canvas for a Mobile App: Template

To assess your consumer segment right and build products and services that meet the requirements of that typical customer, you may use this value proposition canvas for a mobile app template.

Value Proposition Canvas for a Mobile App: Example 

ABC (name changed) is the largest provider of microcredits in Ukraine. They have no physical branches — their services are fully digital and offered online. They turned to us to help them with diversification and new ways of development. 

Five hours were spent in the workshop with the client’s team. We were able to come up with enough concepts for services, painkillers, and gain-makers during this period to declare that the value proposition for a mobile app was complete.

Value Proposition Canvas: Summary

Fill out your value proposition canvas for a mobile app before you start turning your conceptual business model into a real company to ensure that the problem and solution are a good fit. You may then be certain that customers genuinely need the product you’re launching. Also, we advise that you first release an MVP or beta version to gain additional market validation.

To conclude, let’s review some important conclusions we reached in this article:

• The value proposition canvas definition is a graphical representation of what customers need and experience and what a product may provide to address their needs and problems.
• A value proposition canvas for a mobile app works well together to provide a comprehensive analysis and enhancement solution for businesses.
• The canvas is divided into a value map and client segments.
• There are more opportunities to produce a product that is in high demand if there are more matches between the value offered and the client needs components listed.
• Both aspiring entrepreneurs and established business owners looking to grow their enterprises will find our value proposition canvas for a mobile app template valuable.

We advise you to try it and see how the canvas works. You’ll likely like its impact and find it beneficial for upcoming endeavors.