There’s never been a better time to launch digital products and services. Significant changes in consumer and lifestyle behaviours have seen an increasing reliance on digital, prompting an acceleration in both innovation and adoption.

But while the need and the appetite for digital capability is strong, and the opportunity clear, success is far from guaranteed. Indeed, most new digital products and services end in failure. But with the right approach and guidance, companies can maximise their chances of taking a web or native application successfully to market…

Numerous companies will have spotted the opportunity to launch a digital product, making it challenging to achieve cut-through and reach a commercially viable adoption rate in a crowded market. The internet and app stores are riddled with poorly conceived commercial flops – an eye-watering 71% of mobile apps aren’t used after three months.

This means a great idea is not enough; success demands innovation, hard graft and planning. And perhaps even a small dose of luck.

There’s also a phenomenon called ‘survivor bias’, which arguably skews many of the start-up statistics. According to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, “Small brands are able to post higher percentage growth... because any growth is from a low sales base. But they are also more likely to fall completely out of the market than big brands. ‘Survivor bias’ can cause another error in analysing growth; it’s only the shares of surviving small brands that are tracked so the average performance of small brands is inflated.”

At iCrossing we’ve been lucky enough to spend the last 11 years helping to create digital products, working with a diverse range of clients from global brands to start-ups and everything in between. We’ve observed, and been part of, many success stories, as well as witnessing projects that have failed. And we’ve never stopped learning.

As the need for digital products and services continues to grow, we have drawn on this experience to create a whitepaper to help companies to bring their ideas to fruition. It looks at understanding the needs and journeys of your target audience before defining their problems, brainstorming possible solutions, and working out how to measure success. Companies can then begin the ongoing loop of prototyping to test their hypotheses, optimise based on results, and start to scale.

The guide clues you up on some of the common pitfalls involved in product development, and shares practical guidance on how to avoid these.

For example, the white elephant is a common error: does your big, sexy idea really solve a problem or fulfil a genuine customer need? And of course, there’s the smashed piggy bank – has your project got unrealistic revenue projections which risk cash running out before you've achieved commercial success?