What is Digital Product Engineering? An Ultimate Guide to Digital Product Success

Digital products have become the oxygen we breathe, not just for the individual but also for businesses. Businesses are realizing the importance of digital products, and as a result, we are seeing a strong trend toward digital product engineering, and sales.

Businesses falling short of keeping pace with the rapid innovation of products are risking their obsolescence. MySpace, once the most impactful social media platform, lost out to Facebook due to its inertia and failure to adapt. 

The message is clear: having a digital product that continually evolves and delivers business value is no longer optional, it is essential. But with countless resources and endless possibilities, where do you even begin?

Digital product engineering could be your compass to navigate your journey to design and develop digital products that are in sync with your business objectives. Here in this blog, you’ll have a detailed explanation of product engineering, its benefits, phases, challenges, and solutions.

So, let’s get started.

What is Digital Product Engineering?

Digital product engineering refers to the process of developing innovative digital solutions that solve real-world problems, and deliver exceptional user experience. These digital products or solutions could be anything from software, websites, applications, etc. 

It is a comprehensive process that includes ideation, conceptualization, design, development, testing, deployment, and ongoing optimization of products.

It is based on agile and iterative methodologies that set the foundation for rapid prototyping, and continuous improvement. Furthermore, with a strong emphasis on adaptive planning, it allows the requirements to evolve throughout the development process. 

Digital Product Engineering Phases: Compass to Create Innovative and User-Centric Products

Developing digital engineering solutions is a process that includes multiple phases. Here is a detailed explanation of each digital product engineering phase;

1. Ideation

The initial phase that sets the building blocks for your innovative product. It emphasizes knowing about the target audiences, and pain points, which allows them to generate captivating ideas that have the potential to disrupt the market.

According to a study conducted by Greg A., it takes approximately 3,000 raw ideas to build a commercially successful product. This study sheds light on the challenges involved in the research process. 

Ideation is not a one-time event, it unfolds organically fueled by the growing needs of your customers. For example, Netflix was founded on the DVD-by-mail idea, and later on, identifying its target audience’s interest in online streaming, it made the transition to online streaming. 

The journey of Netflix is the best testament to embracing the changing consumer preferences with open arms to stay relevant in the market. 

Here are a few best practices you can follow to yield digital product ideas that can be turned into profitable ventures;

• Emphasis on formal ideation process, where your team has a clear understanding of your target audience, and their pain points. Organizations with structured ideation processes are 5 times more likely to generate future-proof ideas. (Source: TechLink)
• Instead of involving teams from a single department, you should practice involving cross-functional teams. Having people from diverse perspectives will add value to the ideation process. According to a study conducted by McKinsey, cross-functional teams are 17% more likely to generate value-creating ideas. 
• Involve the customer in the ideation process, after all, they will evaluate the feasibility of your idea. According to the European Journal of Innovation Management, organizations that involve customers in the ideation process are 2.3 more likely to be successful in bringing new ideas to market. 

2. Market Research and Feasibility Analysis

Not all ideas are created equally. As said earlier, only 1 out of 3,000 ideas became a commercial success. Therefore, you should have a process to evaluate the potential of each idea to choose the best one. 

Market research is the best way to find out how your ideas stand in the market. You can begin by understanding your competitors, and market trends. Research the similar digital products already available in the market and what you can do to strengthen your standing compared to them. 

You can employ techniques like SWOT analysis to test the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of each idea to choose the one with a higher possibility of yielding positive outcomes. 

The next step would be to conceptualize your chosen idea. Conceptualization should include the core features, UI, UX, and overall value proposition to help your resources develop a product that aligns with your needs. 

3. Design and Prototyping 

This is the phase where your digital product comes alive with its look and feel. It is the foundation for the digital experience that keeps your users engaged. Employ the user-centered design principles to captivate them and meet their needs. User-centric designs can increase the conversion rate by 400%. (Forrester Research)

Prototype, an early version of your digital product is the best way to validate your design concepts with the targeted audiences before stepping into full development. It allows you to identify and address the issues that might hinder the adaptably of your product in the early stages. The prototype can save approximately 50% of product engineers’ time, but they might end up spending on a project due to bad user experience after full development. 

4. Development

This DPE phase involves turning your idea into a full-fledged product. A team of designers and developers will work to build the product’s features and functionalities based on the conceptualization. 

You should adopt digital development methodologies that allow incremental development, and rapid iterations in tune with evolving requirements or user feedback. A strong emphasis should be placed on writing clean, efficient, and maintainable code.  

5. Quality Assurance

Product engineering is beyond developing an innovative product, it should be reliable, secure, and performance-oriented to make its place in the competitive world.

Quality assurance is the best practice to ensure that the product meets the specified requirements. It is a broad concept that includes;

• Functional testing
• Performance testing 
• Security testing
• Compatibility testing 
• User experience testing
• Regression testing

Testing can be done in two ways; manually or through automation. You can automate the various aspects of the testing process using the following automated tools like;

• Test Automation Frameworks can be used to automate the testing executing process and can generate comprehensive test reports. Some of the popular test automation frameworks are Selenium, Appium, Cypress, etc.
• Continuous Integration Tools (CIT) can be used to integrate the testing process development pipelines. Examples of CIT include GitHub, Jenkins, etc.
• Performance Testing Tools can automate the process of performance testing and suggest areas of improvement. Some popular examples of such tools include LoadRunner, JMeter, etc.
• Security Testing Tools can automate the security testing process to ensure protection from potential threats. Some examples of these tools are Burp Suite,  OWASP ZAP, etc.

6. Launch

It’s time to make your product live for your customers. This phase encompasses several technical and strategic activities to ensure the digital product operates smoothly in a live environment. 

You can plan to roll out the full-scale product deployment, phased roll-out, or canary release. It is vital to choose the appropriate deployment strategy depending on your project’s complexity and user base. Additionally, you can set up different environments for deployment testing such as development staging, and production environments to identify the issues in the process to ensure smooth deployment. 

7. Support and Maintenance

Launching your digital product is just the first step. The real journey lies in optimizing it for peak performance, robust security, and continuous evolution to meet your users’ growing needs.

Support and maintenance are crucial product engineering phases to identify the bottleneck and optimize the performance. Along with feature enhancements put a strong emphasis on security and vulnerability management to ensure your product never fails to impress the audiences.

How does Digital Product Engineering Drive Business Growth?

The world is going digital, and businesses are taking notice.  With a rapidly growing user base for digital products (software), it’s no surprise that companies are looking to launch their own.  But what exactly makes digital products such a profitable business venture? Let’s dive into some key reasons.

Nearly 70% of the World Population is Your Potential Customers

As of April 2024, nearly 5.44 billion (amounting to 67.1% of the global population) were active internet users. This means you have the potential to serve the tremendous potential customer base with your digital products.  

Furthermore, digital products can be accessed from anywhere surpassing geographical boundaries.

New Revenue Streams

87% of the businesses that leveraged digital product engineering services realized new revenue streams. (Source: McKinsey & Company)

Product engineering allows businesses to create digital offerings catering to their online audiences. For example, you can create subscription-based services that ensure a steady source of revenue. 

The market for global subscription-based services is expected to reach USD 10,772.14 Million by 2025. This suggests a future full of potential for digital products. 

Domino’s, one of the world’s largest pizza companies, is leveraging DPE to captivate its customers with convenient online options to enjoy their pizza. Before, the advent of online sales. Domino’s relied on traditional sales channels like in-store purchases, and phone orders. After the launch of its mobile applications and other digital services, 65% of Domino’s revenue in the USA came through digital channels.  

By 2025, 56% of the revenue for B2B organizations is projected to be coming from digital channels, promising sustainable growth for organizations capitalizing on it.

Source: Statista 2024

Bring Digital Products to Market With Cyntexa

A digital product engineering approach will allow businesses to sustain growth today and prepare for the future. Digital Product engineering services providers like Cyntexa help organizations build innovative products using cutting-edge technologies.  Let’s connect with us to discuss how we can help you build a groundbreaking digital product that becomes your brand’s essence.