Why Build Messenger Bots When You Can Build Progressive Web Apps?
It’s been more than 7 months since Facebook released their chatbot platform for Messenger. That event created a lot of excitement. But after the first wave of enthusiasm, it became obvious that simple chat is so easy to break. That problem caused the community to pivot. Instead of building text-driven bots, the focus had shifted. Abandoning conversational interface meant building Messenger apps that offer GUI. Today, many (most) Messenger bots discourage users from sending free form text. Instead, users can seemingly only interact with Messenger bots via GUI. This is why it makes more sense to call those bots Messenger apps.
Why Abandon Traditional Mobile Apps?
A lot of digital ink was spent explaining the reasons behind abandoning traditional mobile apps. I won’t bore you with regurgitating the same old here. The fact remains that traditional mobile apps seem to have reached the plateau. A lot of people are happy to seize the chance to abandon cumbersome mobile app development. Not only is the development cumbersome, the distribution is frustrating as well. Leaving the world of traditional mobile apps behind feels like a win-win situation. Both for the mobile app developers and for the mobile app users.
How To Abandon Traditional Mobile Apps?
Since mobile computing is the undisputed wave of the future, it is silly to make plans to abandon it. But mobile apps appear at this point to be losing momentum. So it is obvious that traditional mobile apps are NOT the way of the future.
So we need to abandon traditional mobile apps, that much is clear. But the question is: how can we continue with mobile computing if we discard mobile apps? The answer presented itself earlier this year: switch to building bots!
Bots appear, at a first glance, as being a perfect replacement for mobile apps. It’s a small wonder that so many people jumped head first into the bot arena. But as I mentioned above, the excitement subsided once it became clear that chat is breakable. Conversational user interface sounds reasonable in theory, but is problematic in practice. Most attempts at getting things done by having back-and-forth conversations with bots often get derailed. That level of unreliability and unpredictability is unacceptable for most individuals, and is also totally unacceptable for all businesses.
Conversational user interface got quickly abandoned in favour of Graphical User Interface (GUI). GUI is better, because it gets much harder for users to break it. Messenger bot builders have embraced that insight, and transformed Messenger chatbots into Messenger apps.
Messenger apps are better than traditional mobile apps because they avoid many pitfalls. For starters, there is no need to depend on an app store with Messenger apps. There is also no need to download a Messenger app. Nor is there a need to install it and then configure it.
Messenger apps appear to be the perfect solution. So why are they not taking over then?
Progressive Web Apps To The Rescue!
The biggest problem with Messenger apps is that their GUI sucks. It feels like an extremely crippled version of a GUI. There isn’t much a developer can do with such lousy interface. Not to mention that Facebook has an awful history of not supporting businesses very well. In short, Facebook as a development platform is not highly recommended. Not by any stretch of imagination.
We need a better solution. Just when we thought we lost all bets, lo and behold, enter Progressive Web Apps (PWA). Why are PWAs so great?
To begin with, PWAs do not require an app store. Why is that? Simply put, PWAs are web resources, meaning they are fully discoverable. They are searchable, bookmarkable, forwardable.
Furthermore, PWAs come with a full blown, super advanced GUI. This GUI beats Messenger GUI hands down. Isn’t it much more reasonable to offer a full blown user experience using advanced GUI? The only remaining advantage of Messenger apps — no need to download and install anything, is also solved by PWAs.
What Are The Advantages Of Progressive Web Apps?
The biggest advantage of PWAs over Messenger apps is that PWAs are vendor-and-client neutral. Unlike Messenger apps, which only work within Facebook Messenger, PWAs work in any browser. And because PWAs are basically web resources, they work in any client.
What are the other advantages of PWAs? In no particular order:
- Connectivity-independent: PWAs work without a hitch in situations where there is no connectivity.
- Re-engageable: PWAs come with sophisticated push notifications. This feature makes it more likely for users to return to the app.
- Installable: PWAs let users install them on the device’s home screen. This makes PWAs readily available.
There are many more characteristics of PWAs that make them superior to Messenger apps. The reader is encouraged to study PWAs in greater depth.
Conclusion
The only advantage of using Facebook Messenger as the app platform is in the seemingly large number of active monthly users. Messenger allegedly boasts close to one billion active monthly users. Nothing to scoff at, which, according to many marketers, makes Messenger a very attractive proposition for businesses.
It would then appear that, in order to reach the widest markets, one is well advised to bring their business to the Messenger channel. After all, if over a billion people are active on there, that makes for the largest market in the history.
Or does it? While one billion users is a formidable number, it still cannot compete with more that three and a half billion users on the web today (more precisely, 3,511,546,526 web users at the time of writing this article!)
In addition to the supremacy of the web in terms of sheer numbers, the web is also superior to Messenger in terms of discoverability. While it’s true that any Messenger app has potential access to one billion users, it is also painfully true that Messenger platform offers zero functionality that would assist in discovering any of those apps.
The web is all about discoverability, so it really makes way more sense to build PWAs that will live on the web. Compared to the PWA technology, Messenger apps look like a botched experiment that is not going to go very far.
And if someone still feels that Messenger must not be abandoned because of the billion active members, the unavoidable question is: what’s the use of publishing your app on the platform that does not facilitate any discoverability? Unless you pump millions of dollars into marketing your app, it will die a miserable death of obscurity if it gets buried inside Messenger. If, despite all that, someone still insists that Messenger could be a useful channel, here is a bit of advice: build a bare bones Messenger app that will serve as a simple launch pad for your full blown PWA. That way, you get the best of both worlds!
