5 Distribution Ideas for Messaging/Chat Apps
Mobile messaging is the future of commerce. Or, is it?
There’s been a lot of chatter about conversational UI and conversational commerce over the last 12 months. And next week, Facebook is planning to announce major updates to the Messenger platform which may make it easier for developers to explore conversational UI for their existing and new products. Additionally, the bar for adding AI and NLP technology has also significantly reduced with the rise of developer tools like Wit.ai. So now an engineer like myself with no background or experience in AI can build a full NLP-powered chat application with minimal effort.
But despite all the excitement about the new “bot store gold rush” that is looming, there has been very little discussion about the new distribution channels that will open up as a result. Here are 5 ideas for how we will see chat applications distributed in the near future.
Chat App Install Ads
Mobile install ads have become a major source of revenue for Facebook and a meaningful driver of downloads for app publishers. So chat app install ads seem like a natural extension. Similar to the ‘Install’ CTA of traditional app install ads, you can imagine a world where the CTA for chat install ads is ‘Message’ and tapping on it takes you directly to Facebook Messenger to interact with a new service. No more apps to download and a seamless transition from a chat install ad to using a new service in one tap.
Group Conversations = Viral Growth
Think about the way mobile apps are fundamentally downloaded and shared. You interact with your phone and install a specific app that you end up falling in love with. You then tell your friends about the app and they go and install the app and follow the same word-of-mouth process. Chat applications provide a unique and viral distribution mechanism that we haven’t seen before. Imagine a conversation with friends on a group thread trying to plan what to do on a Friday night and one friend suggests watching a movie. Another friend responds “@Fandango what are showtimes at AMC tonight” and the Fandango Messenger app responds with information to everyone in the group thread and even offers to buy tickets! We are already seeing this growth mechanism take shape in the Slack app store with the way bots interact with multiple users in a Slack channel.
Search and Intent
As mobile apps continue to hog up space on your home screen, chat bots will allow you to engage with other services effortlessly without the need for downloading new apps. So if you take a look at my home screen, there are a number of apps I have installed that are once a month or few times a year use cases. Take for example the Fandango and myAT&T apps. I use Fandango to buy at most 3–4 times a year and I use myAT&T to pay my bill each month. The world of chat apps will allow me to use a single app (presumably Facebook Messenger) for these less frequent use cases. I can search for “Fandango” and type in “What are showtimes for Batman vs. Superman, buy me 2 tickets.” Or, I find the myAT&T channel and type “pay my bill.” And just like that…app clutter solved!
Messenger App Store
Similar to the App Store, Google Play store and more recently the Slack app store, it seems very reasonable that Facebook will release it own Messenger store in the future, for discovery of new chat applications (this already exists but I suspect it will get much better). The new store may include featured apps or suggested apps based on the groups and Facebook Pages you have liked. It would make sense to suggest to you the Banana Republic Messenger app if you are a fan of the page for instance. Perhaps Facebook will even allow brands and companies you are affiliated with to push you a message in the future. So it would seem like anyone who owns or operates a Facebook Page should be thinking long and hard about extending their reach into the Facebook Messenger world. And I would bet “Messaging” a Facebook page would link you seamlessly to their Facebook Messenger application in the future.
Messenger Website Widgets
Websites are not going away anytime soon. It seems only fitting that chat app publishers will drive traffic to their Messenger applications with a new call to action. So instead of a Download on App Store icon, think of a “Talk to us on Messenger” icon that will be added to landing pages near you. And unlike the App store, these new CTAs will connect you directly with the service in one tap.
If you are interested in conversational UI, drop me a line. Here are additional resources that can help you better understand the future of mobile messaging.
The Mobile Messaging Landscape by Ben Edelson
The Case of WeChat and Mobile in China by Benedict Evans
App Unbundling, Search and Discovery by Benedict Evans
