Learning from China: a post-app world
State of the Apps
In 2018, building and marketing an app for the AppStore / Google Play is quite a challenge. You first need to develop it in its specific langage and then set it appart from the crowd by setting up virality mechanisms or sponsored acquisition. By then, you will need to battle for user retention: if your app is intended for non-recurring usage, you might need to “acquire” users every time you want them to use your app.
Smartphone owners use 9 apps on average per day and 30 per month according to a report from App Annie. If it is not geared towards a highly recurring use case like Messenger, What’s App, Google Maps or Uber, chances are your app will be downloaded someday and then left unused.
So what happens if:
- My app answers a crucial but non-recurring need?
- I don’t plan on spending millions on customer acquisition?
- I can’t pull out a viral stunt?
Enters China
A quick detour through China shows how the ecosystem is leading the way in terms of internet usage. According to KPCB’s 2017 internet trends report, mobile accounted for 71% of the $681bn in gross merchandise e-commerce value in China. In comparison, a mere 35% of the $453bn US e-commerce sales were made through mobile.
What’s so different in China then?
WeChat, the hegemonic platform for everything mobile & the rise of its “Mini-apps”.
Initially developed as an instant Messaging service, Tencent’s application created a whole social ecosystem that enables:
- Audio & video sharing
- Microblogging services
- Videoconferencing
- Mobile payment
- Native internet browsing
- Native applications linked to corporate accounts to better promote their services: mini-apps
WalkTheChat’s Thomas Graziani, expert at accompanying foreign companies implant in China through WeChat, explains in a short post how mini-apps work, their pros, cons and how to build them.
Through mini-apps, brands can interact with potential customers through custom interfaces aimed at specific use cases without the need for a painful installation. Those native apps are:
- More fluid than your average website
- Accessible within WeChat’s social media accounts for minimized user friction
- End-to-end from point of contact to purchase thanks to WeChat’s native payment service
Those mini-apps however don’t enable push notifications and are built using specific computer langages: notable drawbacks when compared to classic apps or simple web-based services.
Takeaway: building apps within billion-user communities makes a lot of business sense.
Chatbots?
In the rest of the world, the biggest platform-apps are WhatsApp and Facebook with “relatively” smaller contenders such as Line in South-East Asia & Japan (217m monthly active users in 2017 vs. 1.5bn for WhatsApp). Even though no other Behemoth has shown a similar level of maturity to that of WeChat, Facebook’s Messenger has made strides in that same direction through the release of chatbots.
Chatbot’s initial value proposal is similar to WeChat’s mini-apps:
- Leveraging social media audiences
- Enabling end-to-end interactions within the platform
- Integrating payment capabilities
They also enable push notifications within Messenger which WeChat’s mini-apps don’t.
With that in mind, chatbots only proved relevant for specific use cases, typically straightforward services such as trip booking or inherently conversational ones such as customer services. However, whenever more complex tasks are involved, chatbots fail to deliver value since traditional web / app interfaces remain much more efficient at providing interactive content and crafting strong brand identities.
The dawn of Messenger Apps
For over a year, Messenger has introduced a major feature into Messenger with the support of “webviews” i.e. web-based applications that pop up after clicking on a link within a chatbot’s conversation. Let’s call those “Messenger Apps”.
Messenger Apps are fully customizable since webviews are made of HTML and CSS like websites and potentially very fluid thanks to modern web technologies (such as ReactJS, VueJS, etc.)
They:
- Enable push notifications since they are build within a chatbot (chatbots can send you messages anytime with the relevant authorizations)
- Provide rich interaction with users
- Leverage Messenger’s native payment services
- Are cross-platform. A user may start interacting from a smartphone and switch to a desktop or tablet seamlessly — since every user is uniquely identified with their Facebook account credentials
It is hard to tell if Facebook is going to make Messenger apps a priority but large players such as Spotify or Apple Music made move in that direction to seize the opportunity.
Still assessing wether you should build an app for your brand? Consider a Messenger app instead!
At Sommelier du Parfum, we have picked Messenger to build our app interface. We implemented a rich content webview to provide perfume seekers with the best perfume recommendation technology available! Feel free to reach out or comment with your views on the future of apps ;)
