WeChat explained

China’s WeChat is often referred to and used as an example, but outside China WeChat can’t really be experienced. Therefore good articles explaining WeChat are important, and this article might just be the best I’ve read. A highly recommended read for all who want to understand where all the talk about bots, messaging apps and closed gardens comes from.

WeChat: China's Integrated Internet User Experience

“When a system is convenient, it goes beyond usability and succeeds in being useful and simplifying a previously complicated task.

WeChat does all of this, and that’s why it’s successful. Not because it grew out of a chat site or originally used a conversational user interface.”

Takeaways:

• WeChat should not be copied or seen as the default future for the web, but there definitely are areas where WeChat is showing the way for the rest of the world. The key takeaway probably is that an integrated user experience is something that users value highly, even if it means a strong lock-in to one company — especially if the alternative is a jungle that cannot be trusted.
• WeChat is not the ideal argument for chat-based interfaces, because many of the benefits of WeChat are about other things than the chat interface. The future of web interfaces is probably more complex.
• WeChat is a superior payment gateway in China, which is its main benefit. Yes, there are other things, but the easy payments are the core.
• In the Western world, there probably is a higher level of trust between consumers and companies, and therefore we probably don’t see this kind of one-way evolution so easily. Our Web probably stays more complex, different approaches competing with each other.