Instant Apps and Mini-Programs

The train was pretty jarring as the tracks are overdue for replacements and didn't bode well with the unusual haste that the train operator was in. Way too bumpy for my usual face-in-phone, shut out the world ride home. So I scanned the app icons on the phone somewhat bewilderingly, trying to recall when did I ever installed some of them and proceeded to delete foreign looking app icons without batting an eyelid.

As the number of apps continue to grow to more than 5 million by now, if you add up both Android and iOS; the lower the users' attention span gets. And while all businesses should aspire towards developing a mobile app to enhance engagement, create value and convenience for customers; business and digital leadership need to be aware that the odds are stacked up against them.

Of the 80% of customers who delete their apps for not meeting expectations, over 57% of customers suffer the most anxiety with banking and financial services app when the reaction time is slow (with obvious reasons) and 24% of users abandon their apps after just one use. While the common-man mobile app consumer only uses 30-40 apps on average monthly. In terms of time frame and loyalty, the bulk of app developers and marketers will lose on average 77% of their users in just 3 days of mobile app installation! 

There’s several hypothesis to this, and the most common one is that the app is just really bad; unstable, slow, functionally restricted and plain out right useless; this infographic sums it up https://www.dotcominfoway.com/blog/infographic-why-users-uninstall-your-app

But here’s the kicker, even if you have an app that behaves reliably, intuitively and fast; there’s still the next hypothesis – the app is used infrequently. Thus, not worth cluttering the user's mobile app real estate.

Frequency is key to any mobile app development effort, as the original premise of an app was to simplify tasks that needed to be done frequently. Hence, infrequency is often a death knell to mobile app investments as customers will uninstall apps that are not used; the analysis breaks down infrequency further with examples:-

• Incidental usage apps:  The example of a health insurer app that locates panel hospitals and clinics comes to mind; policy holders are not sick all the time to use it often enough to warrant an installation. A website that can be bookmarked would clearly suffice and JavaScript, HTML5 and Google Maps API able to provide the necessary interactivity to find the clinic. Other patterns include one-off tests or some form of scoring upon answering a questionnaire or playing a game. 
• Short term usage apps: Apps that hotels provide fall into this category; typically introduced at the check-in counter or loyalty programs that you're in. Included also are airport app for departures and arrivals or airlines and loyalty affiliates. The app is only functional for the duration of the stay or visit. With only a small segment of users being frequent flyers that require constant use of these apps. Short term usage apps per the examples provided also has a strong overlap with location specificity; i.e. useful within the country, the city or the physical establishment that the customer is in for the duration of stay.

Attracting and compelling customers to download mobile app also comes with a host of challenges:-

• Is it discoverable and recognizable by the customer in the app store?
• Would the user trust and accept the many different prompts that the app asks to allow access to your messages, location, contact list, camera and files during installation? (that’s poor user onboarding by the way)
• Worst still, a huge flashing warning prompt to disavow privacy rights should they agree to use the app

So instant apps were created to solve this gap in user expectations and behaviors, particularly incidental and short term usage apps as well as the ability to preview features prior to a full install. In scanning the marketplace of instant apps, I find that WeChat’s implementation is the best due to the advantage that it has over Google’s in markets where WeChat is prevalent.

WeChat calls their implementation “Mini Programs” instead of instant apps.

Firstly, the users have come to know WeChat as a platform where you could quickly subscribe to the many different WeChat sites hosted by corporations, retailers and service providers. For those who are uninitiated, imagine custom Facebook pages on steroids where you could have the page hosted on your own servers, but loaded seamlessly into Facebook. Here’s 26 examples of companies with customized facebook pages (note that the examples work best in US versus other countries, as marketers have setup redirects to land on the country’s Facebook page versus the main page in the US)

Secondly, the use of QRCodes to get access to an app is already second nature in WeChat, so the transition to scanning a code to get an instant app in WeChat is a no brainer. We have mom and pop shops and even beggars using WeChat and QRCodes in China . Believe or not, iOS only added native QRCode support into iPhone cameras for the iPhone 8 in late 2017. I’m pretty sure a lot of iPhone owners have only started to find that out accidentally when the camera hovered over a QRCode. And as smart as the folks in Google are, the Android’s platform play is still pretty weak; with most users treating Android purely as an OS that sits in the background with multiple features disabled. Fundamentally out of fear as add-on engagements interface at the OS level versus an app that sits on top of the OS. Secondly out of ignorance as Android seems to spend more marketing dollars on the developer community versus enterprise accounts and business enablement.

Finally, in Google’s implementation; instant app behaves like a limited feature set for the full blown app with the “Try it Now” button on the Playstore and the word “instant” next to the app name.

WeChat on the other hand was first to market in early 2017 and had a razor sharp market strategy, WeChat focused on solving customer’s behavior with regards to apps – targeting low frequency use cases where installation is a hassle for the customer; and most important of all – targeting brick and mortar establishments that want to make the leap into digital in a fast, cheap and cheerful way.

WeChat achieved this by purposely limiting the capabilities of their mini-programs

• Mini-programs cannot send notifications to users. This is intended to ensure that customers trust mini-programs, and are clearly aware that no private information are being captured. Also, cause users are tired of installing mobile apps that constantly sends inane notifications and reminders.
• Mini-programs are developed in Tencent’s custom HTML. This allows programmers and marketers to rapidly create mini-programs at a low cost directly from the IDE provided in the WeChat cloud. Remember that the goal is to target brick and mortar establishments to embrace the digital world rapidly, versus the high cost and complexity of developing a mobile application with all the needed backward and forward compatibility testing. Personally as a technologist, this is the one feature which differentiates Tencent from Google and Apple. But only if marketers and digital leaders are exploiting the strategy.

One year down the road in 2018; the Chinese instant app ecosystem has unfortunately went full on berserk with many marketers and mobile app creators publishing almost like for like capabilities of their full blown apps as mini-programs sans features that are limited by the mini-program framework.

So we can only wait and see how well they do.

As I struggle to push my way out of the train at the stop cause foreign workers from the Indian sub-continent has a habit of crowding at the entrances while ignoring people disembarking unless you're VERY insistent; my money's on https://www.appbrowzer.com/ who went to market in India earlier than WeChat with the very same strategic goal as WeChat's.

Disclaimer: Article has nothing to do with MetLife nor the opinions represent that of MetLife and its subsdiaries globally.