Your users deserve a chat app, not just a chat tab.

21 October 2021  |  Laurent Guyot

When we design Qwil and add functionality, we abide by the rule that one app does one thing well. We are not a tab, we are a standalone app for staff, clients and multiple companies. We didn’t come up with it, Mark Zuckenberg did when he forced 1 billion users in 2014 to download their separate Messenger app, after removing all chat features from the main Facebook app.

Why? Chat needs to be supported via its own dedicated app due to the frequency of usage and create the best possible user experience. At the time, CEO Zuckerberg explained:

"Messaging is becoming increasingly important. On mobile, each app can only focus on doing one thing well...Ten billion messages are sent per day, but in order to get to it you had to wait for the app to load and go to a separate tab...
We saw that the top messaging apps people were using were their own app. These apps that are fast and just focused on messaging. You're probably messaging people 15 times per day. Having to go into an app and take a bunch of steps to get to messaging is a lot of friction."

There was also the case of having a maximum number of tabs core to the product especially on mobile. Feeds, videos, marketplace all are linked to the content posted.

How about Linkedin? LinkedIn is positioned as a networking application. Tabs for network, posts and managing settings are core to their proposition including making the first contact. However, this is often just for an introductory approach before moving to another standalone channel for communication.

What about financial services firms? Many of them build portals with many tabs with one being secure inbox/messaging. Despite the security, the secure inbox doesn’t get used much by clients. Why? Banking apps core purpose is to allow clients to see bank balances, make transfers or request financial products. They are not a common communication channel between staff and clients.

At Qwil, we believe chat is a utility and therefore a standalone app. And within our own application, we will only add a tab if this complements our core proposition. If it doesn’t, then we don’t build it.