Super Apps Super Charged using App Clips(Part1)

App Clip Supporting Super Apps

In the last post we dove into the mobile Super App.  We looked into where they're penetrating certain markets and some of their pros and cons from an app and usability perspective.

In this post, we'll take a closer technical look at the Super App and some alternative architectural and user onboarding considerations.  

Don't worry, as always this is not a blog to teach coding - as promised, we will keep it at the appropriate technical level for business leaders.

To start off this post - there are four points about Super Apps I'd like to recap:

• They offer a lot of features
• They have large code bases
• Their binary sizes are large and can take up a lot of resources on the device
• They can take a long time to download

Keeping the points above as our guiding principles - there are two primary issues we'll be diving into in this post:

• Breaking down what some of these Super App features potential drawbacks are and how we can mitigate those drawbacks
• And perhaps most importantly, take a look at newer mobile paradigms which may help ease the onboarding of users into your Super App's ecosystem.

Some of the good and bad of Super Apps:

So, we know Super Apps offer a vast array of features.  However, what happens when the user only wants to: 

• Use a single feature of your Super App
• Use a feature rarely or just simply "some" of the time

As we consider the above points along with the four points we recapped, let us revisit the dreaded typical app uninstall scenarios:

• Users uninstall apps they don't use often enough
• Users uninstall resource intensive apps much more quickly
• Once an app is uninstalled, it's very unlikely to ever get re-installed

So what does this mean for your Super App mobile strategy?  Clearly it's not to expect users to install your huge app for a single feature and maybe get hooked on other features, or expect that users will keep a huge app around they don't use very often.  This obviously is not the desired mobile strategy.

However, we must address the issue that our Super App is huge and bringing on new users means there must be a way for users to try/use a single portion of our app.  This, in the hopes of bringing them fully onboard. 

This is where App Clips (Apple) / Instant Apps (Android) can help.

NOTE: for the remainder of this post, I'll refer to both simply as App clips - only because it's easier to type.

The case for App Clips:

What exactly is an app clip?  Essentially it's a small, focused feature set of your full app's functionality.  You'll hear it stated that they provide an "in-the-moment" experience and run instantly.

A little more context...

Your Super App many have N number of major features. Examples:

• Ride Sharing
• Food Delivery
• In-Store Payment
• Loans (Perhaps for customers needing help with transportation cost)
• Loans move you into banking
• You start to provide a crypto wallet and full exchange as more users start wanting to pay with crypto
• etc...

As these type of features expand within your Super App, that Super App's architecture may begin to look something like the very high level hypothetical software architecture diagram below:

Super App Architecture Sample

Again, this is a simplistic high level example for discussion purposes.

Here, we can see this fictional Super App's features that are offered to users.  These include:

• Ride-Share
• Food Delivery
• Credit cards
• etc...

Also, each of the features uses various internal libraries and services which provide critical functionality used by each feature.  ie: The Transportation loan and credit card features both rely on the "banking services" library.

Two points which become apparent are:

• This Super App is big and it would be a lot to expect a mobile user to download this whole app without first knowing if they even want to use it.  
• The features are not strictly isolated, but instead multiple features use overlapping services (This point will be properly addressed in part 2 of this post)

To address the first point, App Clips give you the opportunity to provide a "sampling."  An opportunity for a user to painlessly use specific features of your app with minimal impact.

We'll dive into this more, but before we do, let's take a look at why this matters for user beyond simply concerns of large app binaries.

Super Apps User behavior:

As we look at all these features contained within a Super App, we begin to understand that it's likely some users are only going to want a single, or just a few of these features, and likely only some of the time.

For instance, your Super App users may only want to use your ride-share feature(s), and each has a different user case for even that specific feature.  For example, variation of use cases for ride-sharing:

• Only on the weekends
• When on occasional travel
• Get rides to and from the airport
• Get multiple rides per day Monday - Friday
• Used as their sole mode of daily transportation

However, if all these groups have absolutely no interests at all in your crypto exchange, food delivery, or banking services...  Well, you could find your costly Super App investment getting called into question as a single purpose ride-share focused app could take away all the above customers, regardless of their use case.

This brings us full-circle back to the choice - Super App vs Single focused app.

And why would a mobile user prefer a single app over a Super App? 

Single focused apps:

• Don't take as many resources on the device
• Download and install faster
• Offer the focused use case at the instant the user needs it
• Use less personal data

And why would a mobile user prefer a Super App over a singularly focused app? The Super App provides:

• All the needed services in a single ecosystem
• More access to multiple businesses due to larger influence
• Additional resources to help. ie: In app loans to help pay for transportation
• Provides a hyper personalized experience based on the data the user provides

So, what's the primary point between the two above options for users? 

• Resource tolerances
• An app often used has a high user tolerance

• Feature accessibility 
• An app that offers a feature rich experiences has a high user tolerance 

The challenge we're starting to look at is perhaps one of the most critical in today's mobile environment: onboarding new users.

How do new users know the worth of your Super App's feature set enough so they install it, then for you to begin to understand your user's tolerance levels of your app's size and feature set?

A bit of a chicken and egg problem...

Super Apps especially need a gentle way to bring new users into the Super Apps ecosystem - to provide that single, small, and fast experience when needed.  

We can provide a good portion of that experience and onboarding first step reassurance via an App Clip.

App Clips:

What an App Clip gives you is the opportunity for you to provide a singularly focused feature, much like a single purpose app, for your user's to use when they want or need it.  This, without the massive download or commitment to the whole app's installation.

Often times technical leaders, when they first hear this, they start to think - "Awesome, we'll make EVERY feature an App Clip!"

They may envision this:

However, reality can quickly become something more like this:

As usual, the two major players are taking different approaches to help alleviate this potential "everything App Clip" pitfall.

• Apple will only allow a single App Clip per app, with an App Clip able to have multiple experiences
• Google allows multiple Instant Apps via separate stand-alone modules which constitute entry points. (Remember, the stand-alone part.  It will become very important in part 2 when we discuss architecture and the pile of puzzle pieces.)

NOTE:  App Clips have experiences and Instant Apps have entry points.  Essentially, these are the equivalent of "exposed functionality."

So again, thoughts may jump to "well, we'll just have 50 experiences/entry points in our App Clip - problem solved!  Again, not exactly...

There are some primary purposes around App Clips' use cases which, by design means you'll want to very carefully evaluate this thinking.

Primarily, App Clips should:

• Download & run "instantly"
• Provide a single focused experience
• Allow users to quickly use the App Clip's functionality
• The experience can start and end quickly.  ie: Find the nearest steak house with a 5 star rating.  Or, order a ride share or food delivery
• You can offer to have the user download the entire app once the user finishes with the App Clip

One point here, you'll notice in the first bullet point above, I did not use the term "install."  While in the background, yes, there is something installed onto the user's device - from a user's perspective of installing an app downloaded from the app store isn't the case with App Clips.

From the user's perspective - the user taps a URL or scans a QR, or QR like code and are prompted to run the app clip.  Once they agree, that app clip is running instantly.  No middle man, no observable download or delay - it's an Instant App experience!

Now that we have a high level understanding that App Clips give us an opportunity to expose some focused features of our mobile apps - we will leverage that understanding in part 2 of this post to fully understand how to properly leverage App Clips.

Conclusion:

We have covered quite a bit about the risks regarding user's tolerance to install and keep a Super App installed.  

As we looked at possible solutions to these issues, we saw that, while it isn't quit "App Clips to the rescue!" we can see that "App Clips can help" in breaking down some of the major onboarding barriers mobile apps face today.

While it is tempting to look at App Clips and think to make every component of your app, App Clip ready - it doesn't quite work this way.

And with that, in the second part of the post, we will be diving into more of the technical nuances of App Clips.  We will dive into details which will give business leaders the technical knowledge they need to optimize their Super Apps to properly leverage App Clips for success.