Your superapp is a lifestyle brand

Superapps: The virtual manager of the 21st-century

With the average consumer spending 7 hours per day on their smartphone, it is only natural for companies to want to monopolise consumer attention. The result? The superapp: an all-in-one lifestyle-oriented online home for users.

One prominent example is WeChat, which originally was a messaging app. WeChat went on to expand its repertoire to include a variety of everyday services, leading to a growth in its user volume in the process. In Q4 of 2021, over 1.2 billion active users used WeChat to take out loans, book transport, transfer money, and even find a significant other.

Another example is Binance: With over 90 million users already relying on Binance as their cryptocurrency platform of choice, Binance in June 2022 expanded to offer ridehailing and experiences directly on its platform, meaning users will keep more of their online activities directly on the Binance platform.

What perks does a superapp offer?

The success of prominent superapps like WeChat is inspiring many companies across multiple industries to expand service offerings. PayPal has integrated shopping and crypto into its newly launched finance superapp. Uber has included public transport and rental cars, and will soon be adding planes and hotels into its own superapp. And even Walmart has put together a plan to become a superapp.  But what is the appeal of the superapp?

• User convenience: A successful superapp merges tools that enhance convenience for users. Want to book a hotel for your next trip? Use the app. If you don’t have the requisite funds for travel, you can get a loan from the app itself. Want to order in for dinner, but the restaurant doesn’t have your favourite wine? Order it from the grocery store from within the superapp.
• Loyalty: Customers 'stick' when apps offer more services, while keeping it simple. With a superapp, you build a community of users who have chosen your app because they can seamlessly perform most of their chores on it. Loyalty is an organic outcome.
• Engagement: Superapps have a higher number of users than single-use apps. If a superapp ticks the right boxes with a winning combination of core services that are used daily, boosted engagement is a guarantee.

What are the essentials of designing a successful superapp?

So what will boost your app’s chances of success as a superapp?

1. Integrate tools that enhance everyday tasks

Superapps are made to maximise efficiency. The tools offered by an app can help achieve this goal. Consider the everyday tasks for your user base  —  buying groceries, transferring money, preparing meals  —  and offer integrations that make performing these chores seamless.

One tool that encapsulates this perfectly is QR code scanning. The convenience of being able to scan a code and pay instantly from one’s phone removes the need to carry money at all times. Integrating this tool into a superapp is a huge draw for users.

2. Offer services that prioritise convenience

A goal of successful superapps is becoming the sole provider of all of a user’s core needs. You will know you’ve done this successfully when customers forget that the app is your business’ front for its services and consider it an indelible part of their day-to-day lives.

The best way to facilitate this outcome is to offer services that improve convenience for activities that users perform every day. Mobility is one of those everyday experiences that a superapp has the opportunity to make more convenient. For example, the Grab app offers a transport booking facility. If a superapp offers a slew of services along the transport spectrum, ranging from booking for trips (train and flight bookings) to micro-mobility (cab and escooter bookings), users will keep engaging with the app daily for one stop shop convenience.

Even though the company suffered as a result of pandemic restrictions, it enjoyed an impressive recovery because of its sheer monopoly in the Southeast Asian market. Customers may also have flocked back to the Grab app for the convenience it offers for all their daily chores as well as the customer-friendly UI that allows users to easily swipe across these services and avail offers and discounts across categories.

3. Focus on streamlining the customer experience

The design of a successful superapp starts and ends with the user at its core. A thorough understanding of your target user’s in-app behaviour is integral to building a product that satisfies your central goal of keeping your users engaged and loyal. A way to streamline customer experience is setting up app alerts to appear at the right time when customers are most likely to click on these notifications based on the data you have collected about their app usage. For example, if your data tells you that most customers book a cab around 8 am, presumably to get to work, create a reminder notification that alerts them to book one or offers them a discount on a cab ride. Ensure that your app is enabled to collect, synthesise, and analyse data on when and how customers use the app’s features.

Assess the conversion funnel of your app’s services, i.e. the rate at which app users become ‘buyers’ of a service, whether placing an order, transferring money, or booking a ticket. Identify any aspects of your app's UI/UX that are hindering the conversion process, such as excessive app notifications or an extremely lengthy login process to authenticate your user’s identity. It’s also important to offer users a painless way to contact your customer service team. A clear communication pathway between you and your users also goes a long way toward understanding and resolving issues with your app.

4. Make your app ultra-sharable

From prompting users to leave a positive review after a good experience to enabling them to publicise these experiences easily through social media, successful superapps have been promoting shareability in different ways. For instance, the Grab app lets you add participants to a collective food order by sharing an invite link. Users can add their preferred foods to a unified cart across multiple devices, while the order can be placed from any single device. This feature is especially convenient for family ordering or other bulk orders made by different people.

Health apps that offer calorie counters and workouts have a home page where you can track and share your progress. This feature makes it easy to create communities where members encourage one another to reach their health goals, all the while continuing to use the app. Integrating shareability for social media within the app is a great way to communicate your services to millions without the need for an excessive advertising budget.

5. Seamlessly incorporate new services

Fundamental challenges for any app include bugs, lagging, and issues in functionality. In superapps, any new service integration can cause such issues. This is where SDKs and APIs can help. SDK is a Software Development Kit that comes pre-loaded with all the code samples, libraries, documentation, and essential processes needed to finish installing an app (like a new feature) onto a native system (in this case, superapp). Being comprehensive installation kits, they obviate the need to deal with external run time.

Similarly, an API or Application Programming Interface allows you to integrate products into a native system by simply ‘latching on’ rather than needing to execute extensive installation processes. You not only save time and effort by using an API, but you also get to customise your new additions down to the last detail. Both these tools seamlessly let you add features to your superapp to enhance what users can do on your platform.

Give your app super powers with Splyt

Splyt helps superapps incorporate myriad services like food delivery, ride-hailing, bike-sharing, and airport transfers. Using our seamless integration process, you can supercharge your app with several critical mobility services. By transforming your app into an all-in-one hub for satisfying users’ needs, you can go super with Splyt.