Do you use chat apps on your laptops or smartphones? The answer is most likely yes. Chat apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, and the like are commonly used for personal or professional use.

There is no denying the fact they have completely changed how we communicate with our family, friends, colleagues, and clients. It comes as no surprise people want to design and create their chat apps.

It is possible to replicate. Can you design your chat app? What are the main features? To find answers to all your questions, please read the post carefully. We will discuss briefly how you can design and make your chat app to rival popular apps in the market.

What are the chat app essentials?

Before we move on to the chat app essentials, we must understand the concept or purpose of designing a chat app. In 2009, two individuals decided to quit their comfortable jobs and decided to develop their chat app.

They developed WhatsApp. Today, the chat app has more than 1 billion users worldwide, and the count is only increasing with each passing day. On average, more than 50 messages are sent per day.

The best part about this chat app is that the creators did not promote or advertise too much on it. However, the ROI gave them immense popularity and made them millionaires. Probably, the main reason for that was because WhatsApp was a smartphone-friendly approach.

Though Skype has been around for quite some time, it is slowly fading away thanks to this chat app. You could say that WhatsApp provided a free method to send SMS. Of course, Skype-enabled users to communicate with each other with budget-friendly calls, WhatsApp became free in 2016.

What are some of the must-have features in them?

The designers were focused on providing users with a method to communicate efficiently without burdening them. Most of the available chat apps wanted to make money through advertisements.

What started as a simple texting chat app now provided users with video and audio calls without having to pay. Apart from that, GIFs and images can be shared. Group chats and status can be set, similar to the Facebook story.

The platform on which you plan to launch your chat app decides the whole name of the game. Your chat app should come with proper encryption. The first feature that users all over the world tend to verify is the security aspect.

Apart from that, login and verification screens are also crucial to ensure that your chat app runs smoothly. The backend should be verifiable and quality. In a sense, it should be up at all times.

Why Should People USE Your Chat App?

You would be amazed to know that more than 3.5 million apps are present in the market. Unfortunately, more than 34% of the users do not use the same app, once they have used it. That is why you need to do something to help you stand out from the crowd. Hence, you would want to launch a specialized app. This way, you can target your audience and come up with marketing methods to get them using your app. Offering video streaming gives cable operators stiff competition.

Most of the communication channels have few avenues for monetization. However, WhatsApp has a subscription fee, which is perhaps a commonly found strategy for gaining income. They give out a one-year free trial, and then depending on the users, they chalk out their rates. If your subscribers are large in numbers, then you stand to make more money. However, when you are new to the market, you have to provide free based trails; otherwise, nobody may be interested.

You Need to Have a Strategy for Monetization

How do free apps make money? Is it possible? In the online world, there is a solution to every problem if you look for it. Free apps make money solely through advertisements. Many people prefer their apps without the customary ads on them, which proved to be a nuisance.

But, you can find Facebook Messenger relying heavily on advertisements on them. Similarly, Line, another chat app, is gaining plenty of revenues from advertisements. The same can be said about WhatsApp, once Jan Koum, who is the creator, departs.

Knowing and understanding the different methods of monetization is vital for getting excellent ROI for your chat app. You need to also fix a budget on your chat app. At times, the costs and overhead expenses can seem to keep increasing with no end in sight.

Conclusion

From the above, it is clear that you can design chat apps of your choice. It is just that; you must make sure that the right features are implemented and embedded in them. Real-Time chat apps are the future of communication. Though we have several options to communicate with each other in the market, there is space for quality chat apps. Since you are now enlightened on how to design one, you can go ahead and make it come true