Messaging apps have made communication more interesting than any other regular chat service.  They make us feel more connected to others, both personally and professionally on a daily basis. For example, chat apps like WhatsApp or messenger can deliver a meme or message from a friend that can truly make our day.

While on the professional front, apps like Slack or Microsoft Teams helps us to instantly ping a colleague on an ongoing task. I can go on and on with the numerous use cases that chat services provide us these days. And today we will discuss in particular on the advantages of chat apps and how they are used by businesses as their strategic tool to drive user engagement and build brand loyalty.

If you are here for the same reason, this article will brief you on the several benefits you may achieve by chat development for your brand. So, let’s get started:

The requirements to build a chat application

If you’ve geared up to build a chat app for your business, here is a quick checklist of the necessities you’ll require during the entire process:

• A dedicated In-house Coders Team 
• Development Know-hows
• Right Infrastructure 
• Capital Investment 
• Budget Plan 
• Security & Privacy Support
• Time for Development 
• Hosting facilities

Once you’ve ticked almost all the items in the checklist, we’ll proceed further with discussing on the benefits you’ll achieve from building your own chat application.

Why should you build a chat application?

As a summative, I’ll quote user experience as the first among my list of reasons to build your own chat app. 

Let me break this down. When you run a business, only you have a clear idea about the target audience that your brand will serve. When you integrate pre-built chat to your brand, they can help your users just to communicate with each other. On the other hand, when you plan, personalize, build and control a dedicated chat app for your customers, it will help them feel your brand more personal everyday.

Also, it gives complete understanding of your users’ needs.

Chat apps, by default, render you a win-win situation – it gives your users a medium to communicate with each other. At the same time, it keeps you informed about what they need from your brand. When built right, the ideas for your business’ roadmap for the next few years will emerge from somewhere across the chat conversations between your users and your customer support executives.  Apart from these, there are several benefits of chat application development.  

So, what features must your app have to make it more engaging and interactive? Let’s get into the details one by one:

1. Engaging In-App Messaging Features

Real-time messaging features within apps have made conversations in a virtual environment more interactive and engaging. For example, a text message with features like personalized emojis, reactions, gifs & media is more interesting than just a plain language during an in-app conversation. In fact, it helps you gain user attention and  provides them a sense of attachment within your chat application.

Above this, several other features like typing indicators, message history and end-to-end encryption serves users everything they need to communicate with others directly on your app, limiting the need to opt for other external platforms

• In-app Chat :- In-app Chat is an instantaneous form of communication. In fact, text messaging has become the primary interaction channel for millennials across the globe. When you develop chat within an app, you get to connect from 2 users with each other to a number of users within the same space. The latter especially works perfect for collaboration tools used by large enterprises. 
• Video & Voice Calling :- Chat apps bring people closer virtually even if they live far off from each other. It gives them the convenience to connect without the need to spend a fortune and time to meet people in-person. Chat apps have transformed them all virtually possible!  This means, you will be able to gain users to your app from all around the world.

If you want to get started on integrating chat into your own app, sign up for a free chat trial, and get your own API key to build with!

2. Unparalleled Scalability

As the user base grows, your chat application must be able to handle a high volume of users, sessions and channels. Setting up a highly resilient infrastructure set up with availability on a variety of devices and operating systems can make your app highly competent.

In turn, the performance and reliability of your app will grow exponentially if a clear strategy is set right when you make your first steps. 

3. Reliable Real Time User Experience

A real-time chat application offers users a quick and proactive space to interact with each other. In other words, the user engagement is very high in a live messaging app as the response rate is quicker than the traditional modes of communication.

From the perspective of an app owner, when a customer is able to get all the information and queries sorted within an app via live customer service chats, they are more likely to make a purchase. This makes the app meet its purpose by abiding to modern-day requirements. 

4. Complete Security

Building a chat application is a huge responsibility when it comes to taking care of user privacy and safety. A few free chat apps hold accusations of having breached the usage of customer information due to failures in the implementation of a secure infrastructure. At the same time, several other apps have made their way into building a strong and secure messaging environment with end-to-end encryption, HIPAA compliance, and moderation controls.

We urge you to build one such app that makes your user safe and comfortable to share their opinions, thoughts and queries.

5. Active Chat App Engagement

Interactive features excites users because it gives them an instant gratification to whatever they do. When you embed collaborative features like personalized portfolios, themes, emojis,  custom push notifications and wishlists into your app, it enhances the chances of a user to get more connected with your app and brand.

Similarly, whenever a user seeks assistance on a product or service, many apps redirect the users to an external link or a completely new page. This disrupts the time spent by the user within the app. But, when you build your own in-app chat for your brand, users stay within the app without leaving to external platforms. This eventually leads to a better transaction rate for your business.

6. Building Chat With MirrorFly

Without doubt, building an app from scratch might feel overwhelming. However, there is a better alternative to this. Instead of coding every part of your chat app, you may choose to integrate the pre-built features and customize your app according to your business needs.

This phenomenally famous process of SDK integration lets you add highly interactive features into your existing Android or iOS apps. This reduces the efforts, cost and resources you need to implement chat for your business app, just within a few minutes.

To facilitate this, MirrorFly offers easy-to-integrate and cost-effective APIs and SDKs that provides more than 150+ chat features including chat, voice and video calling. The integrations will be able to implement end-to-end encryption to every conversation along with 100% HIPAA compliance. Above this, MirrorFly exhibits a global low latency with the most effective response rate. 

When chat app developers choose APIs like MirrorFly, they will be able to deliver their chat apps right on time to the market with a frictionless deployment.

Get started now with our FREE chat API!

Create your MirrorFly account now!

Conclusion

To sum up, there are several benefits of chat app development as mentioned above. From connecting your users to generating leads that convert, chat apps can help developers explore the bigger picture of app development.

If you are considering building a chat application for android or iOS devices, we hope this article has done a fair job to help you understand the potential benefits and how to get started with your text or video chat app development strategy. Stay connected for more insights!