The idea of a super app is fascinating. A one-stop-shop for all your needs. An app that has bordered past the realms of being a utility and has become a need for you. An app that assists you go about your day. And the idea of building one such super app is even more fascinating. To be able to connect with your users at multiple levels of intent is the true epitome of empathizing with your users. A truly great sense of product-user connection.
There’s no sure shot way of turning your product into a super app. But aping other super apps can surely be one big step in the opposite direction that leads to slow death of your product. App to super app transition is an organic one, personalized to your app. What works for one app may not work for the other simply because the user acceptance differs for each app.
A super app should not be confused with a motley-mix-of-miscellaneous-features app. Consider that medium sized drawer in your living room closet which stores all and any type of items that are of appropriate size to be kept inside. It holds your device chargers, your keys, your small notebook, your pens, your nail-cutter, your glue stick, your small umbrella, your innocuous medicines, your scissors, your spare batteries, your old wrist watch, your AC remote, and so much more given how organized, or not, you are. It starts out very well as the go to destination whenever you want to find something which you don’t keep in your clothes cabinet, your bathroom or your kitchen. But you keep dumping more and more miscellaneous items in it and the very act of easily finding something becomes a tedious task of finding something inside this drawer amid the pile of small items. It still remains your go to destination but instead of feeling sorted you start feeling dreadful to open that drawer, and constantly remind yourself to organize it more and move items from it into other drawers. So it is with apps. The rate at which smartphones are solving storage and performance issues, the benefits of keeping a separate app specialized in its core offering are far exceeding the downsides of memory, computing and storage footprints of many apps in your smartphone.
A product’s journey to become a super app is a long one. The first milestone in it comes when the users make the product synonymous with the basic intent with which they interact with it. Once this milestone is crossed, the product can slowly start adding various aspects of that basic intent. If the users are as accepting to these additional aspects as they are with the basic offering of the product, the product can slowly progress in its journey and reach the super app destination.
Think about a refrigerator. Keeping away from doing an academic analysis on this product dating back centuries, the very first commercial usage would have been as a cold storage to keep your meat safe from rotting. When it became synonymous to keeping your food safe and store them for longer duration, it would have started adding features like multiple zones of freezing, size and power consumption optimizations, more cost effective cooling, and started adding smaller features like multiple cabinets for various size of food items, ability to defrost and reset freezing, installation of light inside it so that it can be used in the dark, liquid dispenser on doors to make it easy to handle cold drinks, and many more. Now with IoT, it has truly become a super-fridge that can calculate calories, replenish food items by ordering online, and understand your verbal commands. It has truly become a super app.
Similar journey has been there for marquee super apps in consumer Internet space too. WeChat first became synonymous with chatting and connecting with people inside and outside your known contacts, and then slowly transitioned into the super app where users now connect with businesses, making payments, completing transactions, exploring entertainment activities together, and more. WhatsApp first became synonymous with sharing multimedia with your known contacts, transitioned into sharing information with a group, and is now slowly evaluating possibilities of sharing payments.
Identifying that very basic intent which your users associate your product with is the very first step towards empathizing with your users. When you become the only product that majority of users in your audience base identify that intent with, you can start exploring additional offerings which compliment that intent. The long journey to become a super-app thus starts. Just be aware of the pitfall of force fitting these offerings which will result in being a super-ape.