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Did you know that the mobile messaging app market is projected to reach a whopping worth of over $400 billion by the end of 2023? In fact, Discord itself is worth more than $14 billion, making it one of the most valuable messaging apps available. With such a high value market, it’s no wonder that you’re considering building your own messaging app, but competition is high. As a result, it’s crucial to build a solid app. In this article, we’ll explain just how to do that.
What Is a Chat App?
A chat app is a mobile application that allows users to communicate with each other in real time using messaging features. In addition to messaging, chat apps like Discord, Slack and WhatsApp also enable video calling and file sharing.
What Are the Features of a Chat App Like Discord?
While Discord has long been the chat app of choice for gamers, it’s also now used as the user interface for many popular artificial intelligence models like Midjourney thanks to its powerful plugin capabilities. However, the fundamental features of Discord include:
- Text Chat: Like all chat apps, Discord allows users to enter into private group text-based messaging.
- Voice Chat: Users can call each other through Discord privately or participate in a group call.
- File Sharing: Users are able to drag-and-drop files into the Discord chat window and send them to one another.
- Servers: Users can create Discord servers wherein they enter a group chat that hundreds of people can join.
It’s these collaborative features that make Discord a favorite among gamers, as they allow them to game online with one another while communicating in real time.
Why Would Someone Want to Build a Chat App Like Discord?
There are many reasons someone might want to build a chat app like Discord, including:
- Personal Use: You might choose to build a chat app like Discord for you and your friends or even for internal business use. Regardless, building an “internal” messaging app is a viable option and, although it won’t generate revenue, it’ll serve its purpose more effectively than off-the-shelf software.
- Targeting a Niche: By targeting a niche community of people, you can offer a chat app tailored to their needs and quickly build a user base, as there are likely few existing products that meet their requirements.
- Make Money: The most obvious reason to build a social software like a chat app is to turn it into a business. And what’s the point of a business? To turn a profit.
- Connect Communities: Building a chat app like Discord is an excellent way to connect communities, whether niche, broad, or personal.
- Encourage Collaboration: If you’re facing some collaborative struggles in your remote business, a Discord-like app could help encourage effective collaboration and enhance communication.
How to Do Proper Market Research
Before building your chat app like Discord, it’s essential that you thoroughly research the market to gain a better understanding of your target audience and competitors.
Who Is Your Target Audience?
Defining your target audience is crucial, as it will determine everything from how your chat app functions to what features you should include. When identifying your target audience, here are some of the questions you will need to ask:
- Who are you building the app for?
- What are their needs and wants?
- What features are they looking for in a chat app?
For example, let’s answer these questions as if you were building a chat app for professional dog walkers.
- Who are you building the app for?
- Professional dog walkers
- What are their needs and wants?
- A place to communicate with other dog walkers and potential clients
- What features are they looking for in a chat app?
- Chat with dog owners/clients
- Messaging with other dog walkers
- Community groups to find new jobs
- Work availability status
- Public profile page with work experience
By answering these questions, you now have a clearer idea of what your audience may want in a chat app like Discord.
How Will You Compete With Other Chat Apps?
Because the chat app market is highly saturated with many major players and even more start up companies, it’s imperative to determine how you’re going to stand out from the competition. Easier said than done, right? Well, here are a few ways you can take the edge over competitors and ensure your app is a success:
- Offer Unique Features: If your chat app provides users with valuable features that competing apps do not, you’re able to offer a unique experience that will entice users to keep using your platform.
- Target Niche Audience: As discussed previously, targeting a niche audience means that you’ll quickly attract an audience of users who are yet to find an existing platform that meets their needs.
- Offer Better UX: One of the defining factors in the success of any app is its user experience (UX). As a result, if you can offer a better UX than competitors, you’re in a good position to convert users from other apps to yours.
- Competitive Pricing: Although many chat apps are free to use, typically with the inclusion of ads, business messaging software tends to cost businesses per user. This means, if you can offer competitive pricing below that of competitors, you’ll turn some heads toward your chat app.
Considering the above factors when building and launching your chat app is vital if you’re to be successful in this industry.
How to Find a Development Team
When it comes to developing your chat app, unless you have the technical expertise, you’re going to need a team to do the heavy lifting for you. For this, you have three options: hiring a freelance developer, hiring a development agency, or building an in-house development team.
Generally, individual freelancers can’t handle large projects and will be unable to dedicate their time to your project for the foreseeable future. In-house development teams are also costly and time-consuming to recruit. As a result, your best bet is to hire an expert app development agency.
What Skills and Experience Do You Need in Your Development Team?
Your software development team should be experienced in a number of disciplines, including:
- Mobile development
- Web development
- Backend development
- Frontend development
- Database development
- User experience design
- Software engineering
Hiring an agency means you will get access to all these skills. However, it’s also important to ensure the agency you hire provides robust post-release support options, has relevant portfolio items, and offers a transparent development process.
How Will You Find the Right Development Team for Your Project?
You might feel overwhelmed with the sheer number of development agencies and freelancers out there. It’s always good to start with a specific Google search like “software development agency near me” if you’re looking for a local team. Otherwise, searching “chat app development company” will do the job, but this doesn’t solve the problem of knowing who to choose–for this, you’ll need to turn to competitor trust websites.
Clutch.co, for instance, is an excellent place to find expert mobile app developers that suit your needs. The site works to verify reviews, ensuring that you get a real and honest overview of prospective developers. If you do come across a company you like, be sure to also Google their name and location to view their Google reviews.
How Much Will It Cost to Develop a Chat App?
The cost of developing a chat app like Discord will vary depending on your required features, design, and development time expectations. For example, a feature-rich app with expedited development will cost significantly more than a minimum viable product that isn’t rushed to market–it’ll probably have better overall quality, too.
How to Launch A Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
A minimum viable product (MVP) refers to the most basic version of your app that still serves its intended purpose. Building an MVP will ultimately help get your chat app to market swiftly and at an affordable rate; you can then update and improve your app later, once you have a user base and have begun monetization.
What Are the Essential Features of Your Chat App?
To build an MVP, you first need to determine your essential, non negotiable, features that your app can’t function without, such as messaging capabilities. Additionally, if you’re building an app for a niche community like dog walking, there may be more specific nonnegotiables you will need such as public user profiles.
How Will You Build an MVP?
After outlining your essential features to your development team, they can get to work on your chat app. Generally, they will use industry standard development frameworks like React Native, as well as proven methodology such as agile. In terms of your involvement, it’s really up to you–if you have any questions or concerns along the way, don’t be afraid to contact your development team and have them guide you through the process.
How Will You Test Your MVP?
Once your MVP chat app is built, it’ll need to undergo rigorous testing to ensure there are no obvious bugs or security flaws. Aside from in-house testing from your development team, you should also conduct beta tests where you send an unfinished version of your app to real users for free so they can test its usability, report any bugs, and suggest improvements. This is a great way to refine your app, discover issues you may have missed, and deliver a better overall product.
Decide on a Monetization Strategy
Once you’ve built and tested your app, you’ll need to decide on a monetization strategy so that you can make your development investment back and begin turning a profit.
How Will You Generate Revenue From Your Chat App?
There are numerous ways to generate revenue from your chat app, such as:
- In-App Advertising: As your user base grows, you should consider allowing businesses to advertise to your users. For example, Facebook Messenger enables businesses to place ads in between chat windows, so users see small banner style ads while scrolling through chats. This is an optimal way to generate an income, as advertisers pay you a fee each time someone clicks on their ads.
- Subscription: Charging a monthly subscription fee to use your messaging app is a great way to generate recurring revenue. However, subscriptions are uncommon in messaging apps, unless they are aimed at businesses.
- Paid Features: Paid features are in-app add-ons that users can access for an additional fee. For instance, you could offer exclusive emoji packs for a small fee or even automated message replies.
- Donations: Less common, but still a feasible option, is to ask your users for donations if they enjoy using your app.
Using one or more of these monetization strategies will help see your chat app to profitability.
Promote Your Chat App
Now that your app is built and you’ve settled upon a monetization strategy, you need to market your chat app. Marketing is, unfortunately, no easy feat and causes much frustration among businesses.
How Will You Raise Awareness of Your Chat App and Attract Users?
In order to ensure your chat app can attract and retain users, you will need to get your platform in front of as many people as possible. This can be done by combining a few different marketing strategies, such as:
- Social Media: Social media marketing is a promotional method of choice for most advertisers. This is because regularly posting on social media platforms allows you to get in front of a large number of people for free. With this marketing strategy,, you can also run pay-per-click (PPC) ads on various social media platforms, giving you an extra boost.
- App Stores: Like websites, app store pages also require optimization. This process, known as App Store Optimization (ASO), involves using high-value keywords in your title and description in order to help your app become organically discoverable in stores.
- Word-of-Mouth: Word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful marketing methods, but before people can tell their friends about your app, they must first hear of it themselves. This means leveraging the other marketing methods on this, and asking users to share the app with their friends.
- Public Relations: Public relations – or PR, as it’s more commonly known – refers to the process of contacting newspapers and online blogs to get your app into the press.
Combining these marketing strategies will help to get your app in front of as many people as possible.
Contact Idea Maker to Build Your Own Chat App Like Discord
Building a chat app like Discord is no easy task–it takes plenty of time and resources. So, if you’re looking for someone to help ease the process, you’re in the right place. At Idea Maker, we have a team of expert mobile app developers dedicated to building your mobile app to the highest quality. Schedule a free consultation with us today to learn more.
