The future of eCommerce depends on one question: chatbots or apps? As an app developer and website developer, I believe in apps. I have people in my corner who agree with me (claiming that chatbots are overhyped) but there are also those who disagree (claiming that chatbots will completely kill apps and mobile websites).
The battle lines have been very much drawn.
Still, maybe you don’t care. Maybe you think that, because your eCommerce business doesn’t directly depend on chatbots or apps, this isn’t your fight. Think again.
Whether the future of the internet is chatbots, apps, or a mixture of both will have a massive impact on the way eCommerce works. From shipping to pizza delivery, the apps vs. chatbots debate matters because the former has already completely changed the world of eCommerce and the latter promises to change it all over again.
Mobile Internet Is the Internet
If you work in eCommerce, one thing you need to stop doing right now is referring to the “mobile internet” and the “internet”. At the end of last year, mobile internet usage finally took over desktop internet usage as the primary way people browse the web. As a result, what we should be referring to is the “internet” and the “desktop internet”. When we design websites, we should be thinking mobile first and desktop second.
Businesses are still scrambling to try and adjust to this very real change that is happening right now. Google has rolled out two algorithm changes in the past couple of years that are specifically designed to punish websites which don’t work well on mobile and boost those which do.
Many businesses have been creating apps to cut out the middleman and capitalise on the growing number of people solely using mobile internet. Apps have been around for a mere nine years and this growing trend towards mobile internet looks like the future. However, nine years is a long time in the world of eCommerce (this is what Amazon looked like in 2008) and so some people believe the app revolution is already over.
Say Hello to the Future… Literally
Chatbots are apps which you can download to your phone and shop by “talking” (either through texting or speaking) to an unmanned algorithm. Plenty of eCommerce companies are developing chatbots, and the Facebook Messenger app has 34,000 alone. The idea is that you can chat to them about what you want rather than tapping (as you would with an app) or browsing (as you would with a mobile-friendly website).
So chatbots are apps (or extensions to the Facebook Messenger app), and yet many chatbot developers believe that they will destroy apps. This is not an entirely ridiculous claim. Digital newspapers are newspapers, and yet they destroyed newspapers. Still, the latter claim has cold hard data to back it up. Despite blips of encouragement in 2012 and 2013, newspaper circulation has been falling year on year since 2004. The industry is clearly dying.
For apps, however, there is no such evidence — only the speculation of chatbot developers. This doesn’t mean that chatbots don’t have a place in the future of eCommerce, just that their significance may have been exaggerated by some corners of the tech business world.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. The “50 billion Internet of Things devices by 2020” prediction looks like it may have been overhyped. People were swept up by how great the technology was from a scientific standpoint, not a business one. The same appears to have happened with chatbots.
In an ideal world, you would be faster, better, and cheaper than your competition. However, in the real world, you can only be two of those things. With regards to apps and chatbots, both are free (so neither is cheaper), both are extremely fast (a couple taps in the case of an app and a few words in the case of a chatbot), and better is a matter of opinion. Some people like to talk to their phones, and some people don’t.
Besides, if everybody liked the idea of talking to their phones so much to order products, why did we develop eCommerce in the first place? Before online shopping, you could either go to a shop or pay for something over the phone. Chatbots are definitely an improvement on the latter experience (to claim otherwise would be to underestimate them) but the principle is the same.
Those who believe that chatbots and only chatbots are the future are blinded by the impressiveness of the technology. Chatbots are smart — really smart in fact — but great science doesn’t always equate to great business. User experience is what will determine the future of chatbots and, at the moment, this experience is lacking.
People are not interested in how clever the technology is. They are interested in how easy it is to use. We didn’t start online shopping because we were impressed with Amazon. We did it because it was easier. The best apps can do something with a few taps. The best chatbots can do something with a few words. Chatbots aren’t easier to use. They are as easy to use at best. Until chatbots get a lot better — or until they can start reading our minds — it’s unlikely that they’ll completely replace apps.
