The emergence of super apps calls for better digital experiences

Rising consumer demand for seamless digital experiences is driving the emergence of super apps, but reliability remains a key challenge.

Consumers today exhibit a higher level of sophistication and selectivity in their application usage compared to just a few years ago. They seek convenient, flexible, and innovative digital experiences, readily embracing new applications capable of simplifying and enriching their lives, such as super apps.

Exceptionally popular in Asia, super apps amalgamate various digital services, including social networking, e-commerce, banking, messaging, food delivery, and transportation, into a single application. A study conducted by PayPal and PYMNTS reveals that globally, 70% of people express interest in utilising super apps. Moreover, the report highlights the particular interest of Gen Z in applications that enable them to manage payments and everyday activities within a centralised solution. In markets like India, where smartphone adoption rates are high, the prevalence of local super apps is expected to increase as users seek more convenient, all-in-one solutions.

Nevertheless, the convenience offered by such apps is contingent upon the quality of the digital experience they provide. The ‘State of Ecommerce in India’ report by New Relic identifies potential concerns among Indian customers regarding super apps, notably related to bandwidth and storage. These concerns include the necessity for 4G and 5G Internet capabilities (45%) and the requirement for ample storage space on their devices (42%). Despite the strong interest in this segment, reliability remains a significant concern for many Indians, presenting a barrier to widespread adoption.

Need for 24/7 strong performance

Reliability and the quality of digital experiences are paramount to the success of popular super apps such as China’s WeChat, Indonesia’s Tokopedia, and India’s own Paytm and Tata Neu. If customers are dissatisfied, they are likely to share their experiences with others. Studies show that over one in three customers will abandon a brand after encountering just one poor experience. Therefore, organisations must address customer pain points and identify issues before they escalate, particularly if they want Indian customers to rely on super apps to simplify their lives.

Observability enables engineers to grasp the customer’s viewpoint, empowering them to proactively address issues and enhance the reliability of super apps.

Although consumers acknowledge the potential benefits of super apps, such as saving time, streamlining daily tasks, and reducing app clutter, concerns about reliability persist. A recent survey indicates that 58% of Indians uninstalled apps in the past year, citing the overwhelming number of apps and subpar user experiences as the top reasons for doing so. Poor integration experiences pose another significant reliability challenge for super apps. Unless integrations are executed flawlessly, super apps may become more of a burden than a convenience for users, as it becomes difficult to pinpoint and resolve issues along the chain.

A subpar digital experience can have detrimental effects on business success. Therefore, implementing a robust observability strategy is essential to ensure that super apps operate smoothly with minimal performance issues, thereby facilitating agile digital experiences across the entire ecosystem.

Driving growth through data-driven engineering

As super apps continue to integrate further into people’s lives, ensuring swift and consistent response times becomes paramount. Utilising a data-driven approach to engineering, aimed at enhancing uptime and operational efficiency while fostering sustainable and scalable innovation, will be crucial for success. This approach entails bridging data from customer experiences with broader business teams, engineering, and operations. However, many organisations grapple with data silos stemming from a lack of a unified data management platform that provides a comprehensive view of all necessary components. This is where observability plays a pivotal role.

Observability: Key to super app success

Comprehending the performance of a super app from a customer perspective is vital for assessing urgency and prioritising troubleshooting efforts. Doing this manually, particularly while ensuring the uptime of super apps with multiple moving parts, is a Herculean task. The manual process often results in sluggish response time, excessively long mean time to detection and resolution, and poor customer experiences.

Moreover, due to the fragmented nature of monitoring in most organisations, implemented solutions often fail to monitor the entire tech stack. Therefore, despite the tools and techniques an organisation employs to monitor issues, having a centralised data repository capable of displaying related entities and events becomes imperative.

Observability enables engineers to grasp the customer’s viewpoint, empowering them to proactively address issues and enhance the reliability of super apps before customers are adversely affected. The efficacy of observability is evidenced by the 2023 Observability Forecast, which revealed a median annual ROI of 114% in India, with over half of respondents (53%) highlighting its significance in achieving core business objectives.

The benefits of comprehensive full-stack observability are clear—increased efficiency, business growth, improved uptime, reliability, and enhanced customer experience. Given these outcomes, observability emerges as a necessity for all organisations managing super apps.

By Rohit Ramanand

The author is the Group Vice President of Engineering India at New Relic.

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