I love how nineties shopping TV used to grab our attention with black-and-white scenes of life throwing its challenges at you. Fast-forward to 2024. Now picture this (in black-and-white):

• A marketeer is sweating profusely, looking at an unfathomable web of their company websites, apps, portals, and more. Developers are working overtime to maintain them all, sleeping bags on the floor. A designer is contemplating seppuku because of the plethora of visual inconsistencies unleashed onto the world.
• Another scene entirely. A search party for a consumer lost in the virtual woods. Parents educating their children on what they can find on which digital channels, so we can avoid these tragedies in the future.

The point is clear: after years of well-intended digital transformation, things have become a mess. Companies are struggling. Their users even more so.

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Luckily, these teleshopping shows follow up the bleak opening shots with vibrant colors, because here is the solution: Super Apps!

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It seems this is big companies' new favorite digital channel strategy. We approach it with caution:

• Nobody’s really sure what they mean when they talk about Super Apps.
• The examples always come from the East, who have a wildly different digital ecosystem. (WeChat is the equivalent of the App Store. But we’ve had app stores since forever.)
• And crucially, there are alternatives that can also help you reach your digital ambitions, and have a healthy channel mix.

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Ambitions

Let's get this out of the way. We understand where you’re coming from, and what you want to achieve:

• Reach an increasing and increasingly diverse customer base.
• Offering an increasing and increasingly diverse catalog of services.
• Becoming a true partner to your customers, with the benefit of creating richer data profiles about them.

Nothing wrong with that. But let’s give you more options to play with.

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A simple framework for digital channel strategy

Let’s keep things really simple, this is shopping TV after all. How about a nice little 3-2-1?

Let’s start with 3 options to expand your digital channels.

• Just create entirely separate apps.
  No risk of bloating the existing app. Optimize the UX for that new use case.
  But, this can become complex to maintain for your company, and cause a fragmented channel mix for your users.
• Another approach is what you’d call an app suite.
  The digital products are distinct destinations, but there are intuitive links between them. Users recognize the same UX patterns.
  But this requires a lot of consideration to keep this interconnected app consistent. Discovery of the different apps can suffer too.
• Then, finally, the Super App.
  Done right, this is a great way to let users discover your diverse services.
  Cooked up poorly, and it’s a UX and technical nightmare.

Next, there are two crucial questions you need to answer when you want to add something to the digital mix.

• Are you serving a new target audience? Or are you catering to the same customer base?
• Are you broadening your value proposition? Or sticking to the core?

These seem like simple questions. They are not. If you cannot answer them clearly, please go back to the strategic drawing table.

And finally, here’s one framework where it all fits together.

• Strengthening the core for the same audience? Stay within your current touch point. One example could be a telco company that wants to offer more security services to its existing B2C-clients. Add that to where they already manage their products.
• Offering truly distinct services to the same audience? Try different but connected apps. Maybe that same telco is doing an entertainment play. Don’t make users watch videos where they pay their invoices. Offer them two platforms, but with an easy shared log-in system and consistent design patterns.
• Adding something different for a new audience or a clearly distinct segment? Don’t be afraid to go for the separate route. Maybe you’re energy company and you want to help Office and Mobility Managers manage EV-charging for their colleagues? Optimize the heck out of that platform.
• And finally, you’re aiming big with both core and adjacent services, for both existing and new customers? The Super App fits those ambitions. (But beware of the challenge.)

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While there are many approaches to digital strategy, we find that this simple grid helps us have the right discussions.