Reaching customers inside the app they already have open

Every business that has built a mobile app has met the same wall. The app works, the team is proud of it, and customers do not install it. Not because it is bad — because installing anything is a decision, and a customer making a small purchase is not going to make it.

The install is the whole problem

Between a customer wanting to order and actually ordering sits: find the app, download it over a mobile connection, create an account, verify a phone number, remember a password. Each step loses people. For a business whose customers order once a month, the maths rarely works.

A Zalo Mini App removes the whole chain. It runs inside Zalo, which the customer already has, already trusts and is probably already in. Identity comes from their Zalo account, so there is no registration form. The first order can happen in the same minute as the first visit.

What it is genuinely good for

• Ordering and re-ordering, where the second order should be faster than the first
• Booking and appointments, with the reminder arriving in the same app
• Loyalty and membership, without another card or another password
• Customer care, connected to an Official Account your team already answers
• Anything a customer does occasionally — exactly what a native app is worst at

What it is not

A Mini App is not a replacement for a native app when the app is used daily, needs heavy offline behaviour, or has to reach deep into the device. It also runs inside somebody else’s platform, with that platform’s rules and review process. Designing against those rules rather than around them is most of the work, and it is why a Mini App is a design decision before it is a development one.

For most Vietnamese businesses selling to consumers, the answer to that question is currently a Mini App — and for some it is a well-built mobile web page. Both are cheaper than the app nobody installs.