Sharing my hands-on experience & my opinion in terms of UX improvement.

Yesterday I launched two bot experiments. One for a client, a home builder (bot in French) http://m.me/deltaconstructionsbe/ and one just for pleasure, offering a curation of great places in Putney, UK http://m.me/putneyselection(a few months ago I also co-designed a bot for a recruitment app).

I wanted to see how casual people would interact with those bots, promoted as a new form of interactive services (I’ve been successfully using Typeform for lead gen purposes for Delta Constructions since January 2016, generating almost 1,500 prospects via that channel).

I interviewed people I saw interacting with the bot, after they completed their first flow and I also had a chat with some people who didn’t start the flow (but whom I had pinged about the bots).

The conclusion I’ve reached is the same I’ve read multiple times in the press (and experienced countless times as a beta tester). Most people are interested in the overall idea of a new interactive service but they don’t get the generic Facebook onboarding, feat. that “GET STARTED” button weirdly positioned at the very bottom of a blank screen (which you can’t customize using Chatfuel. You can do it if you code the bot from scratch but still it’s limited to an adaptation of the greeting copy).

After clicking on an enticing banner in the Facebook feed, the first casual encounter with the bot is anything but exciting. A lot of people don’t figure out how to start that new thing (tap on “get started”). Sometimes the bot won’t even show the “get started” prompt, stuck in a spinning loader mode, which you can only unlock by typing something in the message bar (something most people won’t do).

So basically you lose most of the potential users on the first page due to that weird unsexy UX. On top of that, casual users don’t understand that the interactive service we’re offering them is actually an automated Messenger conversation. They were not at F8 and don’t read Techcrunch / Venturebeat.

It’s much clearer for my home builder’s prospects to interact with a step-by-step Typeform initiated with a clear landing page than clicking on a link from the Facebook feed, leading them on mobile to a warning that they will now be redirected to Messenger and hitting a generic GET STARTED button in a messaging client after reading a scary disclaimer (“when you tap GET STARTED, the bot will see your public info”).

If they come back to the bot after a first interaction, I’d be tempted to say that it’s even worse… no more “get started”, they are faced with a blank screen and at the bottom the usual blank field asking them to type a message. Which message? Most would say “Hi” and then the bot would start its sequence. Strange feeling…

My second experiment (Putney Selection) aims at showing the truly immense potential of Messenger re: users to businesses communication, since Facebook has the privilege to seamlessly terminate conversations inside Messenger (no need to initiate a phone call, as you would do in a Google search).

But let’s face it, a directory operated via a Messenger thread feels a bit geeky. As a POC, it’s OK, it shows you that you can basically retrieve a list of businesses and contact them in a tap (which opens another Messenger thread in a snap). But there are much better ways in terms of UI to search for those businesses and display a list of results, ways that are much more practical than a horizontal gallery slider or a vertical succession of results spewed out as conversational replies.

The real power of Messenger (& Facebook) is the frictionless multisided reach it offers, thanks to the dominance Facebook has built over the years in terms of global coverage. Most people in the West are on Facebook and most businesses have some sort of presence on Facebook (even if they could be far more interactive in the way they manage their presence). The #1 type of (bot) apps I’d love to see on Messenger are services connecting people & businesses.

To capitalize on that power, Messenger should offer the best lightweight UX, depending on the use case, to connect people & businesses via its unprecedented network. Not trying to cram everything into a supposedly conversational chat thread but designing the best interactive widget for each specific purpose, starting with a properly inviting onboarding: geo-aware on-demand services, restaurants/hotels/… booking, simple data capture, news, entertainment,… Only then we’ll see a true uplift in mainstream Messenger bots adoption.