Product launch on messenger apps: Telegram web app opportunities for businesses

How web applications in messenger apps can help businesses to generate leads, promote products and services, and test new features and services. Explore the key benefits of this technology with the Telegram Web Apps.

Let's start with start-ups and new businesses, which tend to suffer the most. Let's say you've already done your market research, got good feedback on your product or service from focus groups, found your niche and launched your website or app. Now you have three tasks to complete:

How can we do it?

There is a universal media channel where every company's customers are present and actively using every day. These are messenger apps. And the statistics prove their effectiveness:

Besides communication, messenger apps also solve everyday tasks. For example, you can get a reminder to pay off a loan and make a direct debit, shop with a bot, distract yourself by playing your favourite game, make an appointment for a haircut or apply for insurance.

Medium and large companies are also using messengers as an additional tool for sales and process optimisation to reduce service load. 80% of customers rate their experience interacting with chatbots as positive. As a result, investment is growing — the total volume of the conversational commerce market is expected to reach $290 billion by 2025.

The next step in messenger app development is to integrate chatbots into full-fledged apps and websites to improve the user experience, reduce incomplete purchases and increase conversion rates.

WeChat is considered the leader in multi-functionality. In 2011, this super app started as a simple messenger app. Today, people use it not only to exchange messages and files but also to buy apartments, take exams and even get married.

For businesses, there are the following options for integrating with WeChat:

• Create official accounts of two types — to communicate with customers or to send brand news to subscribers;
• Develop WeChat mini-programmes — build embedded applications that work within the messenger as a tool for online sales, bookings, food and product delivery, gamification and other processes;
• WeChat Pay integration — integration with one of the most popular mobile payment systems in China, allowing users to scan a QR code and pay for goods and services in WeChat.

The European market is better suited to Telegram, Pavel Durov's messenger, which has every chance of repeating WeChat's success. As of July 2024, the total number of registrations exceeded 950 million, of which 41 million users live in Europe.

Previously, companies could only use Telegram's capabilities by creating bots within the messenger. But now they can integrate a full-fledged web application — the Telegram Web App. For the user, it looks like a regular website without leaving the messenger. All the essential functions are available in the bot window. The interface can be customised in your corporate style to make the Telegram app more recognisable.

To showcase the technology, the Telegram team released a demo project, @DurgerKingBot, which describes the essence of its work for businesses. The web application represents a standard delivery service with a minimal set of features:

For payments in Telegram and its integrated applications, you can use Wallet Pay. All accepted orders are automatically transferred to your POS system.

To launch the Telegram Web App, you need to:

• Develop a web application (we can help with this as the team has an extensive portfolio of React Native apps and websites);
• Use the BotFather bot to create a bot in Telegram;
• Add an application to the bot's settings and place a link to the web application within it (we talk about this in detail in our other article).

Telegram Web Apps offer companies the following advantages:

Most industries today are taking advantage of the power of simple web-based messenger apps:

Here are some solutions that companies are using with Telegram Web Apps.

Organise a complete checkout cycle within Telegram, where your customers will:

Read more about must-have features for online shops here.

Allow users to sign up for services at your restaurant, hotel, beauty salon, medical centre or any other organisation using the Telegram Web App. They can do it here:

Communicate with your customers where they are used to. With Telegram Web App, you can:

Grow your customer base and retain your audience with Telegram. After connecting to a bot through a web application, users can not only leave their contact details but also manage their activity directly in the messenger:

Read our article on why it is essential to think through the logic of working in the personal account and what solutions increase the conversion of registrations into purchases.

Gather feedback on products and services with the following features:

Attract new audiences and build loyalty by launching branded games with prizes for activity on the Telegram Web App. Offer to users:

The Telegram Web Apps do not completely shut down any process but are a logical addition to the overall logic of the business. For example, booking a table in a restaurant can be done on the website, in an app and in a messenger app. All orders are tracked in a single system, giving users convenient choices and allowing the business to expand its reach.

You can use the Telegram Web App to perform the following tasks.

Telegram uses a web application API to receive, send and store data – everything in the messenger is automatically fed into the POS system and ERP. In retail, for example, the Telegram Web App will collect information about new user registrations, help customers track the status of their orders and offer new products. For fintech applications, it will send users transaction details, store their history, show their current balance and perform other financial operations.

If you already have a mobile app, set up Telegram Web App features to bring users back to it regularly to take the actions they need. For example, add nutrition tips to your chatbot messages with a ready-made selection of products from your catalogue, suggestions to place a repeat order, explore promotional products or test a new feature.

Telegram Web App doesn't need a particular programming language – the same ones used for standard web development will do. The apps are located in the Telegram store, where the messenger displays them in its WebView, and the button to launch them is inside the bot.

Suppose you already have a mobile app and a website written in React Native. In this case, the Telegram Web App should be cross-platform and use the same code as other products. This approach will allow you to change processes and fix bugs faster and cheaper.

Recently, our team completed an experiment to build a Telegram Web App on React Native for the Web and a mobile app on Android & iOS written in React Native. We have described the whole process and the results here.