How to Make Your Own Video Calling App and Become the Leader of the Market

2020 brought a true challenge to conducting business and sped up people going online. Online video calls now became the primary means of business and work communication, especially for companies that provide services. Working from home completely changed the usual workflow.

As the demand for video calls increased, so did the supply. The competition in the video chat apps market became really tense. It may seem hard to build an app that will gain popularity, so let us show you the complete strategy of making a custom video chat app that will be able to compete on the market.

Video is steadily becoming the most popular way of online communication, especially in a business environment. The market already has some big players like Skype, FaceTime, Google Duo, and Zoom, but it doesn’t stop its growth. Zoom, actually, only recently became so famous: In 2020, they managed to reach 300 million users. It proves that the market is expanding.

In today’s remote reality, video conferencing helps improve the workflow. Several studies by Lifesize state that:

• 94% of businesses increased productivity with video conferencing
• 89% of respondents say it reduces time spent on tasks
• 89% of people feel more connected with video communication

Moreover, businesses do not limit themselves to one video conferencing platform: Owl Lab discovered 89% of companies use two and more apps of that type.

Also, this business area accumulates quite a lot of money. In 2020, the video conferencing market reached $7.87 billion from the previous year’s result of $3.85 billion.

We already mentioned some of the big players on stage, now let’s look at them in more detail. Looking at the market leaders and the analysis of competitors will be useful for building your own development and marketing strategy.

📌Zoom

Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing service. This app gained most of its popularity during 2020, and it doesn’t seem to slow down in the near future. Its simplicity and efficiency made it one of the best choices for education and business. The app provides 40 minutes of free conferences for up to 100 participants. More calls and viewers will require buying a plan.

📌Skype

On the contrary, Skype is one of the oldest and one of the most famous video conferencing apps. The number of systems and devices that this app covers is immense. Apart from video and audio calling, Skype allows users to share files and send text messages.

📌Discord

Discord is the best video chat app for building communities, especially when we talk about video games. In this app, a user can have a group call with friends, share their screen, or create a live stream so all the participants can watch what is going on in the game.

📌Google Duo

Google Duo is the best solution for Android users. It has a simple interface, supports some fun features, and allows users to record and send video messages, so it’s easy to connect with friends and family.

How to make your own video calling app that succeeds

Whatever type of video chat app you want to put on the market, the general building strategy would be the same. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Find your target audience

That is how all product development starts. At the very beginning, you need to define who will use your future product. What devices will be the most suitable: Android, iOS, or desktop? Or all together? Does your audience belong to boomers or gen Z? Do they need it for work? Ask yourself all these questions and get to know your audience as soon as possible.

Here are a few points to consider when analyzing your target audience:

• According to studies, more than 60% of the users of video chat apps are people between the ages of 18 and 29. The rest is made up of users between the ages of 30 and 49. Given those statistics, the younger audience seems to be more appealing for creating a video calling app.
• Your audience is going to be the most decisive factor for defining your app’s features. For example, the younger audience would prefer huge personalization possibilities like chat stickers, filters, or background modifications. These features will help your video chat app reach a wider audience.
• However, addressing professional or entrepreneurial needs requires a different set of functions. Secure video conferencing is one of the most important aspects of business use, so these applications would have a different tech stack and other prominent features. Exceptional video quality and additional data encryption would become a top priority here, so the businesses will trust a new software solution.

Education, healthcare, communication - each industry has its own pains and needs that must be addressed and resolved, so the target audience will be the most influential part of your business plan for a video chat app.

2. Define your features and value

The next step after finding your audience is shortlisting the necessary features. We already made a list of chat app features that will be necessary for a successful chat solution. Some of them are easily applicable for a video chat app, but calls and the visual form of communication require additional functionality.

For example, in addition to general chat functionality, a video calling app should be able to create a video conference for more than two people, provide security for ongoing video and audio streams, and enable screen-sharing for collective work.

After the list of features is designed, it’s time to think about what makes your app stand out from the crowd. It can be the feature that you focus on the most, like security or customization. Or it can be the message you put into your software solution, like 7pm Thursday did. This app that Yellow worked on has a very clear message: Love is love. It has no religion, no social status, and no gender, and that message defined a part of the functionality: it’s possible in the app to identify yourself as male, female, fluid, non-binary, or transgender.

3. Create a business plan

A business plan will define all the key elements of not only development but the whole product lifecycle. The shortlist below covers the most essential areas that will help businesses formulate the plan:

• Resources
• Partners
• Vendors
• Value
• Audience segments
• Customer relationships
• Communication channels
• Costs structure

4. Choose the platform

An important part of a business plan is choosing the right platform for your application. If web and desktop versions may pass without saying, a mobile platform can become a hard choice to make.

If you opt for Android, your app will be able to work on multiple devices, get to the largest app marketplace, and receives official Google support. However, there may be a chance of higher security risks and issues with testing and launching.

iOS offers you high security, good ecosystem optimization, and fewer devices for testing. Still, it can lead to platform inflexibility, a long review process, and limited customization.

Cross-platform is also available. You will cover all the possible audiences, but it will take more time and money.

5. Develop!

The business plan is ready, so it’s time to start the development process! The whole creation of the video chat app is a complex process that includes much more than simple coding, but if we try to cluster all activities involved into the chat application development, it will look like this:

📌UI/UX design

The most crucial part of designing is prototyping. A prototype is a set of black and white screens (wireframes) that show all the main functionality of the app. It’s important not to underestimate this stage: prototyping will let you avoid mistakes in later stages of development, which will save a lot of time and money.

The user experience should always play the leading role in the designing process. This means that the app’s layout should be clear, understandable, and visually pleasing. Functions should not be confusing, and people with different technical backgrounds should be able to use the app.

Read more: https://yellow.systems/blog/how-to-make-a-video-calling-app