How to Build a Chatbot App: A Comprehensive Guide

Are you an entrepreneur from the travel industry, eCommerce, real estate, banking, or hospitality and want to

• Analyze your customer’s data and increase sales?
• Save costs on hiring and training human resources?
• Qualified leads by providing 24*7 customer service?

If yes, then creating a chatbot application for your business is the right solution.

If you are searching for how to build a chatbot app solution from scratch like Replika, you have landed on the right blog. By the end of this blog, you will learn the complete process to build your own chatbot app.

To guide you further, we have drafted the steps to build your own chatbot with the help of our experienced senior IT consultants. Once you go through this guide, you will have in-depth knowledge about how to create a chatbot for your business.

Let’s start with the steps.

How to Build a Chatbot App for Android and iOS in 6 Easy Steps

You need to follow a step-by-step mobile app development process if you are looking to build a successful chatbot app that understands users’ sentiments in real-time. By developing this app, you must be looking to earn a high ROI from this chatbot conversation solution as well as higher engagement.

Therefore, in this section, we are going to discuss 6 essential steps that will help you build a high-quality chatbot web portal.

Let’s dive in to discover the chatbot development process.

By conducting research you need to identify the market trends of chatbots, perform competitor analysis, and understand their revenue model.

But, how do you conduct competitor research before building a chatbot platform?

1. • Check the similar chatbot apps on the App Store and Play Store
   • List down the pros and cons of the competitor’s app
   • Evaluate the features they have implemented, UI/UX of the app, USP, target audience, and how the competitor’s app solves the problem
   • Check out the mistakes made by the competitors
   • On which channels competitor’s chatbot platform are hosted

Once you have all this information you will understand how to shape your app in terms of functionalities, USP and UI/UX.

Apart from this, you even need to decide on the right channel to integrate your chatbot. It is advisable to use a multi-channel strategy to use the same bots across channels.

Let’s understand with an example.

Here’re examples of three eCommerce brands that are using chatbots to provide high-level customer experience.

Studying such examples will help you to know what type of chatbot you want, and help you to identify the ins and outs of the competitors and how you can outperform them.

Step 1. Select the Features to Include in Your Custom Chatbot App

Once you complete your research, you must evaluate the basic and advanced features you want to integrate into your app. Before deciding on the features, remember that customers always want the information right away and chatbots deliver that with speed.

We have mentioned some of the features for you to include in your chatbot app. Refer to the below table and take references to customize your app accordingly.

Unique Features of a Chatbot App

Apart from these advanced features, you can also use other functionalities that will make your app unique and stand out from others.

Step 2. Hire a Chatbot App Development Company

If you have done proper market research and decided on the features to implement in the chatbot, you need to hire app developers from a leading app development company.

Hiring an app development company helps you to build a chatbot as per your custom business requirements and within your budget. Once you get in touch with an experienced app development consulting company, your idea gets validated and you get suggestions, and you will even know the cost and timeline to build a chatbot for your business.

In case you are planning to hire a dedicated app developers team, you can check their presence on Clutch, Upwork, and Toptal. Before you hire a team of developers, ensure to check their portfolios, work experience, reviews, and feedback from the clients.

Step 3. Start with a Chatbot Development

Once you have hired the company, the chatbot app development team will develop your chatbot solution as per your custom company’s needs. After validating your idea, the company will provide you with a timeline, cost, and SRS – to know the outline of your project.

When you get SRS, the business analyst team will start with wireframing your chatbot app. With the help of wireframing, you will know how your app will navigate and will help you with the overall outline of the project. Once the wireframing is completed, the UI/UX team uses tools like Adobe XD to add hues to your design. UI/UX designers create a sample design to know your color preferences.

When your app is designed, your chatbot app development goes through different milestones and integrates business logic, questionnaires, machine learning, and AI algorithms to your app as required. You get all the status and updates of your app development.

Once it is developed, the QA team tests your app. The team writes various test cases, performs the required testing, and ensures that your chatbot app is bug-free and runs across various platforms.

Step 4. Deploy Your Chatbot on Required Channels or App Stores

Once the QA team tests your bot and makes it 100% bug-free, an app development company will host your chatbot on the required channels like websites, apps, Facebook Messenger, CRM, and Google Calendar.

App development companies will even deploy your app on the App Store or Play Store as per the guidelines. App publishing will take around 24 hours to 2 days depending on your app.

As we have learned the step-by-step process to create a chatbot app for your business, let’s even understand the cost to create chatbots.

How Much Does it Cost to Build a Custom Chatbot Solution?

Chatbot development costs depend on these factors:

1. Complexity
2. UI/UX designs
3. Third-party services
4. Features and functionalities you want to integrate

To know the exact app development cost for your project, get in touch with our senior and experienced tech consultant. We will discuss your requirements and help you with a custom quote for your unique chatbot solution.

Use this formula to calculate application development costs.

Want to know the exact app development cost in detail? Know about app development costs in detail from this blog.

Most of the companies even use the below chatbot builder frameworks to develop a chatbot easily.

8 Top AI Chatbot Development Frameworks Comparison Table

So now you know the platform to develop a chatbot, let’s even understand the benefits of using chatbots for your business.

5 Benefits of Using Chatbot for Your Business

Chatbots improve customer loyalty and fosters brand trust. By integrating chatbots, you not only achieve marketing goals but also drive sales and improve customer service. Here are the 5 benefits of using intelligent chatbots.

Chatbot Increases Customer Engagement

Chatbots facilitate business growth and take your customer engagement to another level. When the quick information is delivered, the customers stay for a longer time and maintain a conversation. Since bots provide real-time responses, chatbots can easily meet the goal and enhance the customer experience with your brand.

Chatbot Improves Lead Generation

Since conversational bots provide personalized messaging throughout the journey, businesses can easily generate leads and make informed business decisions. The bot collects contact details like name, company name, e-mail, and phone number. It automatically gathers leads and qualifies them.

Chatbot Monitors Customer Data and Gain Insights

Chatbots are one of the best tools to track purchasing patterns and analyze user behaviors. The data collected through the chatbot helps to market the product in a different way and expand the customer’s reach. You can use bots to send push notifications to your existing customers and engage with them.

Your Presence is Available 24*7

Your chatbot is available around the clock whenever you need any assistance. It supports your customers even on weekends and late at night. And if there should be a question that your chatbot cannot answer, there is still the possibility that the users can be forwarded to a human employee. Outside of service hours, a message can be left for customer service to answer by email the next business day.

Chatbot Provides Scalability

An operator can concentrate on one customer at a time and answer one question. However, a chatbot can answer thousands of questions simultaneously. In this sense, a chatbot can easily handle traffic surges like festive seasons or peak hours without much investment.

By now you have got an idea about conversational bot app development, let’s check out some of the best chatbot apps.

6 Best Chatbot Apps

Here are some of the best chatbot apps that you should know.

So, now you have a complete idea about how to develop a chatbot for your business from scratch. If you still have doubts let’s discuss them in the FAQ section.

Ready for Chatbot App Development?

In this blog, you have learned all the aspects of how to create a chatbot app. But to make your chatbot platforms different from the other available solution, you need to have a unique idea for app development.

If you are looking for a custom chatbot for your business, get in touch with us today.