Ever felt that Snapchat is difficult to use? If you feel so then there is a great news for you all. Snapchat is working on a significant overhaul of the app. In the Snap Inc. Q3, 2017 earnings letter, Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snapchat revealed that the company is working on redesigning the app so that it is easier to understand and use for its users.
He acknowledged that the “One thing we have heard over the years is that Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use, and our team has been working on responding to this feedback.” According to his statement, the company got several negative feedbacks about the user-friendly nature of the app. So, they decided to focus on this feature to attract new users.
According to him the redesign may affect the business and can be disruptive for a shorter period. This statement gives subtle hints that whatever change the app is undergoing, it’s going to be big and not a minor redesign.
“One thing that we have heard over the years is that Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use, and our team has been working on responding to this feedback. As a result, we are currently redesigning our application to make it easier to use. There is a strong likelihood that the redesign of our application will be disruptive to our business in the short term, and we don’t yet know how the behavior of our community will change when they begin to use our updated application. We’re willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business.” – the statement made by Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel.
Although the CEO did not divulge the details and release date of the improved version of Snapchat, he mentioned that Snap is working on displaying content “in a personalized and more relevant way, while still maintaining the exploratory nature of our service.”
Spiegel says, “We are developing a new solution that provides each of our 178 million daily active users with their own Stories experience, leveraging the tremendous benefits of machine learning without compromising the editorial integrity of the Stories platform that we have worked so hard to build.”
One of the reasons the company is making big changes to its application is because of the fact that the app only added 4.5 million users for the quarter ending September while the analysts expected 8 million new users. Adding to that, the company’s ad revenue has decreased by 60% when compared to a year ago.
From the statements given in the quarterly earning letter, it can be observed that the growth of Snapchat has vastly decreased when its competitor apps such as Instagram and Facebook have introduced the stories feature in them shifting several Snapchat users to Instagram and Facebook.
What do you think about Snapchat’s move to attract new users? Will it be able to succeed? Drop your thoughts in the comments!
