Top 10 Essential Social Media App Features
Social media has been in the trend since its advent. It connects people regardless of their age, physical location, and various other parameters. Social media is also known as a platform for networking since it lets you network with new people from around the world.
By HARIKRISHNA KUNDARIYA
There are so many social media apps available on the respective app stores. Most popular social media apps include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. These apps have certain inbuilt features that keep the user engaged and keep them coming back for more.
The main goal behind social media apps is to provide networking opportunities on professional and personal levels, and to allow interaction with people from around the world. If you plan to develop your own social media application, you must ask yourself what features would you incorporate? There are certain essential features that every social media app offers to its users. Moreover, those features are the basic features that every social media must have.
Following is the list of the features, that every social media app must have:
- Fast login:
The basic purpose of social media is to have easy access to friends, family and new connections regardless of the location and the time zones. This should be done with procedures and methods that are easy to follow and implement.
Reaching out to your friends or new connections over social media platforms should not be a tedious task. For this reason, the process of signing up and logging in into the social media app should be quick and effortless. Therefore if you are going to create a social media app you have to ensure that the login process is effortless.
- Simple user interface:
No matter which app you use, you always want the interface to be simple and intuitive. How many times have you decided to abandon an app which has a difficult interface?
When it comes to user interface, you have to design an interface where people can easily work with it. This is also applicable when you are designing your own social media app. An easy and user-friendly interface makes sure that the user never abandons your app. It is always a good idea to have an interface with which the user can interact easily. However, developing an easy-to-use interface is not everyone’s cup of tea unless you have hired a team of experienced web developers.
- Profile that can be customized:
Today, every user is looking for customised services. This is applicable for social media apps as well. An app that offers customisation is always liked by the users.
Popular social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and others offer a lot of profile customisation according to the user preference. This is one of the many features that make the app desirable and usable. Not to mention because of the customisation, it gives an impression to the user that the app has been designed only for them.
This is the single most important thing that offers user engagement. If you are looking to develop your own social media app, look at it from a user’s perspective. If your app offers customisable profile then it should be usable as well.
- Interesting News Feed:
News feed is the place in the social media app where you see the updates from people and the accounts that you follow. Like the profile, the news feed should also be customisable. When the news feed is interesting the user is enticed to use the app more frequently.
Also,the user is bound to come back to the app more frequently and the chances are, s/he would never abandon the app. This is possible only if the news feed that your social media app offers is very interesting.
In addition to this, make it a point that your app offers interesting news feed and content that the users like to see according to their preferences.
- Push notifications:
Push notifications are the most important notifications that the user can receive through your social media app. It is a way for the users to stay updated with the latest news and updates.
If you ever find yourself trying to develop a social media app, make sure you incorporate the push notification facility. This way a user can take a look at the notifications from his lock screen without opening the app. It reduces the effort the user needs to put to open the app. This is what makes the push notifications an important feature of a social media app.
- Quick search facility:
Since the advent of search engines, we all are accustomed to searching something using a search query or a search phrase. Hence, gradually all the apps have started to incorporate an internal search engine.
This also stands true when it comes to social media apps. A search box in a social media app is one of the most important features. The reason behind this is that the search feature can be used to find someone or something on social media.
For instance, if you are looking for someone’s profile on social media, you cannot find them without a search box in the social media app. Therefore, social media apps also need to have a seemingly common, yet an important feature called ‘search’.
- Secure communication:
What if you are talking to someone on a social media app and third person can see the texts going back and forth? Not a very great scenario, isn’t it? A secured communication form is the most important thing to have for a user.
Social media offers a lot of benefits where you can communicate with a lot of people. In the absence of security and privacy, social media can lose its importance rapidly.
Privacy and security is of utmost importance when millions of people are using social media apps. Moreover, it is always good to have better security layers when users from all over the world are going to use your social media app.
- Security:
As we saw the importance of secured communication, we would like to reiterate the importance of security measures in the place. Every user who uses social media is concerned with his security.
There are so many users who are plagued by thoughts like, what if someone could eavesdrop their conversation? To ensure that your social media app becomes more usable, you have to make sure that your users are secured.
It is imperative to have correctly implemented security layers as far as your social media app users are concerned.
- Cross platform compatibility:
Whenever you are developing a social media app, the most basic requirement of such an app is cross platform compatibility. The cross platform compatibility ensures that your app can be used by users who use different operating systems.
If your social media app is cross platform compatible, it can work on any device with any resolution which makes it more accessible. Also you have to make sure that the social media app can be used on the majorly used platforms.
- Effortless content sharing:
The basic purpose of a social media app is to stay updated with the content that others have to share. A way to spin this idea is that you can also share your content with your own peer group.
As we discussed, an intuitive interface is essential when we talk about content sharing. A user is bound to abandon the app if the steps to share the content are tedious and time-consuming.
Thus, the steps to share the content should be minimum when you develop your own social media app.
Conclusion
A social media app is an app that is frequently used by everyone in today’s era. Hence, it becomes important to understand what features enhance user engagement. This blog lists out all the important features that you can incorporate if you create your own social media app.
Harikrishna Kundariya is a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies.
His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new startups
based on IoT and ChatBot.
