In-app messages are being added to every app built for specific use cases, allowing users to chat with their friends and businesses in real time, thus boosting user engagement and experience. If we see this feature on the positive side, it is a great functionality to have within apps, but building in-app chats from ground zero is not an easy task.
And that is where in-app chat APIs are used by businesses of all sizes to seamlessly integrate top-end features like push notifications, chat history, group chats, chat moderation, topic-based chats, and more. Plus, integrating in-app chats into customer service apps can benefit the business by improving customer satisfaction rates as well.
Hence, in this article, we will see how to easily integrate the chat API into your website. So, without any ado, shall we start.
What is a Chat API?
A chat API(Application Programming Interface) is a tool or a service that helps developers add in-app chat functionality within web and mobile app development in a few simple steps without writing hefty lines of code.
And by using a chat API, businesses can easily add user-loving features like push notifications, group chats, typing and presence indicators, and chat history instantly. You might now wonder why you should opt for chat APIs.
Well, building a chat app in-house is expensive and time-consuming. You need to hire platform-skill developers, spend on infrastructure costs, initial investments, and more. Also, you would stress out about maintenance. So, as an easy measure, many tech giants like Reddit, Paytm, Uber, and Netflix have enabled messaging features using chat SDK.
Plus, some of the top chat API providers, like MirrorFly, help you build a completely customizable and white-labeled chat solution if needed by giving you the flexibility to host apps on your own servers. And below, we will see a detailed step-by-step process on how to add chat SDKs to your application.
Step-by-Step Chat API Integration Guide For Web & Mobile Apps
Let me tell you that the process of adding a chat SDK to your software can highly vary depending on the choice of your third-party provider, platform, and framework. And so, we have listed some of the general steps that you would carry out like:
1. Choosing the right in-app chat API provider
This is your first step where you will do a detailed study on the specific needs of your project and your target audience and then select the chat SDK provider. And when you are in the zone of choosing the right one for your business, you might see that there are a plenty of options in the market. So, pick a provider that offers the best features at affordable pricing.
As some providers offer an advanced set of features like chat moderation, single and group chats, push notifications, and topic-based chats, while others focus on offering a basic feature set with a lower cost. So see which provider is suited for your business and whether they also cater their services to different verticals like healthcare, gaming, finance, logistics, and more.
Your next step on finding the right chat SDK provider is whether they let you build a customizable chat solution by letting you take complete control of their source codes or hosting apps on your own servers as well. Other than this, have a check on some aspects like security, scalability, documentation guides, and free plans. That is it!
2. Set up your account and get API keys
Now say, if you have opted for MirrorFly as your choice of provider then your next step will be to create an user account with MirrorFly and get it set up with the help of their expert team. Once this is done, log into your account and get the license key from the application info section.
Remember that this license key is important to authenticate the SDK in your app project. And with that in hand, you can initialize the SDKs, customize their source code based on your business’s brand and style and even make use of their UI kits that can come handy in seamlessly designing your app’s UI and layout.
3. Install the SDK or Libraries
After the two steps discussed above, your next level would be to integrate the chat SDKs in your preferred platform, say Android, iOS, or the web. And if you want to build a web chat app, here is how you can integrate chat SDKs in JavaScript and React Native.
1. First see whether the packages.json files are up to date then verify for any duplicates.
2. Download the files from React Native SDK by clicking on the download button and transfer them to the dist folder.
3. Then make a new directory within your project and paste all the copied files to it and then build a new sdk.js file to export the SDK elements.
4. Initialize Chat SDK
Now you can start with initialization process of chat SDK by inserting the licensekey into the respective parameter and locating the sandbox server and adding respective codes in the sandbox section.
After this, your next step will be to establish connection to the MirrorFly server by using the credentials got from registration and on successful establishment, you will receive a statuscode of 200.
5. Create Core Chat Functions
As a next step, you can now add core chat features like sending message and receiving message, push notifications, recent chats, profile images, moderation, mute notification, retrieve user list, search chat, archive and delete chats, and more that users would want to see in their apps.
6. Test the Integration
This is the final step where you need to test what you have built and integrated. Which can include testing the chat feature across different devices, platforms, web browsers, and under different network conditions. Also, you must check whether your chat app works on different conditions like when a user blocks, on a different user account, retrieving message history, and more.
After checking all these if you find any bug, you can correct those and then deploy it.
7. Key Considerations
Here, we will discuss some key aspects that you must keep in mind while integrating chat API, like:
1. Checking whether your chat service is secure.
2. Your app can withstand any growing user base.
3. It adhere to compliance standards like GDPR and HIPAA.
4. Your choice of provider offers good documentation and video tutorial support.
Conclusion
Adding a chat feature to an existing chat system using a reliable chat SDK can make the whole difference in how your users can engage with the app and boost the retention rates. Also, they may even suggest the application with their circle, which by the way can help you elevate your brand ratios.
And if you are a startup searching for the powerful chat SDK, then I would suggest you check out the process discussed above a bit clearly. That’s all for now, see you soon!
