Why is it so difficult to add a contact on WhatsApp?

And how to simplify it.

Context-
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world, but the concurrence is strong with Imessages, snapchat, android…

Problem-
Adding a contact, the most important action on a messaging app, is very complicated. Users need to add the contact through the phone contacts, so they need to go out of the app, which is a way to loose them (they will send the message directly through Imessages or Instagram for instance).

Moreover, we can’t find automatically a contact we already talked to in another group chat.

Finally, WhatsApp doesn’t pre-write the name of the contact, even if the app clearly knows the name.

Why is it bad?
One of the reason Facebook bought WhatsApp is to use their data for advertising. They need Facebook and Instagram users to be also talking on WhatsApp, to identify better their interests, by connecting the interests of the people you are the closest, and target their ads accordingly.
If people can’t connect easily on WhatsApp, they will use other apps, and Facebook will loose a lot of data.
Source: Techcrunch

The growth of WhatsApp is impressive, but we can see a little stagnation on year 5. Enabling users to connect more easily with new contacts (and inviting those new users to if they don’t already use the app) will help maintain the growth in the futur.

This is the actual funnel to add a contact:

This is the new proposition to simplify it:

-Add a “Contacts” option in footer, on the right, very easy to access.
-Allow users to add a contact directly when they try to send a new message.
-Pre-write automatically the name of the contact.