WeChat’s app-store like mini programs (an app within an app) has topped the 450 million daily active users according to the WeChat Open Class Pro 2022 event earlier this year.
Mini-program usage is up 32% year on year, with an 80% increase in users paying via mini programs. There are now over 1 million mini programs available on WeChat, reflecting a boom in usage, on what is China’s #1 digital ecosystem.
Why is it important?
WeChat is part of the fabric of Chinese society, and mini programs provide an opportunity for brands to generate greater engagement with their audience and to monetise their Wechat traffic. Setting up a mini program shop on WeChat linked to WeChat pay is relatively straight forward and cost-effective, and perfect as a vehicle to test the market.
Mini programs allow users to access a wide range of services without ever leaving the main app. The system offers merchants a chance to access a huge user-base by building lightweight apps within WeChat instead of having to develop a separate app and convince users to go there.
Regroup China continues to be at the forefront of mini program development, having launch multi-brand stores and single brand stores for many leading UK retail brands.
Download our free mini program e-book here – https://www.regroup-china.com/wechat-e-book/
To discuss how to reach the largest online market in the world, please contact scott.muir@regroup-china.com
WeChat has now been part of the social fabric of China for 10 years and continues to advance its shopping ambitions with close to $250 Billion worth of transactions being generated via its mini programs annually.
We believe WeChat mini programs are hugely compelling for UK brands looking to ‘prove the concept’ in China. They can be a highly cost-effective means to establishing a direct sales channel in China, whilst also building up brand awareness via the content marketing and advertising platforms within the WeChat eco-system.
Regroup has been working closely with WeChat for many years, in developing some of the most ambitious multi-brand and single-brand stores on WeChat, selling everything from luxury watches, jewellery, fashion, food, and drink.
Download our free WeChat Mini Program e-book to find out how to sell on WeChat, take payments, and advertise. We can help you every step of the way. Please do feel free to contact us to talk further about reaching the World’s largest online market.
WeChat’s Mini Programs can facilitate e-commerce functionality on WeChat and is amongst the most popular in China for social commerce. In 2020, the platform facilitated transactions worth an estimated 1.6 trillion yuan ($250 billion). That was double its 2019 transaction value.
WeChat hosts over 2 million Mini Programs, compared to Apple App Store’s 1.96 million and Google Play Store’s 2.87 million. This platform is growing year on year and has rapidly established itself as a highly effective low-cost route to reaching the China market.
Regroup China has been building WeChat mini programs for many European luxury and high street retailers as well as food and drink brands and developing booking capabilities for the student property market.
China accounted for around 50% of global online retail sales in 2020! As China’s online population is set to increase, this figure will only go up and selling to WeChat’s rapidly-growing audience will become ever more important.
Join Regroup in a Webinar on Friday 19th March, at 11am BST on how to set up and use a WeChat mini program to establish a direct sales route to the world’s largest online market. Click here for further details
Great to announce Regroup China’s involvement in this very exciting project. A trailblazing initiative involving DIT and Business West, helping UK food and drink brands establish customers in the world’s biggest market – China. Regroup China designed and built the WeChat Mini Program store to facilitate the sales. #wechat #wechatminiprograms #rethinkchina #regroupchina #businesswest #DIT
The Great British Food Programme aims to connect UK food and drink producers with a host of Chinese buyers and consumers who are hungry to buy high quality British produce.
The Great British Food Store will be launched in November on the social media platform, WeChat, as a specialist mini-program and will give sought-after food and drink producers in the South West of England the opportunity to showcase and sell their products to a user base of 1.2 billion. According to Tencent, in 2019, WeChat users spent $115 billion through mini-programs, equivalent to £88 billion.
A report published by the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), showed that while exports of food and drink to the UK’s top markets fell in the first half of 2020, value sales increased by 0.3% to China.
Joining Regroup China as strategic partners in this initiative will be Elanders, an award-winning logistics company with expertise in getting products safely into China, who will be on hand to cover all the documentation, consolidation and logistical aspects of the store. Intellectual Property specialists, NJ Akers, will also provide advice on IP and other legalities that a business may encounter when launching a product in the Chinese Market.
Lee Hamber, Senior Sales Executive at Lilley’s Cider who has signed up to the WeChat opportunity said:
“Lilley’s see a huge potential in China for our products, including the sheer size of the population. There is also a growing interest in cider as well as English products, so being involved in the program is a great opportunity. “Business West’s support has been so important as the WeChat program will allow us to tap into large audience of Chinese WeChat users and grow our brand internationally.”
“Lilley’s see a huge potential in China for our products, including the sheer size of the population. There is also a growing interest in cider as well as English products, so being involved in the program is a great opportunity.
“Business West’s support has been so important as the WeChat program will allow us to tap into large audience of Chinese WeChat users and grow our brand internationally.”
Paul Rostand, founder of Great British Biscotti, who has also been accepted onto the store said:
“China has been a target market for us since founding the brand because of the vast potential in both retail and food service. “By being part of the WeChat program, we hope to get the awareness and brand exposure to help us grow our exports in the Chinese market.”
“China has been a target market for us since founding the brand because of the vast potential in both retail and food service.
“By being part of the WeChat program, we hope to get the awareness and brand exposure to help us grow our exports in the Chinese market.”
Lex Thornley, Director of Blue Goose, producer of compostable coffee capsules said:
“Every lesson, webinar and blog post about launching in China and overseas talks about the need to understand the way those countries do business and all the pitfalls you might face. “So, as a micro business, to work with Business West and the expert team overseeing the marketing campaigns in China means we have the best possible chance of success without costing us time, money and stress that we can’t afford.”
“Every lesson, webinar and blog post about launching in China and overseas talks about the need to understand the way those countries do business and all the pitfalls you might face.
“So, as a micro business, to work with Business West and the expert team overseeing the marketing campaigns in China means we have the best possible chance of success without costing us time, money and stress that we can’t afford.”
James Monk, Director of Commercial Services at Business West said:
“In 2019, China was the UK’s sixth largest export market, so this program is a fantastic opportunity for South West food and drink companies looking to expand their company in a lucrative market.” “Food and drink in the UK and the South West are recognised globally for its high quality and demand for authentic British food products from China has been soaring in recent years.” “I would encourage businesses in the region looking to grow their brand internationally, to get in touch to discuss the opportunity or apply today to be part of the exciting program.”
“In 2019, China was the UK’s sixth largest export market, so this program is a fantastic opportunity for South West food and drink companies looking to expand their company in a lucrative market.”
“Food and drink in the UK and the South West are recognised globally for its high quality and demand for authentic British food products from China has been soaring in recent years.”
“I would encourage businesses in the region looking to grow their brand internationally, to get in touch to discuss the opportunity or apply today to be part of the exciting program.”
Businesses can apply online by following this link and applications to join the Great British Food Store in China close on 16th November.
To learn more about this exciting opportunity and to meet the team behind the store, interested businesses are encouraged to join a free webinar taking place on 11th November. More information can be found here.
Sign up here
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WeChat is best described as an ‘eco-system’ rather than as traditional social media or a ‘WhatsApp of China’, as the BBC recently described it. Describing WeChat as an eco-system captures the fact that it is all things in daily life in China.
It is Tencent’s (WeChat’s owners) vision for Chinese nationals to use WeChat throughout their day; using it for calls, messaging, playing games, paying bills, buying products, hiring taxis and posting their social media.
Key WeChat Functionality
Mini Programs are best described as ‘apps within an app’. WeChat is an app and a mini program is an app within the WeChat eco-system. These apps sit on Tencent’s server, not on the users’ mobile phone, as such they are typically fast to access.
For brands looking to enter the China market, mini programs can provide additional functionality to their WeChat account, to add shopping functionality for instance, to sell directly via a shop front, or to add booking engine functionality, to take bookings directly. The whole process can be done within the WeChat eco-system, using WeChat Pay as the payment gateway. The end-user never has to leave WeChat.
As such, Mini Programs can help brands monetise their WeChat account.
For UK brands wishing to test the waters in China, WeChat is the ideal vehicle, serving as a base to build brand awareness, and as a route to establishing sales.
Using a mini program, brands can build a shop within WeChat at relatively low cost. The process typically involves taking a product data feed of product SKUs and marrying this up with design templates for the shop front. The whole process can take as little as 4- weeks to build significantly less than setting up a Shopify or Magento e-commerce channel.
Using the WeChat advertising platform, brands can target users based on age, gender, education, location and importantly on search behaviour, meaning brands can build up a targeted audience over time.
The other main key channel to building up an audience is via Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) who are effectively influencers and hold huge sway in China.
It is now easier than ever to set up an official Service account on WeChat for overseas brands. The days of requiring a Chinese business licence to register a verified account are long gone. UK brands can use their UK business licence and the whole process takes 2-3 weeks to process, faster than ever. Ownership resides with the brand, not a third party.
All of this makes for exciting times post Brexit. China accounts for a fifth of the world’s internet users, and 40% of worldwide e-commerce. Regroup China has been working with Tencent to produce some of the best known mini programs in the UK, including the WeChat shop for the Best of British event in Shanghai this year, where we onboarded over 30 UK brands selling product at the event via WeChat, using WeChat pay as the payment gateway.
The Best of British WeChat mini program
Regroup have also been at the forefront in producing mini programs as booking engines, producing the UK’s first property booking engine for Downing Property, the student-property business, who are targeting Chinese students in the UK, via WeChat.
Student Property Booking Engine on WeChat
We believe that UK brands wishing to test the market in China should be excited about this for many reasons, namely:
All of this adds up to providing a unique opportunity for UK brands wishing to test the market in China. As a proof of concept, no other channels provide the ability to build awareness and sales, at low cost.
As such, we are of the view that WeChat is the priority channel for brands getting established in China, as a phase 1. Once the concept is proved, then we advise moving into key e-commerce channels such as Tmall and JD, who collectively own c 70% market share of b2c e-commerce in mainland China. Getting active on these channels is not a small consideration and requires investment. But building awareness and sales initially is far safer on WeChat as an initial undertaking.
For more information on reaching the World’s largest market please contact us. We’d love to hear from you.
Launched in January 2017, WeChat mini-programmes, or sub-apps within WeChat official accounts, have widened possibilities for marketers by adding additional functionality like e-commerce, coupons, loyalty schemes, and task management. According to Jing Daily, by the end of January 2018, a total of 580,000 mini-programs boasting a cumulative 170 million daily active users could be found on the app. Indeed some leading Chinese e-commerce companies like Pinduoduo have more users on their WeChat mini-programme than on their own native app.But how can UK consumer-facing brands across gaming, leverage this rapidly developing and highly customisable platform?This event, co-organised by ReGroup Media and the China-Britain Business Council (CBBC), hopes to explain the key functionality available, how it can be used, outline the costs and requirements, and provide some case studies of where it has worked well.Formed by experienced marketers and technicians, Regroup China is a specialist digital marketing agency committed to helping Western Brands define and action strategy for China – the World’s biggest online market.Agenda:
Click here to know more and register: http://www.cbbc.org/events/2019/january/boosting-engagement-and-sales-through-wechat-mini/