After half a year of silence, the Douyin Mini Program was officially launched on the "Mini Program Desktop" recently, making a high-profile comeback.

One is the king of short videos, with the topic being hot all year round; the other is a new traffic depression in the mobile Internet, which has attracted over a million developers to settle in. When the king steps into a new traffic depression, there is undoubtedly great room for imagination.

On the one hand, Douyin's interesting and high-quality short video content and its strong ability to gather celebrities are a natural fit for gaming, general entertainment, and e-commerce mini-programs. In addition, Douyin's 500 million monthly active users, coupled with a powerful content recommendation mechanism, can ensure the distribution and monetization efficiency of such mini-programs. The two complement each other and can achieve mutual success.

1. The speed and slowness of the Douyin mini program

It is not surprising that Tik Tok has entered the mini program market. After all, all powerful Internet giants have joined the battle.

What was surprising was ByteDance’s execution ability - less than a month after the launch of Toutiao’s mini program, Douyin started to take action.

In October 2018, a mini-program entrance appeared in the new version of TikTok iOS 3.0.0. When clicking on it, a prompt "Mini-program that has not been used" will appear. At that time, ByteDance staff said that "the TikTok mini-program is still in a small-scale internal testing stage."

▲The mini-program entrance in the new version of TikTok iOS 3.0.0

Two months later, "Maoyan Movie" officially appeared as the first mini program in the Android 3.7.0 version of Douyin. According to a report by 36Kr, "the mini program is a project that Zhang Yiming personally monitors", which was generally interpreted at the time as the beginning of a challenge to the WeChat mini program.

Since entering 2019, TikTok has made rapid progress. First, the first mini-game "Sound Jump Ball" was launched, and then the product search function was opened. Users can search for keywords to obtain the mini-program link of the product . Soon after, it was officially connected to mini-program service providers such as Jisu Application.

This is the “speed” of the Douyin mini program.

"(The TikTok mini program) uses the same set of codes as the Toutiao mini program," a Toutiao insider once said. At present, ByteDance's model for mini programs is that the Toutiao mini program department develops a set of technologies, and then each product line opens a mini program entrance.

In other words, developers can make a small program on Toutiao and directly copy it to Douyin, or even products such as Xigua Video and Huoshan Video (this has already been achieved for Huoshan Video), without any cost for technical transformation.

▲The mini program entrance in Huoshan Video

However, this "speed" does not actually conceal its slowness in advancing some capabilities, and in fact it seems to be even slower in comparison.

For example, the "Mini Program Collection" that merchants have been longing for, a key capability to help merchants retain users, was not officially launched until recently, a year later. You should know that "Mini Program Collection" has become a standard feature of all current mini program platforms. Even the QQ mini program, which was only launched in June this year, has been equipped with this capability when it was first launched.

"The emergence of mini program collections and mini program desktops proves that Douyin has not given up on mini programs. It is like a shot in the arm for us. After all, we have invested a lot of resources in the early stage." Many merchants who have settled in the Douyin mini program expressed optimism when interviewed by Xiaochengpu Express.

In addition, many merchants also expressed distress. What they have in common is that they are all optimistic about the Douyin Mini Program, but they have not been able to successfully register for the Douyin Mini Program. "Launching the collection function of the mini program is a small matter, but opening up the registration of the Douyin Mini Program is a big matter."

It is reported that there are indeed many restrictions on the registration application for Douyin Mini Program, such as the inability to apply for the mall category and the limited overall number of applications, which has greatly affected the rapid development of the Douyin Mini Program ecosystem.

2. Capability closed loop has been established

Although the collection capability of the Douyin mini program is late, fortunately, it is not absent.

Its arrival not only greatly encouraged them as the merchants said, but also filled the gap in the retention link of the Douyin Mini Program, realizing the closed loop of the Douyin Mini Program's capabilities. Because only the closed-loop Douyin mini program can be truly "fully equipped".

The statement of "fully equipped" is not groundless. In our opinion, the "equipment" of Douyin Mini Program is mainly concentrated in three aspects: "centralized traffic acquisition", "self-operation tools" and "potential operation tools".

The first is "centralized traffic acquisition". Douyin currently provides two channels: First, the Douyin applet mounted on the short video page can obtain the same traffic recommendation as the short video, but this is extremely challenging for the short video content itself;

Second, Douyin officially launched the "Douyin Mini Games" mini program, which functions similarly to a game app store and will centrally distribute mini programs in the game category. Prior to this, the official recommended mini games by pushing messages through the "Douyin Mini Games" account.

▲Changes in the centralized recommendation portal of Douyin mini-games

The second is the "self-operated tools". The Douyin Mini Program provides merchants with a "toolbox" to solve key links such as attracting new customers, retaining existing customers, and promoting activation:

In the "New User Attraction Tools", there are currently two major paths: search and shooting/sharing videos. There is no need to say much about the search path, but you can focus on its product search function. Once users form the habit of shopping on Douyin, the traffic brought to the mini program by product search will be considerable.

The "shoot videos/share videos" function of the Douyin mini program has formed its unique "mini program + short video" strategy. Users can choose to shoot videos and show off their good things in the mini program, and the corresponding mini program will be automatically mounted on these videos of good things. Users can jump to the mini program after clicking. This cycle will have a "snowball" effect on the exposure of the mini program, and in terms of fission ability, it seems to be no less than WeChat.

In addition, the Douyin mini program also supports social sharing. It can not only be shared to Douyin friends and the latest group chat, but also can be spread and acquired through WeChat and QQ in the form of picture QR codes. Of course, this customer acquisition ability is weaker than the former.

In terms of "retention tools", before the launch of the "Mini Program Desktop", the Douyin Mini Program was almost blank in this area. If we really have to be picky, then the expert’s homepage can also be counted, because users can also reach the mini program through the store entrance and video page entrance on the expert’s homepage, but this path is too long for users. It is for this reason that the emergence of “Mini Program Desktop” becomes even more significant.

The emergence of "Mini Program Desktop" makes it possible for the Douyin Mini Program to become an independent entity separated from specific influencer accounts. If it can be combined with the ability of "Douyin account and mini program following each other" in the future, it can largely solve the embarrassing situation that merchants and influencers encounter in Star Chart transactions: "They can only bring traffic to the mini program but not to the merchant's Douyin account, and as a result, they can only continue to advertise."

▲TikTok mini program collection function, mini program desktop

As for the "activation tool", the Douyin mini program has opened a fixed entrance to the mini program at the top of the comment area, allowing users to access the mini program at any time when browsing comments.

For content platforms, the comment area is an important indicator for evaluating the user activity of an account. Whether it is WeChat official accounts, NetEase Cloud Village, or the Douyin we are talking about today, their creators are consciously operating the comment areas, but only NetEase Cloud Village has taken shape at present.

Therefore, operating the comment area well in the future is likely to become the "trump card" for Douyin mini program merchants. It can be as simple as using the top message in the comment area to guide users to click on the mini program. It can be more complicated by using the mini program in the comment area to hold sweepstakes, topic activities, etc. This is an area of ​​potential to be explored.

The last are “potential operational tools”, which mainly include shopping carts, POI addresses, Doudian, product image recognition, star maps, etc. They run through content production, IP packaging, product conversion and other links, covering many online and offline marketing scenarios. It is reported that some of the above operating tools can already be carried by the Douyin mini program.

In the future, as more tools are transformed into mini-programs, the Douyin mini-program can serve as the most direct tool for the platform to better connect these links and scenarios, and through closer linkage of multiple capabilities, help merchants achieve more effective content distribution and product monetization.

3. Where is the future heading?

The latest data from QuestMobile shows that users are spending more and more time on mini programs, and the commercialization of mini programs is also constantly expanding. Mini programs have become a new incubator for startups.

It can be seen that in this entrepreneurial incubation area, there are Pinduoduos that have risen thanks to mini programs, and there are also a large number of brands and stores that hope to develop online traffic through mini programs. When the needs of these entrepreneurs are gathered together, it becomes a source of traffic monetization for Internet giants.

In addition, QuestMobile data also pointed out that compared with 2018, the usage time of Tencent apps in 2019 decreased by 3.7%, while the usage time of ByteDance apps increased by 3.1%. Compared with 2017, the corresponding data in 2018 were -6.6% and +6.2%, respectively. This means that more and more users are using ByteDance products, and they are gradually eroding part of the traffic that originally belonged to BAT.

▲Data source: QuestMobile

The reason why Toutiao and Douyin choose to develop mini programs is to continue to enhance the stickiness between ByteDance's products and users and increase the time users stay on their products.

More time means that more commercial monetization actions can be put on the agenda, which will help ease the IPO pressure faced by ByteDance and give ByteDance more room to try and maneuver in incubating other products.

Not only that, the powerful tool of mini programs also gives Toutiao and Douyin more opportunities to break through their own product limitations, and go beyond content information and short video platforms to become more all-encompassing national apps.

These two major directions may be where ByteDance is aiming for the future of mini programs.

Author: Tsai

Source: Xiaocheng Program Express (xcxsubao)