To start running a WeChat store from scratch, just read this article

Many students who are engaged in operations should be familiar with Weidian. It will be used in cases involving derivatives and course monetization. If it is a pure e-commerce company, Weidian must be a channel that must be seized. After all, if you want to sell goods on WeChat , you can't rely on Taobao .

When I was operating the courses, I also put virtual products on the WeChat store and sold course redemption codes. I stimulated users to forward and purchase by organizing activities, and the effect was great. Later, I made my own scented tea and also put it on Weidian. In the process of operating two products in Weidian, I also summed up some experience.

I will share with you my previous experience in micro-store operation through four aspects, hoping that it will be helpful to those students who are operating micro-stores in the company or planning to do it as a side job and use micro-stores to earn some pocket money. This article is divided into the following four parts:

1. Positioning of WeChat Store

2. Introduction to the basic functions of WeChat stores

3. WeChat store operation experience

4. E-commerce monetization ideas

1. WeChat store positioning

Weidian is a tool for WeChat e-commerce monetization. In fact, there are other similar tools, such as Youzan and Diandianke. The reason why I chose Weidian is that it is free. You see, Youzan costs 4,999 yuan per year right from the start, so I uninstalled it and blocked it.

The second reason is that Weidian has investment from Tencent, so if they are Tencent’s own company, they will have higher permissions in WeChat. For example, you can’t even share a link from Taobao on WeChat, you can only use the squeak command. I hugged those Taobao babies with heartache.

The greatest value of Weidian is its distribution channel. When I was selling scented tea, the reason I chose Weidian instead of Taobao was because I valued Weidian’s distribution model.

We make our own products and act as a supplier, so we need to expand our channels. The channels include traditional ones such as supermarkets and distributors, as well as new models such as Weidian distribution, which uses hundreds of millions of users on WeChat to help you with distribution, and you can scale up in minutes.

I remember that a certain e-commerce platform used a distribution model to focus on promoting a certain steak, and sold hundreds of thousands of pieces that day, which was driven by small users.

2. Introduction to the basic functions of WeChat stores

An e-commerce platform includes the following basic functions: product management, order management, marketing promotion , store decoration and auxiliary functions. Next, I will use pictures and texts to demonstrate these functions.

It should be noted that it is best to use mobile devices to load and unload products, organize activities, edit materials, etc. in WeChat stores, as this will be more efficient than using a PC.

When I launched the first flower tea product, it took me ten minutes on PC. For the remaining nine products, I switched to mobile and it only took me half an hour.

Product Management:

In the product management of Weidian, there are three menus: adding products, batch management and category management. Under each product, there are four functions : preview, analysis, promotion and sharing .

There is no need to explain these basic functions in detail. I will focus on the sharing function. Because the promotion was on WeChat, after I added the product, I shared it with WeChat friends on WeChat. What the users received was the mini program . However, when I shared the store with users, what the users received was the H5 page . This confused me.

If it is a mini program, the purchasing experience is much better than H5. After the user purchases, he can find this entrance for the second time, pull down WeChat, and enter the Weidian mini program to see it.

If it is an H5 link, after the user purchases, he or she must either find the previous link or download a WeChat store APP. When we were promoting courses before, users called to complain, asking why they didn’t receive the redemption codes they purchased. Because they are not experienced users and have not installed WeChat stores.

Order Management:

Order management is my favorite page to browse, because every time I go to this page, I can see how many orders I have sold and how much I have earned, and I feel very happy.

After we send the package, we will enter the courier number into the order to show that the package has been shipped. Like Taobao, Weidian will automatically confirm receipt shortly after the user signs for it.

This function is quite user-friendly. For example, when I buy things on Taobao, I almost never click on the received items. They are all automatically confirmed by the system.

There is one situation that needs to be explained separately. When users purchase multiple products and they are not shipped at one time, they can first check the products that have been shipped, and then check the subsequent products separately when mailing them.

We once encountered a user who bought 3 products, 2 of which were in the warehouse, and the other 1 needed to be mailed by the manufacturer, which was sent in batches. There were 2 express delivery numbers in the WeChat store.

Marketing promotion:

This is the focus of this article. Only when marketing promotion is done well can it bring real benefits. According to my years of operation experience , users are very fond of activities, and some users have developed the habit of not placing orders without activities.

The marketing promotion page of Weidian is divided into functions according to the following: acquiring new customers, marketing tools (to increase revenue), sharing and interaction (to increase exposure), promotion services and offline activities . Any function can bring good results if it is mastered, not only WeChat store operations, but also channel operations and Weibo operations.

Here I will briefly explain to you the functions that I have used before. For the functions that are not mentioned, you can explore them on your own. If you find any useful unconventional functions, you can also tell me.

Weidian group buying, the group buying function was the main reason why we chose Weidian at that time, because our own APP does not support the group buying function, we can only rely on a third party.

There is a fee for activating the group buying function of Weidian, which is 18 yuan per month and 98 yuan for 6 months. The longer you buy, the lower the price. If you are not doing long-term activities, it is recommended to buy a one-month plan. We only used it once when we did a group purchase of courses, and bought a month's supply.

The group buying on Weidian only supports groups of 2 to 10 people. The gameplay of group buying is similar to the popular Pinduoduo. You can initiate group buying or participate in group buying. Our group buying activity at that time had an original price of 688 courses and a group buying price of 488 yuan. It was considered successful only if there were 3 people in the group.

In order to take advantage of this, users attract users from everywhere based on the principle of similar target users . A user who has the same needs will also have friends who have the same needs.

For example, if you are learning English, you will come into contact with many people who are also learning English. At this time, if you launch a group buying activity for English courses, it will be easy to cover the people who are learning English that you have come into contact with.

Weidian defined this activity as attracting new customers , but in actual operation, it turned into a disguised discount activity. Some users have a narrow social circle and cannot attract new users. What should we do?

We called on everyone within our existing user base to join in group buying, but it turned out that most of the users who participated in the group buying were old users, so it turned into a discount event for everyone. We must keep this in mind when using this function.

Flash sales, the purpose of flash sales is to attract traffic , and a large amount of traffic can be gathered in a short period of time. Because the flash sale prices are particularly attractive, we offer a course worth 100 yuan for only one yuan, and the number of places is limited to 50.

This is what flash sales work like. Only a small number of people can grab the items. Those who can’t grab the items become traffic, and when they browse around, they make purchases. This is the essence of flash sales.

There are two points to remember when running a flash sale. One is to give advance notice so that users know about the flash sale. Remember to let most users know. If only a small number of people know about the event, the flash sale loses its meaning.

Another thing is to implement account restrictions. Registration for a WeChat store is relatively simple. One mobile phone can register one store. When a family has several mobile phones, it may happen that one user can buy multiple items in one second.

Therefore, we have imposed account restrictions on the use of courses, so that even if a user grabs multiple redemption codes, they can only use them once, reducing the unfairness of the activity. During the event we were running, one user actually grabbed 4 redemption codes. It was so infuriating.

If it is a traditional industry, the money spent on flash sales is real money. For the scented tea that I just put on the shelves, I don’t plan to do flash sales at the moment because the cost is really high. But if I do, it’s also okay to do a flash sale once a month and sell one product each time. It can be said that I am very wealthy.

Group buying. The case of group buying has been mentioned before. Let’s briefly review it here. Group buying is a group buying activity initiated within a WeChat group . For example, if there are 10 places for a group purchase, only when 10 people in the current group sign up to join the group, can they be considered to have successfully joined the group and can they buy the goods at the group purchase price.

The advantage of group buying activities is that the function is free, unlike group buying activities which cost money. It is also relatively simple to create a group buying activity. You just need to set the start and end time of the activity, the number of group buyers and the discount price, and then forward it to the group.

As for the disadvantages, the front-end display is relatively low-quality, and the font size of the discount price is particularly small. When users go to the group joining page, they see the original price. If they don’t look carefully, they won’t be able to find the discount price, which will reduce their willingness to join the group.

There is no data monitoring. After the group buying activity was launched, I wanted to check in the background how many people had joined. Sorry, there was no such data. I could only go to the group and click on the link myself. Oh, three people had signed up.

This function of profit sharing for promotion was not used when I was operating the course, but when I was selling flower tea, the first thing I did was to set it up here. I set the promotion profit sharing ratio to 15%, that is, if any user helps me promote it, I will get a reward of 15% of the sales. Do you think that once you set it up here, someone will help you promote it? You are too naive.

In order to really let users help you promote, you have to complete the application for the supplier you are interested in. You need to submit various certificates such as business license and production license. There is also a self-service supply and marketing application in the supplier application.

After applying for this self-service trial sales function, normal users in the WeChat store will not be able to see our products. I don’t know why there is such a requirement and I decisively rejected the application.

Free shipping for orders over a certain amount. This is obviously the same thing as the shipping fee setting in the transaction settings. Until now, I still don’t know which one to use for the shipping fee setting. But it doesn’t matter, because all the flower tea I make is free shipping for one piece.

There are many such pitfalls in Weidian. I can’t find the entrance to change a certain function. For example, I want to modify my bank card, but I can’t find it! I wanted to modify the layout, and I finally found it through Baidu. No wonder Weidian can’t get off the ground. I guess the level of their product managers is blurred here.

Store decoration: Store decoration is the most important work in the early stage of a store establishment. When I first started my WeChat store, a friend asked me, can you decorate? I looked at the house I live in. What does not knowing how to decorate it have to do with running a WeChat store? Later I learned that decoration refers to store layout, design and other work.

The decoration of Weidian is mainly in the management of the store and the decoration market. The management of the store is a module setting, similar to building a framework. There are all kinds of templates in the decoration market, such as curtains and toilets at home, which are all in the decoration market.

I still have to complain here. There are many options in the templates in the decoration market, such as all, free, limited time discount, popular recommendations, clothing, etc. I checked free, and only 2 came out! 2! 2!

The other one was a supermarket template, which scared me so much that I quickly closed the decoration market. We will never do such a stupid thing as investing a lot of money in a platform before it even opens, unless we know the platform very well.

Auxiliary functions: Here I have classified functions such as news, business analysis, business school, and services into auxiliary functions. The role of these functions is icing on the cake. For example, the business school will tell you how to sell more goods, how to get more users, etc. To put it bluntly, it teaches you how to make your WeChat store better.

You can go and have a look when you have nothing to do. It’s better than wasting time eating chicken when you have nothing to do (I would rather starve to death than eat the chicken from this restaurant... Yeah, the chicken from this restaurant is really delicious!).

There are some minor functions in the service that can be studied, such as video marketing, buyer shows, robots and public account assistants.

3. Experience in operating WeChat stores

The basic process of opening a WeChat store

When I was promoting my WeChat store, I met many classmates who also wanted to open a WeChat store. When they came to me, they almost all asked the same question: How to open this WeChat store?

It’s actually very simple. First, you need a mobile phone, which should be no problem. Then download a WeChat store, which should also be no problem. Then register an account, which should still be no problem. Now comes the key point.

The process after registering an account is to complete the store information, put products on the shelves, decorate the store, test the purchase process, promote, and count money while lying down.

These are probably the steps above. These steps can be divided into early, middle and late stages. The early stage work is to build the infrastructure so that users can see the products in the store, place orders normally, sign for them by mail and settle the bill.

The initial work is one-time, similar to building a highway, which is time-consuming and important. If the initial infrastructure is not well done, the subsequent user conversion rate will be very poor and it will be difficult to generate revenue.

Complete the store information and fill in all the options that can be filled in. The more complete the information, the better. This will enhance user trust and thus increase conversion rate. When you first start filling out the information, your ideas may be bad or incomplete. You can fill them out first and then modify them later when you think of a better one.

For example, my store announcement starts with: Welcome. Because I couldn’t think of a better copy and I didn’t know where to display it. After a few days of promotion, the copy here became: The flower tea shop is open, and everyone is welcome to come and taste it. Although it’s not perfect, it’s much better than the first copy.

Try to fill in all the store information and store manager information that can be filled in, and certify all that can be certified. The text content is relatively simple. For a low-cost operation like ours, the most difficult part may be the pictures, such as logos and store signs, which you can actually design yourself with the help of the tools inside.

In the material center, you can design logos, product details pictures and advertising pictures. It is a very easy operation. We only need to modify the text and replace the image materials. Of course, if conditions permit, it is best to have your own designer.

After the store information is completed, the next step is to put the products on the shelves, which is a relatively large workload. The products on the shelves include the following content: 5 to 6 large pictures of the product, product name and price, and product details.

I upload products to Weidian on my mobile phone. After uploading, I just click on preview to see the effect. Moreover, operating on the mobile phone can achieve the purpose of mobile office. I can put products on and off the shelves while walking on the street or riding in a car.

Here we will talk about the most difficult product details. We know that the quality of product details will affect users’ purchasing behavior. What kind of product details can increase users’ purchase rate? It doesn’t seem appropriate to say “copy from peers”. Another way to put it is to learn from the excellent materials of peers.

When I was taking pictures of my baby, I specifically referred to the shooting angles of my peers and found that there are only two types: shooting from top to bottom and shooting at 45 degrees. Adding some small accessories, such as wooden spoons, flowers, etc., can make the photos look more beautiful and more upscale. A user even said, after seeing your pictures, I want to buy it.

This shows that our effect has been achieved. Remember to continuously optimize product materials until you find the version with the best conversion rate.

It should be noted that the products are put on the shelves before the store decoration. Without the product, it would be impossible to adjust the layout during decoration. I have three series of scented tea. In order to decorate the shop first so that it can be browsed normally, I put 2 to 3 SKUs for each series first, and then adjust the layout in the shop.

As a new WeChat store owner, I don’t know what the layout is and how it is displayed on the front end. So I added each module to see how it is displayed. It contains store image, navigation, advertising, recommendations, etc.

At present, I have only selected two modules: store image and recommendation. The others are not used yet. In addition, I would like to explain that the layout set here is on the APP side. It is a different scene in the Weidian mini program and there is no classification! No categories! No categories!

Although my classification is very beautiful, users cannot see it. Currently 95% of users access it through mini programs. I hope Weidian can improve this.

After the store is decorated and all the products are on the shelves, you can find an acquaintance to place an order and familiarize yourself with the entire purchasing process. When users make a purchase, Weidian will have a push notification, and it will be pushed twice, one for non-payment notification and the other for payment notification.

I have to complain about this. It seems that this is how it should be pushed. It is necessary to communicate with users who have added items to the shopping cart but have not paid in a timely manner by phone to solve the problem and promote transactions. But it is still annoying to push twice for each order.

After the user successfully purchases, I will contact the courier to mail the scented tea. After getting the courier number, I click the "Ship" button, enter the number, and submit . The user will receive a text message informing him that the goods have been shipped. This process is quite user-friendly.

Weidian can be set up to automatically receive goods within 7 days, so I won’t urge users to receive the goods and check the box “Received”, because the entrance to Weidian is really hard to find. After the courses I made were put on the Weidian shelves, users only had two questions: What is Weidian? How to enter WeChat store?

After completing the above work, the infrastructure is completed and promotion can be carried out. Before promoting the product, there is one small thing you need to do: self-test.

There are currently two versions of the Weidian APP, one is the store manager version and the other is the user version. I have downloaded both APPs, one is used to upload products, and the other is for self-testing from the user's perspective. For example, I often search for my store name on the user version to see where it ranks. Unfortunately, I have to flip through many pages to find it.

Moreover, the stores ranked ahead of me are not all those with exact word matches. It can be inferred that it is related to sales volume. Those ranked ahead have large sales volume. For example, when I first started, my sales volume was only 2 hearts, and it was already very good to be searched.

Promotion of WeChat Store

Even if the basic work is done well, if no users come in, it will just be a self-entertainment and will not generate a penny of profit. Therefore, the most important work in the future will be publicity and promotion.

When it comes to promotion on WeChat, I may have some advantages over people in traditional industries, because I’m in APP operation, I’ve attended meetings, visited channels, joined many groups, and added many friends. I counted and I find that I have several thousand friends on WeChat.

Most of them are in the Internet industry , which is consistent with the target users of our scented tea product. When I posted an advertisement for selling scented tea on WeChat Moments , some users came to ask me if it was very simple. Sometimes, if the method is right, the results will generally not be bad.

Some people looked at my circle of friends and defined me as a micro-businessman. As for that, I’ll talk about it when I become bigger. Unlike other people’s Moments, every picture I post will have a long-press identification button to enter the WeChat store details page for purchasing the picture. This way, when users see the beautiful pictures , they don’t need to consult me, they can just go directly to the page to make the purchase.

It not only saves communication costs, but also is different from Wechat business. If every order is transferred to me by user via WeChat, it always feels like it can't be big. Just imagine, if there are 1,000 orders a day, wouldn't the transfer be very hectic?

If you frequently post advertisements on your personal account, you will be blocked by others sooner or later, so I later applied for a small account. In order to guide users to the small account, I also tried various methods. Generally speaking, the effect is okay.

At the peak in one day, we had over 300 new users. Based on the calculation of 50 yuan per user, I made more than 10,000 yuan in one day. There is also a killer method of onboarding users, which I haven’t tried yet, but I expect the effect to be good.

Because I have tried it before with my personal WeChat account, and added dozens of users at one time, but gave up because I was worried that my account would be blocked. So of course I can give it a try with a small account.

Weidian has an advantage over Taobao on WeChat. Users who follow my official account can receive notifications from Weidian. Users can see store information by replying "buy" or "push". Every time I see a new message notification in the background of the official account, I guess that someone has replied with the word "buy".

In order to promote WeChat store, I also created a new column called "Tiger's Tea" in the menu bar. After the user clicks on it, they will receive a picture with the mini program code of my flower tea shop. Users can long press to identify and enter my WeChat store mini program to view the background data. The menu bar clicks more than once per person, which can also bring some traffic to my store.

4. E-commerce monetization ideas

When I really started doing e-commerce and encountered problems, I realized that it was not easy to do e-commerce. The first problem was how to get the goods? How to put products on the shelves? These are not difficult problems at the moment. The most difficult ones are the following two: where does the traffic come from? How to do the channel?

Where does the traffic come from?

I have been thinking about this question these days and have asked many colleagues. Those who do Taobao business say that it is not easy to do. They try to invest in through trains, but there is no effect. If the optimization ranking level is not high enough, they cannot do it.

Compared with Taobao, the problem of Weidian is much more serious. For example, if I promote it and a user is interested in our scented tea and wants to buy a box, I tell him to go to Weidian to buy it, but he may not be able to find our entrance at all. He can only find it by sending a link to him.

I have encountered several users who came to me and asked for the link to our store, saying that they could not find the chat records. If the users are from outside, the chain will be broken and the effect of publicity and promotion will be greatly reduced.

The problems exposed above will determine the source of our traffic. The strategy I set is to direct external traffic to Taobao and WeChat traffic to Weidian. Weidian and Taobao both play the role of closing the channel. As a closing channel, the core is to be able to be found by potential users.

Let’s talk about Weidian first. All the users who I promote in my circle of friends forward the Weidian mini program to each other. In fact, compared with Taobao, it is not very convenient, and users have to re-enter the mailing contact information. But the advantage of not having to leave WeChat made me decide to stick with Weidian.

If you just run a WeChat store, I don’t think it will be big, the real big part is still on Taobao. So where does the traffic on Taobao come from?

At present, I am more optimistic about the king of selling goods - Douyin . As I said, as long as the method is right, the result will often not be bad. I looked at Peppa Pig and scented tea in my hands and couldn't help but smile. Let's see if my Peppa Pig fried scented tea video can go viral.

How to do the channel?

Deep cultivation and meticulous work are the main ways to build good channels. Taking Weidian as an example, we need to clearly know each function of Weidian and what it can do. For example, free materials and free activity templates can all be used.

I guess many people who have run WeChat stores for several months or years don’t know that there are activity templates to choose from. Users are visual animals first, so you need to attract their attention first. Then they become rational animals, and decide whether to buy after evaluating the quality of the product.

The templates provided in Weidian can catch the user's attention if used properly. As for whether the transaction can be completed, it depends on the previous infrastructure.

Each channel has its own characteristics and rules. It is very valuable to be able to fully understand the channel rules. Whether you work for others or do it yourself, you can get good treatment.

It takes time to become familiar with the rules. It is impossible to fully master them without a year or two. Although I am good at users and promotions, I still lack understanding of the rules of e-commerce and I am still constantly learning.

As a small e-commerce channel with complete functions, Weidian is very suitable for us office workers and start-up companies. When I was running Weidian, some people said that it was difficult to run a Weidian and it would not be successful. I believe this is true. Just like Taobao, only a small number of stores can make money.

In summary, these are some of the experiences I have summarized since I launched my flower tea on WeChat store. They may not be completely correct, and some of them will be constantly adjusted as I get to know WeChat store better, such as search. Once I have figured out the rules, I will share them with you in a timely manner.

We also hope that those who want to make a good profit through e-commerce can learn valuable knowledge. I have been engaged in operations and I know that if you want to make a good product, you must control the details, study the platform functions, understand the platform rules, and play with the platform rules. Then it will be so easy to build this platform.

The author of this article @老虎 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games