The mini program is launched amazingly, but why do I think it is bad?
|
In the early morning of January 9, the WeChat mini program was stunningly launched, instantly dominating the Moments and sparking discussions in various product manager groups. Zhang Xiaolong immediately wrote a date on his Moments - 2007.1.9, and attached a photo of the Apple conference, implying that this was a symbol of an era. However, based on my experience and thoughts on mini programs today, I personally am not very optimistic about mini programs, unless Tencent makes major adjustments to its subsequent development ideas. Why do I say this? Here are some of my thoughts: 1. The name of the mini program is too professional We have to admit that the word "program" looks more professional, and people's first impression will be associated with concepts such as computer programs. Even a term like "mini program" will undoubtedly deepen the user's psychological threshold. For people in the Internet circle, perhaps this naming does not make much difference. However, for older users, or users in third- and fourth-tier cities, they may not quite understand the meaning of mini programs at first glance. The main focus of mini programs is services in different offline scenarios. It is impossible for them not to spread to second- and third-tier cities, otherwise they will not be able to support an ecosystem. If this is the case, mini programs may eventually become just a plaything for the Internet circle or young users, and there is still a long way to go before they can cover more users. Personally, I think it would be better to name it "mini apps", which may be more in line with everyone's usage habits, because regardless of age, smartphone users basically know the concept of downloading apps in the app market . 2. Mini Program Entry Costs Are High Currently, only users who have activated any mini program can see the mini program in the Discover column of WeChat . However, the cost of using this entrance is too high, mainly reflected in the following three points: 01. The cost of using a mini program for the first time is high. Even if users upgrade WeChat to the latest version, they will no longer be able to see the mini program in the discovery column. Only when users actively activate the mini program once will the entrance to the mini program appear in the discovery column. From a product perspective, this kind of user guidance is relatively poor, making it more difficult for users to discover the mini program. Therefore, many users don’t know how to find the mini program at the first time. When I saw the screenshots of the mini program in the circle of friends, I also looked up a lot of information before I knew how to use the mini program. As for some older users, they probably won’t be able to find the entrance to the mini program without anyone’s guidance. 02. Currently only precise search is supported, not search search. In the search interface of the mini program, we can only search for this mini program if we search for the full name of "mini program" and there are no typos. If you search for "Mobai Bicycle", you will not find the corresponding mini program. Fuzzy search in the form of keywords is not supported. If you search for keywords such as "weather" and "shopping", you will not find the corresponding mini-programs. This will undoubtedly increase the user's usage costs, and for mini-program developers, the chances of entry display will be smaller. 03. There is no message notification to remind users. Precisely because of Zhang Xiaolong’s “use it and go” philosophy, after using a WeChat mini program, there is basically no channel to notify users and urge them to use it again, except for the search entrance, which will arrange the used mini programs in order of use. This may really have a fatal impact on a small program that is launched online for the first time. 3. Mini Program promotion costs are high As we all know, during the use of mini programs, the mobile phone does not support long-pressing QR code recognition, and does not support sharing mini programs to Moments. Zhang Xiaolong once said that regarding mini programs, there are no stores, no WeChat entrances, and no ability to push messages. Therefore, this is undoubtedly a major limitation for businesses that want to rely on mini programs to achieve viral spread. Then, the way to promote mini programs on a large scale is undoubtedly to use offline promotion . However, the offline promotion method itself is time-consuming, labor-intensive and extremely costly. It is difficult for small and medium-sized startups or individuals to accept such a promotion model. In addition, it is to guide users to accurately search for the full name of the mini program on WeChat, which undoubtedly requires extremely high educational costs and requires the product brand to have extremely high popularity and relevance to usage scenarios. So, if you want to achieve such brand awareness, you will definitely spend a lot of advertising and promotion costs. In summary, whether you use online or offline promotion methods, it will cost extremely high costs to promote mini programs on a large scale in the market. 4. The mini program experience is very general Compared with native APPs, the experience of mini programs is very average, and many core functions of APPs are castrated. Taking the "Xiachufang" app as an example, one of the functions I often use is the vegetable basket function. That is, when we have determined a recipe, we can directly see the ingredients needed for this dish. The Kitchenette app only supports searching and collecting recipes, which is completely unable to satisfy users who want more functions. Similarly, there is the Didi Taxi app, which can only call express cars, not private cars or taxis. When using Toutiao , you can only manually refresh to view text news and videos, and you cannot use Toutiao’s most core precise algorithm recommendations and personal subscription functions. I personally feel that the experience of a mini program like this that has its core functions cut off is very poor. Some people say that you can use mini programs to uninstall some seldom-used apps. I personally don’t think that’s very optimistic, after all, the functions of mini programs are too limited. If your phone has enough memory, there is no need to uninstall the app. 5. Conflicts between developers and the mini-program ecosystem WeChat wants to connect everything, connecting people with people, connecting people with services, connecting people with businesses, and connecting people with things. However, when developers develop mini-programs, they undoubtedly value the user and traffic dividends of WeChat. The ultimate goal of all developers is to promote their own apps or products. If WeChat continues to stick to their current restrained attitude and allows all mini-program developers to play within the WeChat system, then for developers, investing manpower to develop mini-programs and spending huge amounts of money to promote them, but ultimately failing to obtain traffic and users, will be completely unable to support the developers' business model . In this case, developers will definitely not invest all their energy in mini programs, but will only use mini programs as an important part of supplementing promotion channels. Therefore, it can be predicted that mini programs will eventually become a battlefield for Internet channel promotion , filled with the atmosphere of channel promotion, which is completely contradictory to the original idea of WeChat mini programs to build an ecosystem. The above are some of my thoughts on mini programs. Some people say that the launch of mini programs may intensify WeChat’s monopoly and highlight the ambitions of the Tencent empire. However, I think that as a new thing, mini programs still have a lot of room for improvement. There is no need to be too optimistic about mini programs, and there is no need to deify them. In the future, mini programs may still have a long way to go. Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising The author of this article @大雄 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! |
>>: Viable business models for live streaming products: I have summarized 13
![Top Community Operator Club: Practical Methods + Traffic + Projects + IP + Tools 9 Major Rights Empowerment [Video Tutorial]](/upload/images/67cc33987c165.webp)
Recommend
At what time and how many episodes of Ancient God King are updated every week? The update time and plot summary of the Ancient God King
Today, the romantic new martial arts film "T...
We studied 500 vertical screen ads and revealed the 5 rules for making Tik Tok hits!
I have three Tik Tok communities , which contain ...
How do these Werewolf Killing APPs build channels and quickly acquire users?
In addition to short videos , Werewolf was also a...
Promotion tips: How to define new users?
In our product operation practice, the definition...
Bandwidth and storage costs of renting Tik Tok short video servers
The field of short videos has increasingly become...
Well-known APP marketing director teaches you: How to plan an efficient marketing operation plan?
What? Reading and understanding this article can ...
Soul and Tantan product analysis
With the continuous development of the Internet e...
Tik Tok e-commerce marketing system!
Relying on a huge content ecosystem and interest-...
Product and operation, why can’t you do conversion analysis well?
This article will share with you the necessity an...
This article teaches you how to use ByteDance search ads!
Starting from exploring search technology in 2016...
A collection of frequently asked questions about short video operations!
We always face many problems when making short vi...
Analysis of ideas and steps for writing online promotion plans
Internet promotion, a promotion method that requi...
2500 words user retention analysis
Faced with the current situation of difficulty in...
Introduction and tips for iQiyi splash screen ads and information flow ads!
Often, advertisers will ask, iQiyi has so many ad...