Collection level! Not only WeChat and Alipay, this article will show you all the mini program platforms

There are more and more platforms for mini programs, and developers' attention is increasingly dispersed. In fact, what are the characteristics of these platforms? What are their representative works? How many entrances do they have? Is the development cost high? What kind of support policies do they provide to developers?

This article analyzes the six major mini program platforms for you.

WeChat

About WeChat Mini Programs

On January 9, 2017, WeChat Mini Program was officially launched. After three years of development, it has become the mini program development platform that developers pay the most attention to. In August 2018, Ma Huateng revealed that 1.5 million developers have joined the mini program development team, the number of mini program applications has exceeded 1 million, covering more than 200 sub-industries, and the number of daily active users has reached 200 million. The 2018 annual financial report also shows that the number of daily active accounts of WeChat Mini Program has grown rapidly, and the average daily visits per user has increased by 54% year-on-year, and the mid- and long-tail mini programs also account for 43% of the total daily visits of mini programs.

Among mini-games, WeChat already has outstanding mini-games with monthly revenue exceeding 100 million. The number of mini-games with monthly revenue exceeding 10 million from in-app purchase items has increased to 10, and 11 mini-games with monthly advertising revenue exceeding 10 million. The success of the top mini-games is self-evident, but from the perspective of the entire industry, a 30-day retention rate of 43% is also excellent.

The social relationships in WeChat make Mini Programs more attractive, and Mini Programs make WeChat's "operating system dream" a reality. In WeChat, Mini Programs have connection and service capabilities beyond official accounts, and can also connect official accounts, group chats, conversations, and Moments to provide users with more extensive and richer services.

Representative works

Mini Programs: Pinduoduo, Tiaoyitiao, Xianwushuo, Xiaodaka, Qingmang, Xiaoniangao, Chengchema, Yueshengshi, etc.

Mini games: Jump, Physical Pinball, Brain King, Happy Landlord, Star Path WeGoing, Badminton Master, etc.

Main Entrance

The mini program interface that is pulled down from WeChat chat is one of the most important entrances to mini programs. Mini program cards in chats, mini programs in public account tweets, shared mini programs, and scattered mini programs are all important entrances to mini programs.

According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 60 entrances to WeChat mini programs.

Development costs

The main development language of mini programs is JavaScript. Mini program development is very similar to ordinary web development. For front-end developers, the development cost of migrating from web development to mini programs is not high, but there are still some differences between the two. After all, mini programs are still in a closed program running environment.

• Development documentation: https://developers.weixin.qq.com/miniprogram/dev/index.html

Support policies

WeChat has launched different support plans for mini-programs and mini-games.

Mini Programs

Tencent Cloud announced the launch of the "Mini Program·Cloud Development" resource support plan at the WeChat Open Class, which is worth 1 billion. The plan is divided into three mechanisms: long-term universal support, advanced support, and high-level support. The basic version package, professional version resources, and flagship version resources provided by Tencent Cloud are all support rewards.

Minigames

Creative mini-game incentive plan: creative identification, initial users, profit-sharing incentives, and creative protection.

Seed User Plan: For new games, WeChat will allocate equal number of seed users without discrimination. After the first batch of equal number of users without discrimination is released, WeChat will continue to observe the data of all mini-games and give the second batch of seed users to new games based on the platform's data model. In addition to these two plans, the receivable transfer and receivable withholding provided by WeChat will help developers to turn around quickly. At the same time, the commission rate for ordinary developers will be further reduced. Mini-games with monthly turnover below 500,000 are exempt from commission. For the part of monthly turnover above 500,000, the commission for in-game purchases is 40%; for the part of daily turnover below 1 million, the commission for advertising is 50%.

Alipay

About Alipay Mini Program

On September 12, 2018, the Alipay Mini Program was officially launched, mainly active in the business and life fields, and does not support mini games for the time being (strictly speaking, it currently only supports game mini programs developed by Alipay, such as "Jie Le"). It is reported that as of January 2019, the number of Alipay Mini Programs has increased to 130,000, the number of daily active users has exceeded 230 million, and the average 7-day retention rate is 43.26%.

Currently, the Alipay Mini Program is open to corporate accounts and personal accounts (limited public beta testing for individual developers has been launched).

Alipay's real-name authentication and its linkage with "money" make both users and merchants feel more trusting; and its unique credit system allows Alipay to shine in scenarios related to deposits and leasing. For example, Alipay applets such as shared bicycles and shared power banks provide users with convenient services such as no deposit after being connected to Sesame Credit.

Representative works

No deposit required: Laidian, Neisha, Renren Rent a Phone, Hello Travel, etc.

Others: Good Food Period, Youth League Part-time Job, Air Travel, Tao Piao Piao Movies, etc.

Main Entrance

It mainly includes the search bar at the top of the Alipay app homepage and the "Mini Program Collection" that can be pulled down from the homepage.

Development costs

The overall architecture is basically the same as that of WeChat Mini Program. If you want to migrate WeChat Mini Program to Alipay, you only need to rename the Mini Program file suffix, some event functions and some APIs.

• Development documentation: https://docs.alipay.com/mini/introduce

Support policies

On March 21, at the 2019 Alibaba Cloud Summit in Beijing, Alibaba's Alibaba Cloud, Alipay, Taobao, DingTalk, and AutoNavi jointly launched the "Alibaba Mini Program Star Plan": providing 2 billion yuan in subsidies to support 2 million+ mini program developers and 1 million+ merchants. All mini programs selected as "Super Star" will also receive key traffic support after entering Alipay, Taobao, DingTalk, and AutoNavi.

Baidu

About Baidu Smart Mini Program

On July 4, 2018, Baidu Smart Mini Program was officially launched, mainly running on Baidu App, with four main features: "experience, traffic, intelligence, and openness". It is understood that in December, Baidu App had opened more than 40 traffic entrances for Mini Programs, and provided Mini Program developers with more than 60 AI interfaces and more than 20 NA components.

Baidu Smart Mini Program supports the development of mini-games, but the main entities currently supported are media, enterprises, governments and other organizations. Individual developers are temporarily unable to join.

Representative works

AI related: iRap, Chimelong AR Zoo, AI triage assistant, etc.

Others: Xiaohongshu, iQiyi Video, Geometry Escape, Tieba, etc.

Main Entrance

You can access Baidu Smart Mini Programs from the Baidu app's search bar, search results, or the "My" menu at the bottom.

For more Baidu smart mini-program entrances, please check 👉 "Baidu's search traffic is finally fully open! The new entrance is in the main scene of the flagship product"

Development costs

The overall structure is basically the same as that of WeChat Mini Program. If you want to migrate WeChat Mini Program to Baidu, you only need to use Baidu's "Migration Tool" to convert the existing WeChat Mini Program.

• Development documentation: https://smartprogram.baidu.com/docs/introduction/enter_application/

Support policies

At the Baidu World Conference in 2018, Baidu announced the "Developer Co-construction Plan" for Smart Mini Programs - "Thousands, Hundreds and Elevens", which respectively correspond to Baidu opening up 100 billion user traffic across the globe to Smart Mini Programs, providing 10 billion in advertising revenue, establishing an innovation fund to provide investment and promotion, and providing one-on-one dedicated services like open classes.

Taobao

About "Light Shop"

In September 2018, the mini program "Light Store" on Taobao Mobile began internal testing. Taobao "Light Store" is a tool that supports individuals or companies to open stores, with functions such as group chat, article publishing, store navigation, etc. It is understood that "Light Store" will collect Taobao brand owners' live broadcasts, Weitao content and store information to form an information block, which will pop up when users search for the brand online.

Representative works

Strictly speaking, only Starbucks China is a true “light store” on Taobao Mobile, which is connected to the Alipay Mini Program at the bottom layer. Although other Taobao stores also have the iconic “capsule button” of the Mini Program, they are not Mini Programs, and the capsule button is different from the “light store” button.

Main Entrance

Search "Starbucks China" on Taobao and enter from the banner at the top.

Development costs

As it is still in the internal testing stage, developers can send their name, contact information, company name, and position to [email protected] to apply to become an internal testing user. Users who do not obtain the internal testing qualification will not be able to settle in.

ByteDance

About ByteDance Mini Programs

On November 8, 2018, ByteDance's mini program was officially launched. The mini program aims to use the usage scenarios associated with and generated by high-quality content to divert traffic to the mini program and solve the problems of developers' traffic and conversion. The advantage of Toutiao's mini program is that it can serve multiple products by developing a set of mini programs. Mini programs developed on the ByteDance developer platform have the opportunity to appear on different platforms such as Douyin and Xigua Video.

Currently, the mini-programs that ByteDance is well-known for are mostly existing content on other platforms. However, in the fields of games, e-commerce, entertainment, etc., ByteDance has more impressive works. However, since the platform is still in the development stage, many content structures have not yet been perfected.

At present, ByteDance has not yet released its mini program data.

Representative works

Mini-games: Light and Forest, Planetary Destruction, Music Balls, One-stroke Painting, etc.

Main Entrance

The article details page of Toutiao, micro Toutiao, short videos, search and other entrances are all entrances to Toutiao mini-programs. The new version of Toutiao's "Common" bottom navigation bar is also testing a new interface similar to the mini-program desktop. On other platforms, there is also a corresponding mini-program entrance in the lower left corner of the short video of Douyin.

Development costs

ByteDance Mini Programs do not currently support one-click conversion tools. They do not currently support frameworks such as wepy and mpvue. Developers are required to actively compile the code developed using the wepy framework into the syntax of the Mini Program in order to render it normally on Toutiao.

• Development documentation: https://microapp.bytedance.com/

Support policies

Currently, the support policy announced by ByteDance is only for small games. For ordinary games, developers can get 60% of the daily advertising revenue that does not exceed 1 million, and developers can keep 50% of the part that exceeds 1 million.

Games first released by ByteDance will receive more resources. Developers can get 70% of the daily advertising revenue that does not exceed 1 million, and for the part that exceeds 1 million, developers can retain 60%.

Quick App

About Quick Apps

vivo, Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Gionee, Meizu, ZTE, Nubia, OnePlus, Hisense, and China Mobile want to work together to create a new application form based on the mobile phone hardware platform. The Quick Application Alliance, composed of twelve mobile phone manufacturers and service providers, is coming in full force. It covers 1 billion devices, has 200 million monthly active users, has opened 2 billion quick applications, has retained 100 million desktop icons, and 35% of the traffic comes from desktop retained icons.

There is a high degree of homogeneity between quick apps and other mini-program platform applications, and the 12 partners in the alliance also have significant differences in the allocation of resources to developers.

Representative works

Tools: Cainiaoguoguo, Xichuangzhu, Toast toolbox, etc.

Main Entrance

There are four types of entrances for quick apps: application distribution, smart scenarios, secondary entrances, and developer entrances

Development costs

Quick apps are developed using the front-end technology stack and native rendering, and have the dual advantages of HTML 5 pages and native apps. Quick apps are developed using the MVVM design pattern, and developers do not need to directly operate the addition and deletion of DOM nodes, but use a data-driven approach to complete node updates.

Compared with WeChat and Alipay applets, the development syntax standards of quick apps are closer to traditional web pages.

• Development documentation: https://doc.quickapp.cn/

In addition to the mini programs launched by the above-mentioned major platforms, mini programs have also appeared on Youku, DingTalk, and NetEase Cloud Music.

Youku’s mini-program interface, DingTalk’s E-application, and NetEase Cloud Music’s “Private Recommendations”.

Thanks to the efforts of several existing platforms, the existence of mini programs and the service forms they represent have been recognized by more and more platforms. These platforms may not go all in on mini programs, but they will also make more attempts on mini programs within their own ecosystems.

Compared with a mature and inclusive platform, these platforms have strict category restrictions, or simply convert the original H5 content into mini programs, or just imitate the interface similar to the mini program. For developers, they do not seem to be an open development platform, but they are also closely related to the mini program.