The heartfelt words of mini program developers: Why can’t small and medium-sized merchants develop mini programs?

I have been engaged in the development of small programs for 5 years, and helped more than 100 small and medium-sized businesses to connect and develop small programs. According to my statistics, none of these more than 100 small and medium-sized businesses can successfully operate the small program. Most of them abandoned the small program after a three-minute enthusiasm, or they operated it carefully but did not see the effect, so they did not persist. WeChat's vigorously promoted small programs are so bleak in the hands of small business users. What is the problem here? I have been thinking about it, and now I am leaving this industry. Let me share the results of my thinking with you.

Why can’t small businesses use mini programs?

First, small businesses themselves have problems with the positioning of mini programs

In my opinion, the mini program is a "infrastructure" product of WeChat to improve its own business model. The mini program itself is just a tool and it does not bring traffic. To put it in another way, the mini program is like a sword. Only in the hands of a martial arts master can it have the power to kill the enemy and break the armor.

However, many merchants, seeing the popularity of mini programs, use them as a traffic-generating tool. They think that as long as they make a good mini program and leave it there, people will come in and buy it. They put their hard-earned sword aside, thinking that it will fly out and slay demons, which is unrealistic. Mini programs are just a transaction platform, and they need to cooperate with other traffic-generating measures to work.

Here, I would like to advise everyone that if you want to use mini programs to improve your transaction channels, then go ahead and do it. If you want to use mini programs as a new traffic growth point to boost sales, then it is tantamount to starting a business again. You must be prepared with human, material and financial resources.

Second, small businesses do not have the ability to operate mini programs

The operation of mini programs requires the cooperation of multiple types of workers such as artists, copywriters, and planners. Even though one person can have multiple roles, at least one person should be responsible for the mini program. However, I found that this is impossible for many small and medium-sized businesses. They simply do not have the financial resources to hire another person to operate the mini program. Many times, the boss does it himself, or designates an employee to do it, but they also have their own work to do, which results in no one operating the mini program after it goes online.

Here I would like to remind you that you should never underestimate the time and energy required to operate a mini program. Although it is called a mini program, it is not small in complexity. Customer service, delivery, event planning, copywriting promotion, poster production and other tasks need to be done by someone. However, many small business owners rarely use online shopping. It is simply a fantasy to ask them to do these things. Therefore, it is definitely not an arbitrary statement that mini programs are incapable of operating mini programs, but the experience gained from more than 100 merchants.

Third, small businesses do not have the strength to promote

Mini Program is essentially an APP that does not need to be installed. As we said earlier, Mini Program only needs traffic to run. So do you know how much the customer acquisition cost of an APP is now? Pinduoduo's answer is 286 yuan, and JD.com and Taobao are even higher. Although Mini Program is built into WeChat and traffic is relatively convenient, the cost is not low if you calculate it carefully. As I said earlier, many small merchants directly use Mini Program as a traffic-generating tool. They did not expect that Mini Program would also need traffic, the cost of traffic generation would be so high, and the effect of traffic generation would be so poor.

There are rich and poor ways to attract traffic, either by spending money or time. One of the poor ways is to forward it to WeChat friends, groups, and Moments one by one. It is simple and violent, but it only attracts users to the mini program. It takes some other means to cultivate stickiness, which will be discussed at the end.

The way to get rich is to place advertisements. You can place advertisements on official accounts, WeChat Moments, etc. Of course, the price is not cheap, and Tencent is not responsible for the advertising effect. In August 2020, one of my clients who sells handbags placed 20,000 yuan of information flow advertisements on WeChat Moments, which brought less than 1,000 visiting customers. As for the transaction amount, it was a big zero. The magical Internet shocked the boss. (As an aside, for small and medium-sized businesses, information flow advertisements are also a pitfall. As for why, I will write an article in detail later)

How to cultivate user stickiness? Just remember one point: a continuous stream of discounts

For example, Suning Super does it this way, giving out 20 yuan red envelopes every week. From August 2020 to now, it has been given out for 5 months, with a total value of 400 yuan, which is real money expenditure. If you observe carefully, big companies basically play this way, just throwing money, simple, violent and effective. Merchants with limited financial resources can only think of various ways to play, sign in, draw, and tasks, all of which are done. For a prize of 100 yuan, they would like to have 100 ways to play, and the threshold is set very high. This will only tire themselves, make customers suffer, and hurt their reputation. So don't learn the fancy marketing methodologies on the Internet. You just need to grasp the core things, that is, discounts. If you don't have so much money to send red envelopes, then the price of the product can always be lower. Traffic diversion is so realistic. You spend one cent and you get one cent of effect. If you don't have a budget, even Ye Maozhong can't save you.

Let me say something off topic. In the first point, I mentioned that merchants have misjudged the positioning of mini programs. What exactly caused their misjudgment? A very important reason is that the head effect of mini programs is particularly serious. The health codes, chess and card games, Pinduoduo, etc. that we often come into contact with all have mini program terminals, and they are used very frequently. Therefore, merchants will think that mini programs are indeed easy to use, and they will have the idea of ​​making mini programs. But little do they know that this is just an appearance. The health code mini program can be used because of administrative power.

McDonald's mini program is available thanks to its huge scale of tens of thousands of stores and tens of millions of customers.

The Pinduoduo mini program can be used because of the crazy traffic diversion of WeChat and the countless human and material resources invested

So it is true that not everyone is suitable for mini programs. If you have certain experience in Internet e-commerce operations and have the time, financial resources and manpower, then mini programs are still worth a try.

If you want to expand sales channels just because your offline sales are blocked, then I suggest you think twice.