Alipay and WeChat focus on search, and the second half of mini programs may see a change

Mini programs are becoming popular again.

Recently, WeChat announced that "Search" has officially opened service search access. After merchants that meet the conditions configure "Service Search" in the background of the official account, the relevant mini-program services will have the opportunity to be displayed in the search.

Judging from the internal test pictures of WeChat products circulating online, the WeChat search results page is quite similar to that of Alipay, with mini-program services placed at the top and segmented services directly exposed. This is a signal that both platforms have begun to focus on search paths.

When the wind rises, the clouds surge.

According to Sina Technology, Alipay has reorganized its search business, and Yuan Huaibin, the former head of Taobao search operations, has been transferred to Alipay search product operations. In the past two months, Alipay has opened up centralized traffic on the homepage search and upgraded the search box, which has led to the emergence of the first batch of merchants in its ecosystem whose performance has rebounded due to search operations.

Undoubtedly, the two major domestic mini program platforms have increased their investment in "service search", which means that mini program search services have become the focus of major platforms this year, and service search may become a new fulcrum for mini programs in the second half.

1. Mini Programs Become "Big" + "Scan" Is Obstructed, Supply and Demand Rise, Urgent Need for "Search" as a Fish Knife

Everything that happens has its own reasons.

There are both internal and external factors that have led to mini program service search becoming popular.

In terms of internal factors, the number of mini programs has increased significantly, and the number of users has increased. According to a report by iResearch Consulting, as of the end of 2019, the number of mini programs monitored in the domestic market was 4.5 million, exceeding the 3.67 million APPs, and has become the most important way for users to access content and services. In addition, the report shows that the user awareness of mini programs is as high as 86.2%.

This also means that the cost of users screening mini programs will increase, the platform's matching efficiency will face challenges, and the competition among mini program merchants will become more intense. Especially under the purely decentralized operation model, the 28 effect will be intensified, and the cold start and commercialization difficulties of mid- and low-end merchants will become increasingly prominent.

In terms of external factors, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic has forced many offline merchants to close their stores. The traditional path of acquiring customers through "scanning" of mini programs has been blocked, and there is an urgent need to find new traffic channels.

In the face of internal and external troubles, in order to solve the current problems, the mini program platform has tailored a "fish knife" - service search.

The so-called "fish knife" is a strange knife invented by the Dutch that is specially tailored for herring. Before, processing herring required a lot of processes, but with the "fish knife", it can be solved in one step. Its appearance has achieved multiple goals at one stroke, making a qualitative leap in the processing efficiency during the peak season of herring fishing. This invention also helped the Netherlands develop into a strong country in maritime logistics and trade.

However, whether "service search" can become the "opening knife" to solve the problem of mini programs, "Mantid Finance" believes that it mainly depends on how much it empowers the conversion rate of service search, which is specifically manifested in the following aspects:

First of all, service search needs to be “straight to the point”. Compared with centralized channel entrances, information flow recommendations and other methods, when users search for services, they expect to reach them quickly and directly. Through search, presenting services on the result page is only the most basic demand, and the core demand is whether services can be found faster. Therefore, the weight of mini program services in the search results page is critical.

Taking the keyword "express delivery" entered in the search box on the homepage of Alipay and WeChat as an example, Mantis Finance found that Alipay services are displayed at the top of the search results; WeChat-related services are displayed after chats and public accounts, and need to be obtained by clicking "Search". In comparison, the former is more convenient to access, and the logic behind it is not difficult to understand. Alipay's strategic positioning is the digitalization of the service industry, and the traditional financial chassis also belongs to the category of services. Therefore, the mini-program service is bound to occupy the highest weight on the search results page. As an operating system and connector, WeChat aims to connect services while maintaining the basic social and content base. This also means that WeChat's search results need to make choices and balance in the order of presenting the results of the three businesses.

Secondly, accurate matchmaking requires "meticulous attention to detail" to ensure maximum conversion rate. Another purpose of service search is accurate matching. Compared with traditional searches that only present brand names, today's searches are becoming verticalized, and the search results further reveal the segmented services provided by merchants, allowing users to see at a glance when searching.

Taking the search for "express delivery" as an example, the search results of Alipay are mini-program services displayed with different functional requirements, such as express delivery check, door-to-door pickup, same-city express delivery, and life services. WeChat displays express delivery brands such as SF Express, ZTO Express, and Deppon Express. The commonality between the two is that both are refining the service search. The difference is that Alipay focuses on the detailed division of functions, while WeChat focuses on listing different express delivery companies.

Finally, search services need to be "both in form and in spirit". For merchants, if service search stops at configuring keywords, then service search operations are only "form". To have "spirit" and to lead the industry through service search, merchants need to have the ability and motivation to operate their own search, which belongs to the "infrastructure" that the platform should provide.

In this regard, Alipay has gone a step further and extended the centralized + decentralized gameplay to search operations. In the classical Internet era, search operations were decentralized, and merchants spent money on SEO (search engine optimization) to allow brand official websites to appear in good positions on the search results page. But the inevitable result of this path is that only the top 20% of merchants who can afford the resources can win, and they need to continue to invest funds. Alipay opens up the centralized search traffic and outputs it to merchants in the form of incentives rather than purchases. Long-tail, mid-level and top merchants can all participate.

According to the "Supporting Excellence Plan" released by Alipay in March, when merchants make certain self-operation improvements and meet the conditions, they can obtain rights and interests including search weight improvement, search keyword increase, and centralized traffic incentives. Based on centralized traffic, merchants can further retain customers.

Alipay has disclosed a set of data. Two months after the launch of the "Supporting Excellent Program", an average of 100 life service mini programs with more than 10,000 monthly active users have been added every week. Currently, life services account for nearly 60% of the total user searches on Alipay, a three-fold increase over last year. Among them are small and medium-sized merchants such as "Papai before eating", which increased the number of mini program transactions by 300% in two months through optimized search operations; and Huolala, a relatively large head logistics platform. Although the business volume once dropped by more than 90% during the epidemic period, through self-operation methods such as search and centralized traffic incentives, the mini program orders increased by 667% month-on-month, which exceeded the pre-epidemic period.

Merchants that have experienced a V-shaped rebound due to search operations have begun to appear in large numbers on Alipay. Mantis Finance believes that the "fish-cutting knife" of service search has begun to show its effect, and this will be a trend.

2. From the concentration of “service rights” to their redistribution, why has search become the new fulcrum of mini programs in the second half?

The emergence of mini program service search is not only inevitable, but also necessary.

From the functional attributes of search itself. In the PC era, information was initially transmitted through portal websites. As online information became more and more abundant, search tools came into being, which effectively met users' needs for information screening and matching.

The same is true for mini-programs. Recently, Ant Group CEO Hu Xiaoming said that Alipay currently has 2 million mini-programs, with over 600 million monthly active users. WeChat is another mini-program platform with over a million mini-programs. With so many mini-program services, it is necessary to match demand through "service search", and both of them do just that.

Let’s go back to the mini program itself.

On the one hand, mini programs originated from APP, and their essence is to bring users "closer to services."

As business service, information service and social service platforms, Alipay, Baidu and WeChat each have their own advantages in connecting business, information and people.

Compared with WeChat, Alipay and Baidu have stronger service genes in terms of service resources and user mindset. Centralized operation can help platform service providers quickly launch mini-programs and bring users closer to services. WeChat mainly has social resources, and decentralized operation is used to make up for the shortcomings of service resources and user mindset more quickly.

But no matter what, the different strategies of the three in the first half are all aimed at gathering "service rights" through mini programs. In the second half, how to make the gathered "services" release greater potential can only be achieved by bringing services closer to users through "search".

On the other hand, mini programs are derived from APPs, but are superior to APPs. Only through search can mini programs make the most of their strengths and overcome their weaknesses. This is mainly reflected in two aspects:

First, mini programs have the advantage of breaking down barriers between apps, which can be amplified through search.

Before the birth of mini programs, it was difficult for major Internet giants to gather their own APP services, let alone gather other merchants, but mini programs can make this goal come true. For example, Alipay wants to be the Taobao of the service industry, and Taobao cannot match users and products without search. Therefore, after Alipay gathers various services through mini programs, it also needs to use search to allow users to accurately obtain services. The same is true for WeChat. After extending from a social platform to providing multiple service platforms, using search for matching is the most efficient.

Second, compared to the obvious Matthew effect in the APP industry, a similar situation will occur in the mini program industry. However, through search, it is more possible for mini programs to break the class solidification and the cost is lower.

It is undeniable that in every industry and field, when a large amount of resources are gathered, the 80/20 effect will occur, and this also happens in various large and small program platforms. However, compared with the free-range mechanism of decentralized platforms, the platform combining centralized and decentralized platforms will be more friendly to mid- and low-end merchants and low-frequency service players.

The emergence of "search services" will improve this situation to a certain extent. The difference is that different platforms have different effects on breaking the rigidification of social classes.

In fact, WeChat opened the "direct access function" as early as September 2018, supporting WeChat search to obtain mini program services. Alipay's mini program opened the search service direct access function later than WeChat, but it was the first to catch up in search operations. This is due to Taobao's search operation experience, which Alipay can learn from.

Unlike WeChat, Alipay's search operations continue the platform-centralized + decentralized model. Taking the Yifeng Moving Alipay applet as an example, the daily activity of the applet increased 10 times within one month, and the number of users from the search channel increased by 50% on average per day. What happened behind this?

The specific approach of Yifeng Moving is to improve the service competitiveness index by improving customer service capabilities, direct search configuration and other actions, so as to obtain incentives from Alipay such as search weight upgrade, increase in configurable search keywords, and increase in center traffic. After obtaining these resources, it will use this as a stepping stone to further leverage more users through self-operation.

In summary, the existence of service search is very necessary. It will become a new fulcrum for the second half of mini programs, shouldering the heavy responsibility of efficiently allocating "service rights", and will also become the focus of each platform. The quality of service search between platforms depends on the ability of the platform to integrate operations into search, and the space left for merchants to operate independently.

3. Under Albad's Theorem, who will dominate the "search positioning" of mini programs in the second half?

There is a very interesting Albard theorem in economics, which means that the success of a business depends on how well it understands the needs of its customers. If you can see the needs of others, you are halfway to success. If you can meet the needs of others, you are completely successful. This is also applicable in the field of mini program service search.

At present, the entire BAT mini-program ecosystem is already very large. Compared with Alipay and WeChat mini-programs, Baidu Smart Mini-Program is relatively small. From the perspective of service search technology, the three companies are evenly matched. However, in terms of search operations, each has its own advantages, and the final winner is precisely the way the platform operates service search.

If we look at it from the perspective of the overall strategy of Alipay, WeChat and Baidu Mini Programs, perhaps we can see something fishy.

As we all know, Baidu search serves two major sectors: content and service. Its mini-program gameplay is "centralized + open ecology", intending to create a "content + service" closed loop. Through the open ecological alliance, it can narrow the scale of Alipay and WeChat mini-programs, but as far as search is concerned, it faces the challenge of internal competition between content and service. When facing the same search keyword, it is worth considering whether to prioritize content or service.

WeChat has to do more than Baidu. It is positioned as an operating system and connector. Its search not only connects content and services, but also connects people. Behind this are the three major businesses of social networking, public accounts and mini programs. Therefore, in terms of which side the resources should be tilted, WeChat faces a more complex internal game than Baidu, which may also greatly reduce the effect of its service search.

Alipay can advance relatively faster among the three precisely because of its relatively focused business. On March 10, Alipay was officially upgraded to a digital life platform. According to Ant Group CEO Hu Xiaoming, Alipay's position is to focus on the digitalization of the service industry.

The strategic focus on services allows Alipay to focus all search boxes on mini-program services without internal constraints, which allows it to build the "search box" into a "portal" leading to services. This allows it to delegate power to merchants, forming a "centralized + decentralized" gameplay, and go a step further in meeting the needs of merchants and users.

Therefore, in the operation of mini program search services, although all small and large program platforms are using search to "occupy a position", their goals are different. From the perspective of Albard's theorem, BAT has seen the demand for search services, but they have different ways of meeting the demand, which may be an important weight that determines the balance in the second half of mini programs. For merchants, the search path that has just started means a bonus to be pursued.

Final Thoughts

As the old saying goes: Yin alone cannot produce life, Yang alone cannot grow, so heaven and earth are paired with yin and yang.

This statement refers to the relationship between Yin and Yang, which is not isolated and static, but relative, interdependent, growing and declining, and transforming. It also refers to the fact that a single factor is not conducive to the long-term growth and development of things.

The same is true for the development of the mini program industry. Initially, based on the advantages of each platform, the mini program platform operations focused on different aspects. For example, Baidu has always emphasized its centralized gameplay, WeChat has labeled itself as decentralized, and Alipay is somewhere in between. However, as the number of mini programs and users on both the supply and demand sides grow, the drawbacks of single centralized and decentralized operations are beginning to emerge. In order to maximize the efficiency of matchmaking, the two traffic distribution models need to be combined. And this combination should be reflected in the operation of various traffic distribution paths on the mini program platform, especially the increasingly important search box.

If today's search box operation continues the decentralized + advertising model pioneered by search engines in the classical Internet era, then only the top merchants who can afford the promotion costs will have the opportunity to be exposed. Mantis Finance believes that the operation of the search box should also be a combination of centralization and decentralization. This will be the general trend and the key to service search.

Alipay search box can deliver centralized traffic to merchants by searching for background words and hot searches; with search weight and keywords as incentives, merchants can also perform decentralized search optimization by configuring search keywords. This is a new path, and more platforms are entering the search box. From traditional search engines, to local promotion, communities, and now to in-terminal search, the focus of merchant operations has been iterating between the outlets, and this moment may be the arrival of a historical turning point.