In the office hall of the Enterprise Service Center in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, the staff guide citizens to handle one-net-to-one services through the mobile phone mini program. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Fang Zhe
The total amount of mini program transactions in 2020 is expected to exceed 2 trillion
Small programs leverage big business opportunities (Online China)
Reporter leaves
Since the beginning of this year, small programs have met the service needs during the epidemic prevention period, and have been quickly embedded in telemedicine, online education, fresh food retail and other industries. In terms of government affairs and people's livelihood, mini programs have also played important roles in epidemic prevention data collection and epidemic information transmission.
The "Mini Program 2020 Mid-year Research Analysis Report" recently released by the small program SaaS service provider shows that the number of small programs on the entire network exceeds 5.5 million, and the daily activity exceeds 440 million. It is expected that the total amount of small program transactions in 2020 is expected to exceed 2 trillion. The "use and go" small program has opened up a big business opportunity in the digitalization of the service industry.
Easily meet daily needs
Online grocery shopping, medical consultation, playing games, ordering takeaways, checking health status... Have you found that your life is more closely connected with mini programs this year?
"During the period when the epidemic was serious, my family members kept going out as little as possible. I used a small program to buy groceries at home, which was very convenient!" said Xiao Zhao, a college student. Later, she discovered that whether it was living payment or online shopping, what was there in daily life? The demand, search for a small program, basically can meet. Xiao Zhao also taught his parents to use small programs to ride shared bicycles, send couriers, etc., "You don't need to download an APP specifically, the elderly will quickly learn."
After the outbreak, the demand for non-contact digital services has surged, and small programs that take the lightweight route have performed outstandingly.
On the Alipay platform, the small program "Hi Tea GO" launched by a milk tea brand has been online for only two months, and has accumulated more than 8 million user visits. The transaction volume on the Alipay side has increased by 50 times; Yifeng moving small program that provides moving services The background shows that monthly users consult about moving services through the Alipay applet for more than 10,000 times, with a conversion rate of 30%; the snack food retail brand Lishanghuang uses online voucher to attract traffic to offline mode, which is less than 20 days. The program has been exposed 6 million times, with more than 300,000 coupons received, and more than 20,000 people are drawn to the store to buy...
Prior to this, Alipay released a list of ten socially in short supply services and launched the "Alibaba Mini Program Developers Convening Order". Within a week, more than 1,200 developers took the initiative to participate in the war to develop epidemic-related mini programs to meet social needs. These services cover government affairs and people's livelihood, legal services, medical care, public welfare, convenient living, logistics and distribution, and business recovery and operation, and other rigid demand scenarios, which provide great convenience for the recovery and development of production and life.
"Use it and go" favored
Since the official launch of WeChat Mini Programs on January 9, 2017, there have been 11 mini program platforms, including WeChat, Meituan, Alipay, Baidu, 360, etc. This application that can be used without downloading and installing has won the favor of many parties.
For users, nowadays APP occupies more and more memory, mobile phone storage space is becoming more and more precious, small programs do not need to be downloaded separately, users can open the application by scanning the small program code or searching for the small program name. The concept of "use it and go" saves memory and is easy to use. For developers, the cost of developing a small program is much lower than that of developing an APP, but it is more efficient, and there is not much difference between the experience and the APP.
Pan Helin, Executive Dean of the Institute of Digital Economy, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, said in an interview with our reporter that in addition to the above two points, mini programs have a significant advantage, that is, mini programs are closely related to social software. In fact, in order to increase user stickiness, many products and services are trying to connect with social platforms. Mini programs can be shared and opened at any time when users use social software, which will help the rapid spread of products and services.
According to data from iiMedia Consulting, the number of Mini Programs in China in 2017 was 580,000, and it is expected to exceed 14 million by 2020, and the number of users is expected to exceed 850 million. As high-traffic platforms are deploying small programs, more types of small programs will be connected to various platforms, and the number of small programs will continue to accelerate in the future.
The reporter learned that there are currently more than 1.7 million small programs on Alipay's digital life platform, with over 600 million monthly active users. The "White Paper on the Internet Development of Mini Programs in the First Half of 2020" released by Aladdin shows that the number of mini programs on the WeChat platform exceeds 3.2 million, and monthly active users exceed 730 million. At present, the number of small programs and the level of user activity are considerable.
Facilitate digital transformation and upgrading
Recently, the WeChat team announced that the WeChat small store will open closed beta applications and support live broadcast delivery, helping more small, medium and micro businesses and individual entrepreneurs to develop e-commerce business in the WeChat ecosystem. Earlier, Alipay announced its upgrade to an open platform for digital life. In the next three years, it will introduce 50,000 service providers to help 40 million businesses complete digital transformation and upgrading.
It is not difficult to find that in addition to government services, the integration of small programs and commerce is deepening. Whether it's live streaming of small programs, community group purchases, takeaways, etc., more and more verified operating methods are being deeply utilized by developers and earning dividends. As the mini program ecosystem matures and develops, more gameplay and modes will be further explored.
Some experts said that China has successively experienced digitalization of the retail industry, digitalization of the manufacturing industry, and digitalization of urban governance. In the next stage, the digitalization of the service industry will become the focus. In 2019, the service industry accounted for 53.9% of GDP, but only a relatively small part has completed the digital transformation. Merchants’ demand for digitalization has huge business opportunities, and small programs can meet this demand.
Pan Helin is very optimistic about the future development prospects of small programs. He believes that with the improvement of the mini program ecosystem, the development space of mini programs will become larger, the drainage role will become stronger and stronger, and the functions will become more and more abundant. This means that in the future mini programs will attract more capital and enterprises to join. .