WeChat Shop provides businesses an excellent opportunity to sell their products to millions of users across China. Once you open a WeChat Store through a service account, you can maneuver the creative space and consequently interact with your customers directly. In fact, brands can get customer behavioral data easily through their official account, enabling them to manage relationships with customers better.

What is a WeChat Shop?

WeChat shop is a mobile website that can be accessed from the WeChat Official Account’s menu. The users of WeChat can access the WeChat store and with the help of WeChat Payment can make one-click-payment.

Though WeChat emerged in 2011 primarily as a messaging application, over the years it has added functions such as WeChat Pay, facility to purchase tickets, book appointments, order food/taxis, and many more.

You, as a business entity, can use WeChat to sell as well as engage with your customers or followers. This super-app platform, which is deeply embedded in the daily lives of the Chinese, had a reach of around 1 billion daily users, as of January 2019.

With easy to share social attributes, WeChat has become the go-to platform for businesses of all sizes. In fact, WeChat eCommerce has come up as a booming brand multi-channel strategy. Opening a WeChat Store has become an excellent growth strategy for the brands. To increase their reach, influence, brand awareness, and traffic, more and more brands are now using the WeChat platform.

To build a long-term relationship with their customers, brands can focus on specific target audiences, understand their needs better, and learn about their desires.

Key Statistics of WeChat

● User Statistics:

WeChat was launched in 2011 by Tencent as a social media and chatting platform. Its user increased from a mere 50 million in Q1 2012 to 1.17 billion in Q1 2020.

● Usage Statistics

a. While in November 2016, around 30 billion messages were sent by the users, the number inflated to 45 billion by January 2019. This means 15 billion additional messages were sent on WeChat in less than 2-years.

b. Daily transactions of WeChat mini-programs increased from a mere 16 million in January 2015 to 1.1 billion in January 2019.

c. In January 2020, WeChat became the tenth most downloaded app in China.

● User Demographics

The most dominant age group on WeChat in 2015 was 18-25 years. However, it shifted to the 26-35 age group by 2017. Notably, the 36-50 age group is also not far away from 18-25-year-olds.

All these statistics point to the fact that there is a huge market waiting for businesses to explore. If you are a business entity, set up a WeChat shop and expand your business exponentially.

How does WeChat Shop Work?

WeChat store works in the following way:

Step #1: The interface is easy to use. Get started by simply uploading information, images, and discounts on your products.

Step #2: WeChat Shop owners have to connect their bank accounts for receiving payments directly from the Chinese customers. They will pay in RMB and you’ll receive it anywhere in the world in terms of USD, HKD, AUD, or NZD currencies.

Step #3: Traffic to the store can be generated by using a network of Key Opinion Leaders, CPC platforms, and affiliate programs.

Step #4: Chinese customers place their orders through their smartphone on your WeChat Shop and make payment by using either WeChat payment or Alipay.

Bottomline

A WeChat shop can be designed with the use of 3rd party WeChat eCommerce platforms: Weidian (Free), WalkTheChat (15-day Free Trial), Youzan, JD.COM, and Lewaimai. These platforms provide a clean design and multiple payment options.

Once you have created your own WeChat store, you can list your products, receive payments, offer incentives and coupons, use translation services, track followers through analytics, hosting services, create own pages to introduce your brand, and convert in-store visitors into followers.

With such a huge market waiting to be explored along with a wide range of facilities available on WeChat, businesses should set up their own WeChat Shop and boost their bottom line.

Do you have any questions about the WeChat shop or how to set it up? Please feel free to leave your comments below.