Battlefield of applets： How do long-tailed applets survive？

After basically completing the tasks of connecting "people" (social) and "content" (social media), WeChat has focused on connecting "products" (applets). Although the current mainstream product form is still App, the growth rate of WeChat applets is very eye-catching. According to QuestMobile’s report, from January 2017 to March 2018, the monthly activity scale of WeChat applets exceeded 400 million. Last month, the daily users of applets reached about 140 million, with a penetration rate of 43.9%. There is still a lot of room for improvement.

　

Then, among the three BAT companies, why only the WeChat applet has strong user traffic and ecological scene capabilities? In the WeChat ecosystem, how can small programs survive?

　

What is the difference between BAT applets?

　

In essence, applets are based on Super App, which constantly incubates countless sub-apps, making Super App a new mobile Internet infrastructure. When various needs are met by different applets, it is easy to grow an ecosystem similar to Apple App Store.

　

1. Ali applet bets on "new retail" and expands offline scenes.

　

Ma Yun once commented on WeChat. When he first came out, he was "shocked" and later felt "nothing more". In recent years, the impact of WeChat payment on Alipay in the fragmented payment scenario is obvious; Wechat applet is playing a big game of chess. Only a Pinduoduo hatched from the applet has become another trump card for Tencent’s strategic impact on Taobao’s e-commerce monopoly.

　

The incubation bases for Ali’s small programs are Alipay and Taobao. Alipay’s small programs are more tools for convenience, and they belong to the nature of "running out". A remarkable change in Taobao this year is that it is no longer a pure e-commerce platform, but a new online retail base. At present, O2O services such as "Taobao Takeaway" and "Flying Pig Travel" have been integrated in Taobao. The "Member Code" next to Taobao search box is actually a local life service business that diverts water to offline stores near users.

　

In the Taobao platform mode, in order to realize complex and non-standard service scenes, it is necessary to adopt the "applet" product form without downloading the installation package to better realize the closed loop of traffic. Because Taobao itself is the diversion base of Ali products, it has a strong technical accumulation for light applications and the product experience is not bad. However, Ali’s small program can only get through the e-commerce scene on the small program, but there is no way to enrich other formats. The profit model of Ali’s e-commerce determines that merchants still need to buy their own advertisements to buy platform traffic or rebates.

The number of local life services on Taobao homepage has increased, and the membership code is actually a store applet. At present, Alipay uses a relatively high-frequency bike-sharing applet.

　

2. The way out for Baidu applets is to advertise information flow.

　

The strength of Baidu’s link information is to link official website or webmaster. This advantage has been weakened by WeChat official account and the media in the WeChat ecosystem. Next, the trend for enterprises to do official website may be to make a small program (the cost of developing an App is relatively high). After all, in the past, there were 400 million users on the PC side, and every enterprise had official website, which is about the same as the current WeChat applet users. Therefore, it is really a bit late for Baidu to stop pushing applets.

　

The previous light Application didn’t work because Baidu didn’t have a fist-level app belt on the mobile side.In the past two years, the transformation of Baidu’s mobile terminal has been completed. In 2017, Baidu’s information flow advertising business developed at a growth rate of 20% from the previous month, keeping pace with the big search business. It is a cash flow business that Baidu has long invested in AI technology research and development. Later, in the information flow of Baidu mobile terminal, it is expected to access some small program sites with good experience, and the home page will be presented when the user pushes (recommends), without jumping to the customer’s App, and the experience is much better than the H5-style advertising landing page.

　

The author found that the "Youxin Used Car" applet was launched in the "Common Services" of Baidu App on April 12, and it has not been involved in the homepage.

　

The shortcoming of Baidu applet is that its mobile payment market share is small, and there is no way to completely open up payment scenarios in its own ecosystem; And perhaps only small program businesses that cooperate with Baidu can get the recommendation of "brand zone" and the traffic recommendation of home page, which will restrict the interest of many enterprise developers to enter.

　 　 　 Baidu applet is currently only used as a common service, and Youxin used car is used as a model to experience App, and there is no payment function for the time being.

　

How does the long tail applet survive in the "decentralized product ecology" of WeChat?

　 　

Many entrepreneurs and enterprises have been keenly aware that WeChat applet is replicating the logic of WeChat official account’s success. Few of the more than 20 million WeChat official account can really survive, and the pain points of small program operators are also closely related to the "decentralized product ecology" positioned by WeChat:

　　

The most important thing about WeChat applet service platform is not technology. The underlying technology of WeChat has been simplified. The real barrier is the accumulation of operational experience in different vertical industries, which is difficult for service providers who only do a few applet cases to cope with.The bonus of the applet is in front of us, but it is still a minority who can really play and catch it. The trial and error cost of this bonus window of about two years is high, which makes the applet service platform prone to "head-oriented" Matthew benefits.

　

Providing applet application services is a technical activity. For example, the logic of applet products in different industries, such as micro-e-commerce, smart restaurants, smart takeout, smart beauty industry, is definitely different, and the interaction of transactions in different scenarios, official website, stores or conference applets is also different.　

　

Although applets need more than 50 traffic portals, to solve the problem of difficult popularization of applets, we have to rely on the combination of "WeChat official account+Applet". WeChat official account fans have a high retention rate, but the entrance is deep, the opening rate is low, and there are many small programs with high frequency. If the users of small and medium-sized enterprises with long tail can give full play to the advantages of WeChat official account stock and small program increment, they can save a lot of promotion costs and enrich the promotion of small programs.

Zhang Xiaolong said that applets are not for e-commerce. It means that applets can be widely used in many application scenarios such as content, social interaction, stores, tools, etc. Perhaps content e-commerce, social e-commerce, fan marketing and local lifestyle services can be truly detonated through applets.

Author’s information: Reliable A Xing (Li Xing), WeChat official account: Reliable A Xing, founder of Reliable Hui, columnist of science and technology media, and personal WeChat is QQ number: 1598145405.