WeChat Opens Ecommerce Platform on Mobile Phones

The digital analytics guru ComScore has reported 14% growth in online retail spending for the year 2013. To feel the difference, compare it with the single digit growth in total consumer retail spending in the U.S. for the same year. This has a lot to do with mobile commerce, which has turned on its head largely due to a great deal of interest in native apps and responsive websites in the last couple of years. Last year, online traffic has seen enormous growth. IBM’s 2013 Cyber Monday report suggests, 31.7 percent of total online traffic came from mobile phones.

We have already witnessed how retailers and tech giants are raking in profits through smartphone apps. Apart from native apps and responsive websites, retailers are looking for other ways to sell their products to mobile customers. Recently, the social messaging app WeChat announced an e-commerce platform for its verified users like famous brands and companies. WeChat’s official accounts are just like Twitter’s verified accounts for celebrities, companies and brands. This means that Nike’s official account would be able to display and sell products to their WeChat followers. WeChat will provide in app payment options so that users will not have to leave the app to make any purchases.

We will have to wait for a while

For now, it means nothing for buyers and sellers sitting outside China, as WeChat has only announced this service for its Chinese version Weixin. The rest of the world will have to wait while it is tried and tested in China. It is a really great opportunity for the world’s most renowned brands and products to reach out to almost 400 million active users through the social messaging app.

WeChat’s approach towards social messaging

What’s common in WhatsApp and WeChat? You would say both are social messaging apps, but the similarity would end right there. If we compare the two, we find that China’s largest social messaging app WeChat (Weixin in China) tries to accomplish everything at the same time by offering services like a chatting platform, shopping, gaming, and even banking. WeChat has shown WhatsApp there are more ways to monetize messaging apps than advertising. It is all about giving users the option to purchase from their favorite brands without shoving anything into their timeline.

WeChat is trying to create an app, where people could do almost anything they usually do online, without leaving the app. WeChat could become a place where it would engage its users for gaming, social messaging, shopping and selling things. Allowing verified official accounts (brands) to open an e-commerce store is the first step in that direction.

Wrap Up

WeChat has opened a gateway to other companies and services. Consider WeChat as an app store which would lead you to different promotional deals, apps and entertainment offers. However, with that, WeChat needs to lay a strong user-base in the international market. This would need a lot of focus on users rather than merchants.