Douyin mini program is quietly expanding its capacity.
Recently, according to 36kr reports, Douyin mini programs are expanding the diversity of content on the platform through open source methods. Douyin has invited some content apps, hoping that they will distribute content and guide monetization on Douyin mini programs and Douyin videos. The
Douyin mini program does not have a high presence in the Douyin ecosystem. But in fact, according to questmobile data in May 2023, Douyin mini program has become the mini program platform with the fastest growing traffic. The popularity of the
short drama has further boosted the traffic growth of the Douyin mini program. A person in the short drama industry told Alphabet that in September 2022, Douyin opened the path to jump to WeChat mini programs, which contributed to the popularity of mini program short dramas. The initial model of mini program short dramas was to place them on Douyin and divert traffic to WeChat to complete transaction payments.
Oriental Securities research report shows that from the perspective of purchase channel distribution, Douyin purchases account for about 80% of total consumption, while 90% of landing pages are in WeChat mini programs.
However, with the improvement of the Douyin mini program, part of the traffic was intercepted by Douyin itself within its own system, and the Douyin mini program absorbed this part of the transaction. Data from
questmobile shows that during the Spring Festival this year, among the top Douyin mini-programs, short drama mini-programs rose strongly, occupying six of the top 10, and the overall traffic increased. This type of content-based mini program is Douyin’s advantage category.
Compared with the WeChat mini program, which carries many important life service functions of WeChat Jiugongge, the main usage scenario of the Douyin mini program is mobile video, and is not the main scenario of WeChat, Alipay, and Baidu Smart - life services.
Data from Orient Securities Research Report last November showed that the monthly active users of WeChat, Alipay and Baidu smart life services were 322 million, 312 million and 98 million respectively. In contrast, the monthly active users of Douyin mini-program life service category were only 322 million, 312 million and 98 million respectively. is 20 million.
In the battle of mini programs, Douyin mini program is on the other side of WeChat mini program. Judging from the recent action of Douyin mini program to introduce content app content, will continue to follow this route.
However, life service mini-programs are closer to transactions, have higher commercial value, and have higher user stickiness and retention. Just as the number of users of video accounts is based on WeChat, which has 1 billion monthly active users, the monthly active users of Douyin mini programs are also based on Douyin's huge user base. This makes the Douyin mini program, although the usage volume is not low, but it has not formed the user's mind, and its sense of existence is much weaker than the WeChat mini program.
Zhang Xiaolong once said in the 2019 WeChat open class pro: "Search should always be a main source of traffic for mini programs." The reason why users "search" for mini programs is that WeChat has developed the habit of using mini programs. Yin applet has not yet developed this understanding.
However, Douyin, which has penetrated into all aspects of public life, obviously also needs to use mini programs to supplement the content and services of the platform. Can Douyin’s mini program become Douyin’s “Nine Palaces”?
a
A major trend visible to the naked eye is that new independent apps have almost no room for growth, and Internet traffic is concentrating on small programs, especially those of super apps.
According to questmobile data, as of November 2023, the number of small programs used by users across the entire network per month has increased by 5.0% year-on-year, while the number of apps has decreased by 0.2% year-on-year.
For super apps, betting on mini programs is a part of gathering traffic. At the same time, because mini programs can carry more internal and external services and content, mini programs have also become the choice for super apps to expand. Douyin needs to be introduced through mini programs. This is exactly the case with third-party content platform content.
According to 36kr reports, mini programs will carry the same complete content as content-based apps; Douyin video accounts will be used as traffic content carriers, and clips will be released through official and user accounts to complete the drainage of mini programs.
In fact, this model of Douyin mini program has already been implemented. It is similar to how short plays are diverted to the mini program through short videos on Douyin, but this time the content is replaced by graphic content.
Earlier, in 2022, a batch of short tweet videos appeared on Douyin.The video scenes are usually cooking or parkour, and the audio is a novel read by an AI voice. These videos are the same as the short plays, and they all end abruptly at a climax or turning point. The blogger will not tell the name of the novel, but guide him to a certain place. app search keywords.
This model is cps novel distribution. Also because the WeChat mini program infrastructure was relatively complete before, the main position for cps novel distribution is WeChat.
Now, with the evolution of Douyin’s mini program and the huge traffic blessing of Douyin, Douyin can completely gather this part of the traffic.
At the same time, Douyin’s advantage lies in video. In the past few years, it has been supplementing the lesson of graphics and text. Recently, according to Tech Planet’s exclusive report, Douyin has restarted the grass-growing community app “Cao Song” that has been removed from the shelves for nearly two years. Compared with the version before the removal, the new version of Croissant is more like an app in terms of experience. Douyin version of Little Red Book. Graphic content such as
novels can help Douyin fill its shortcomings in the graphic field. There is already a lot of similar content on Douyin.
Douyin mini program has previously established a promotion plan, that is, the mini program operator publishes a promotion plan. After accepting the order, the expert publishes a short video and mounts the relevant mini program to earn a commission. In September last year, the mini program promotion plan updated its functions. The platform officially added support for graphic and text content and supported the publication of graphic content to promote mini programs.
At present, short drama mini programs are the most popular mini program category in the promotion plan square. In the copyright content platform category, we can see that novels, long videos, comics, digital reading and other content are being promoted in the Douyin mini program.
This is why there are more users of the mobile video category in the Douyin mini program.
b
At present, the monthly activity of the Douyin mini program is much lower than that of the WeChat mini program, but in fact, the Byte mini program was launched not too late. In the early days of
, mini programs were used as the infrastructure of Douyin e-commerce. In 2019, Xiaomi Youpin was among the first batch to participate in the Douyin e-commerce mini program test. Users can jump directly from the short video page to the Xiaomi Youpin product purchase details page. It also supports mini program store page display, in-store search and other functions.
However, with the development of Douyin’s live broadcast e-commerce, Douyin’s mini program e-commerce did not develop rapidly. Unlike brand merchants who directly open mini programs on WeChat, brand merchants who enter Douyin directly open stores instead of building mini programs.
For super apps, the important function of mini programs is to provide more transaction scenarios and expand their usage scenarios and commercial value ceiling. The Douyin mini program has also gone this route.
In August 2022, Douyin and Ele.me reached a cooperation, and users can order through Ele.me’s Douyin mini program.
A month later, at the Open Platform Developer Conference, Douyin officially launched the open platform and announced the business carrier of the open platform - Douyin Mini Program, calling it the "main container" of the open platform, that is, using mini-programs. The program accommodates additional services from outside companies.
In the same year, Douyin opened up the qualifications for platform service providers of transportation services, and t3 Taxi took the lead in entering.
However, since then, the Douyin mini program has not made rapid progress in the life service category, and it has also not cultivated users' minds.
On the one hand, this is related to the awareness and traffic scale of the Douyin mini program itself. Compared with the 900 million monthly active users of the WeChat mini program, the scale of the 300 million monthly active users of the Douyin mini program is much lower. Oriental Securities mentioned that the health code has cultivated users’ mentality in using WeChat and Alipay mini programs, but Douyin has not It has undertaken this infrastructure function, so users are more unfamiliar with the Douyin mini program itself.
is related to Douyin’s weak instrumental attributes. As the largest entrance to the mobile Internet, WeChat is already playing the role of a life assistant. In scenarios such as taking a taxi or ordering takeout, users will choose WeChat’s mini programs more than Douyin, which has stronger entertainment attributes.
is also related to Douyin’s traffic distribution mechanism. As Zhang Xiaolong said, the main source of traffic for mini programs is search, but users often rely on algorithm recommendations when using Douyin. For example, if you want to book a hotel, users will go directly to a live broadcast room instead of searching for a small program on a certain platform.
These factors jointly pushed the Douyin mini program to embark on a different path from the mini programs on other platforms.
c
Of course, Douyin mini programs and WeChat mini programs also have overlaps, that is, short plays and mini games. Data from
questmobile shows that in February 2024, the mini-game market was growing rapidly. For example, the number of active users of WeChat mini-program games reached 750 million, accounting for 80.3% of panoramic traffic. WeChat has given relevant data that in 2023, WeChat mini-game advertising consumption will increase by 30%, and business scale will increase by more than 50%. Xuntao Daqian, a subsidiary of Sanqi Interactive Entertainment, has more than 160 million active users.
Although game mini-programs are second only to video mini-programs in terms of monthly activity among all categories of Douyin mini-programs, in horizontal comparison, there is still a considerable gap between Douyin mini-games and WeChat. The monthly active users of some products are in the millions.
But the war has begun. In April this year, Douyin released a new rule: For Douyin mini-games that meet the conditions, developers can receive 90% of total Android consumption and an advertising incentive equal to 5% of total Android consumption, known as "Jiuyikai" In contrast, WeChat’s mini-games are “60% open to 40% open”, and Douyin’s additional 30% to developers is a big temptation.
Obviously, Douyin is trying to steal developers from WeChat and attract more developers to deploy Douyin mini-games.
Earlier in January, Douyin announced that it would invest more than 5 billion+ resources to provide support such as talent subsidies, operating subsidies, project support, advertising grants, etc., to promote Douyin from three aspects: improving capabilities, complete delivery, and policy incentives. Development of audio mini games.
Although Douyin is as dominant as WeChat in the mobile Internet, its mini programs still need more efforts to catch up.
's current mini program entrance includes historically used mini programs, video mounts, comment areas, live broadcast rooms, Douyin search, account homepage, etc. Among them, the entry positions of mini programs and account homepages that have been used in the past are not conspicuous.
Douyin mini program has not yet been able to play the role of WeChat Jiugongge.
Judging from the current attitude of Douyin, mini programs have not been mentioned at a strategic level. This is related to Douyin’s strategic deployment and platform attributes. Most of the popular life service mini programs on WeChat are platform-level mini programs. This is related to the decentralized model of WeChat and mini programs, but this model is not suitable for Douyin. The
mini program is shelf-style. Users need to enter the door to open a certain mini program and select products by themselves. This is not commensurate with the mainstream interest e-commerce on Douyin.
For example, Douyin has personally deployed all important categories of life services such as mini programs. Douyin will not recommend the account of a platform-level company in the information flow unless it has signed a strategic cooperation or annual advertising frame.
Even though Ele.me has previously reached a strategic cooperation with Douyin, which has huge traffic support, due to the platform model and tonality, the cooperation with Douyin has not greatly alleviated Ele.me’s traffic anxiety.
For small brands, compared with developing small programs, the output ratio of directly opening stores and live broadcast rooms is obviously higher. This is an important reason why life service mini-programs do not have a strong presence on Douyin.
However, mini programs have become an important growth point for mobile Internet traffic. At the same time, more external mini programs are introduced to enrich platform services and content, and can also drive the growth of platform payment scale. At present, Douyin is vigorously developing its own payment system. business.
It is conceivable that Douyin, which is attacking various fields, will also focus on small programs. According to Orient Securities, since this year, movie ticketing and medical health mini programs among Douyin mini programs have performed better. Obviously, the Douyin mini program with growth potential will compete head-on with WeChat in the future.
