When WeChat mini programs launched in 2017, a lot of companies moved into the space to take advantage of the traffic, and the mall format in particular was seen as commercially promising. Then in early 2020 the platform opened livestreaming to mini programs, and merchants turned to look at that instead. Which raises the question for anyone arriving now: do you need the mall, or do you need the livestream?
The useful way to answer it is from the marketing side, because the two formats behave very differently.
Livestreaming
The pandemic made live selling a familiar idea, and the platform responded by building it into mini programs. The mechanism is straightforward: someone watching a broadcast sees a product they want and buys it in the room.
What matters is the nature of that decision. A large share of purchases made during a stream are spontaneous, and therefore uncertain. They are not the customer’s firm requirement, which means some categories do not suit the format at all: where the need is genuine and considered, live selling is the wrong channel.
The same uncertainty produces returns. Impulse buys come back at a rate that considered purchases do not.
And the cost is not low. Either you pay to bring in a known host or an influencer, or you develop your own hosts, which is also an expense and takes time. Live selling is not a particularly efficient marketing channel; it is a channel that needs an audience already built, and building one takes a long campaign.
The mall
A mall mini program is opened when there is something to do. Three situations account for most of it.
The first is proximity: a customer near or inside a shop scans a code, or searches the shop’s mini program.
The second is marketing: an ad, a forwarded mini program, a share into a group, a link inside an official account post. All of them are someone choosing to open it.
The third is a repeat visit: the customer used it before and comes back.
In every case the customer arrives with a defined need. That is the structural difference from livestreaming, and it is why the mall converts slower and holds better.
Which to choose
Livestreaming is faster and gives the operator the initiative, since a broadcast can happen anywhere and reach people directly. Transactions close quickly and conversion is high, at the cost of returns.
A mall is more certain but more patient. It converts precise demand rather than creating it, so the rate is lower, and the result is more stable.
Most businesses need the mall first, because it is the thing that can be marketed. Livestreaming is what you add once there is an audience to broadcast to. Doing it the other way round means paying for reach before there is anywhere to send it.
Want to talk through what you just read?
We work end to end, from product design to launch. Tell us about your scenario and we can start there.
Shenzhen XZS Technology Co., Ltd. · Tel 0755-82494862 · 13760424861