This article features the benefits of WeChat and the WeChat shake functionality, as well as giving a better understanding of how WeChat can be leveraged to increase in-store traffic, customer engagement and sales.
Benefits of integrating WeChat and WeChat shake in your business
#1 Cost: It is extremely expensive, both in terms of money and time to create a native app and a synchronised website. If you haven’t already, please take a look at our previous article Things to consider before developing an app. The response to that is mobile wallet. A mobile wallet is the application that allows the modern smartphone user to store, organise and access content – payment and non payment items – on their mobile device. It keeps loyalty cards, coupons, stored value cards, membership cards, tickets, and more all in one place. With 700+ million monthly active users and 50 million of them open the app more than 10 times a day, WeChat is the most popular app in China with wallet capabilities. By opening yourself up to WeChat’s huge user base, you have the opportunity to access significant business opportunities.
#2 Increase ROI with WeChat Shake functionality: Increasing conversion rates is a crucial aspect for every business. iBeacon technology paired with WeChat can help with that. To see how beacons work with WeChat, visit this link. Let’s now take a look at a quick example to see how WeChat Shake can help businesses in collecting data from customers and engaging in offline commerce:
- Shop alpha launches a digital coupon campaign – customers get their coupons through WeChat shake.
- Customers make their purchases and redeem the coupon.
- Once coupons are issued and redeemed, shop alpha can analyse that data, gain insights on customers, communicate precise and laser-targeted information to segments of customers and ultimately improve sales conversion rates.
The picture below shows an example of a beacon notification delivered to iPhone through WeChat shake. If you want to see the whole WeChat Shake experience, please check out this link.
#3 Convenience: Another feature worth mentioning is WeChat Pay, the mobile payment solution within WeChat. More and more users in China are getting used to pay with WeChat Pay, meaning that coupon offering through WeChat Shake will encourage more mobile users to make the final purchase.
Another interesting feature of WeChat Pay is the cross-border payment, meaning that payments can be settled in different currencies. All the major currencies are included. WeChat Pay settles each transaction with foreign vendors based on the price in local currency. And if your currency is not supported, transactions can be made in US dollars.
The image below shows how WeChat Pay looks within the app, and which actions can be performed. To make a payment you just need to tap on Quick Pay icon (circled in red).
#4 Close the online-to-offline loop: The key role of O2O is to find consumers online and bring them into real brick-and-mortar stores. And WeChat can do that for quite cheap. All we discussed above seems to be quite promising for businesses to provide a more customised approach to in-store shopping. While customers experience an enhanced purchase journey, businesses get the chance to deliver the optimal marketing message to the right person at the right time.
WeChat gives shops and businesses a strategic advantage, for the simple fact that customers don’t have to download an additional app to receive beacon notifications. Messages prompted by beacons are delivered within WeChat’s Shake feature instead. If you want to learn more about WeChat shake, access a customer base of 700 million people and implement a WeChat shake strategy in your business, you just need to click on the blue button below.
This is the end of the article, but before you leave I’d like to make a couple of recommendations:
- If you haven’t already, please check out our previous article WeChat Beacon experience for Chinese New Year.
- If you like this article or if you have any question, please feel free to leave a comment in the comment section below.
