WeChat Open Class in 2025, all opportunities for small shops are here!

The 2025 WeChat Open Course has brought new opportunities to merchants and brands, especially the upgrade and expansion of WeChat Stores, which heralds new trends in e-commerce within the WeChat ecosystem. This article will deeply interpret the latest strategies for WeChat Stores in the WeChat Open Course for your reference.

In 2025, WeChat Open Class provided specific directional guidance.

The 2024 WeChat Open Class focused on the comprehensive upgrade and transformation of the video account, and launched many new features and marketing tools, allowing brands and merchants to reap unprecedented traffic dividends in the field of short videos and live broadcasts.

After another year of development, Video Account has become an indispensable source of traffic and e-commerce engine in the WeChat ecosystem.

This year, WeChat Open Class turned its focus to a new potential battlefield - WeChat Stores.

WeChat will no longer be limited to a certain transaction link in e-commerce, but will be further integrated with the WeChat ecosystem. Through the close connection between WeChat "atoms", it will achieve full-area operations, maximize traffic and maximize profits.

Today, we have collected some incremental directions for the WeChat ecosystem in 2025 for your reference in the WeChat Open Class:

1. WeChat Store: A Lego-like gameplay of an e-commerce foundation

A brief review of WeChat Store capabilities:

The original video account stores were limited to short video and live broadcast scenarios. After upgrading to WeChat stores, merchants' e-commerce operations can move beyond the short video live broadcast room and move from a single to the entire WeChat domain, including video accounts, official accounts, searches, mini-programs, communities and other WeChat scenarios, broadening business space and channels to reach users.

This also means that WeChat Stores, as the official transaction tool within the WeChat ecosystem, can achieve in-depth linkage with other WeChat products such as mini-programs, official accounts, and enterprise WeChat. Merchants can use the different functions and features of these products and combine them at will to create multi-scenario linkage marketing across the entire domain, greatly improving the "playability".

For example: WeChat store + official account = content e-commerce, WeChat store + community = social e-commerce, WeChat store + video account = live streaming e-commerce, WeChat store + search = shelf e-commerce.

In terms of operational efficiency, merchants no longer need to frequently put products on and off the shelves based on live broadcasts or short videos. They only need to uniformly perform operations such as putting products on and off the shelves, inventory management, and price adjustments in the WeChat store background, without having to switch back and forth between multiple platforms.

The series of growth in 2025 will also revolve around WeChat Stores.

2. Promote products through promotion: WeChat version of Taobao

Based on the small store alliance, WeChat has launched a targeted pusher-carrying function. Merchants can create promotion plans, and sales agencies can invite pushers (sellers) to cooperate and promote products in private scenarios such as social groups, achieving a win-win situation for merchants, sales agencies, pushers, and consumers.

On the one hand, compared with traditional e-commerce, the promotion of goods by promoters can better leverage the power of social relationships, allowing goods to circulate in private scenarios, relying on the trust between promoters and fans, bringing precise promotion and sales growth to merchants. On the other hand, for individual promoters, it can also realize the monetization of fans.

It is worth noting that Tuike can display products in the form of native product cards. Consumers do not need to copy links to external sites to jump. They can directly browse and purchase products, successfully closing the loop.

3. Gifting: Integrating e-commerce into private conversations

The gift-sending feature is undoubtedly WeChat’s ambitious attempt to integrate e-commerce elements into daily communications.

It directly integrates WeChat's core advantage - communication, and uses the connectivity of WeChat's social scenarios and users' social relationships to complete the layout of an e-commerce touchpoint.

Giving gifts is also a strategy that kills three birds with one stone:

On the one hand, WeChat’s e-commerce scenarios have been expanded, and consumers have shifted from passive consumption to active consumption;

Secondly, it provides merchants with more monetization opportunities, and product recommendations will become more personalized;

Third, it provides users with a new important scenario for gift giving.

If you are an offline merchant, you may prefer this feature. For example, in specialty shops or cultural streets at tourist attractions, tourists can buy local specialty products or handicrafts, and send them as gifts to relatives and friends through the offline scan code gift function - the products can easily expand their distribution range.

4. Second level group: Let everyone be a partner

The secondary group aims to promote cooperation between different institutions, especially between institutions that bring goods and suppliers. Institutions can display their own pallets in the square and create their own institutional plans to attract other institutions to cooperate in bringing goods.

This function is similar to an online market, where organizations can select suitable products (from other organizations) for promotion and sales.

Two real cases:

As a sales agency, Institution A cooperated with 21 suppliers through the secondary group function, involving 31 secondary products. These products accounted for 27% of its recent GMV, bringing it new GMV and successfully expanding its product categories.

Institution B has strong inventory capabilities and has released a total of 130 products for other institutions to carry. Three institutions have cooperated with it, and its sales have increased by more than 3 million in the past two months.

Displaying pallets and creating customized sales plans in a transparent environment allow organizations that excel in traffic operations to work together with organizations with strong sales capabilities. This is highly flexible and greatly enhances the personalization of e-commerce marketing.

5. Service Account + Enterprise WeChat: The Last Link of “Global”

This year, WeChat has placed special emphasis on "full domain", guiding businesses to make full use of various tools within the WeChat ecosystem. The implication is that they must focus on building a complete marketing closed loop and not lose sight of one thing while focusing on another.

The core of this strategy is that brands should not focus on any one tool, but use WeChat's atomic tools in a coordinated manner to ensure that every link from traffic acquisition to user repurchase is effectively covered.

Under this framework, service accounts and enterprise WeChat are "traditional" Tencent products. Their mission is to efficiently accumulate fans and conduct in-depth operations after the introduction of traffic, that is, to accumulate fans and increase repeat purchases - using service accounts to reach fans, and enterprise WeChat to conduct shopping guide attribution, send group product cards, etc., to increase user accumulation and repeat purchases.

This will increase the customer lifecycle value and ensure the maximum use of marketing resources. At a time when there is no easy business in the world, it is necessary to build the ability to achieve long-term growth.

6. Mini Program + Small Store: Long-term Operation + Short-term Conversion

The biggest advantage of this connection model is its complementarity.

Mini programs serve more as a portal for merchants and are suitable for carrying some service scenarios that require long-term operations and in-depth user interaction, such as member points redemption, after-sales service appointments, and user feedback collection.

WeChat stores are more suitable for scenarios where transactions need to be completed quickly, providing users with a convenient shopping experience and allowing them to quickly complete product display, purchase and order processing.

The combination of complementary scenarios and complementary capabilities enables merchants to seamlessly connect user needs in different scenarios, simultaneously complete long-term operations and short-term conversions, and avoid duplicate investment of resources.

It is an efficient omni-channel operation solution.

7. The future of talent: Cancel strict rules, but don’t be biased

Three sets of data:

1. The number of new sales influencers in the overall market increased by 104%, and the number of influencers who started to make money increased
2. The overall increase in four- and five-star talents (recognized by the platform as "professional talents") is 40%, which means that the number of top talents is increasing, and more and more talents are getting great results.
3. The scale of distribution business accounts for 13% of the overall business, and the growth rate has increased. More and more merchants and influencers cooperate through distribution, and influencers have more "meat".

To support this development, the WeChat platform has developed a number of optimization policies for influencers. Some overly strict rules have been changed directly. For example, in terms of illegal heating, influencers with minor violations can be assessed instead of punished, giving them more opportunities to make corrections. In addition, the "no preference" new customer indicator was introduced to help influencers improve the conversion rate of non-fans.

In 2025, WeChat will have only one requirement for influencers: omni-channel operations.

Including official accounts, short videos, mini-programs and live broadcast rooms, forming a closed-loop ecosystem, which will further consolidate its position in the WeChat ecosystem and promote the long-term activity of users.

"Talents need to perform well in all channels without being biased towards any one subject." These are the original words.

8. Service providers: fully open, but with an online rating system

At present, the cumulative number of service providers has exceeded 3,000, doubling, and the transaction volume of merchants served by service providers accounts for more than 35% of the market. The industrial belt service providers have developed more than 41 industrial belts through regional supply chain resources, and the number of service merchants exceeds 40,000.

There is also data showing that merchants served by service providers have much higher retention rates, DSR scores, and other aspects than merchants not served by service providers.

As an important partner of the WeChat ecosystem, the service provider system of WeChat Stores will also undergo an important upgrade in 2025, mainly in two aspects:

1. Fully open: Cancel the qualification requirements for service providers, do not restrict the qualifications and quantity of industrial belts, and attract more service providers to enter the WeChat store ecosystem.
2. Online evaluation system: an online service provider rating system that rates service providers based on factors such as their activity, transaction size, merchant introduction, and service quality, matches them with corresponding rights and interests, and helps high-quality service providers obtain more resources and opportunities.

9. Benchmarking cases

The following two cases are both highly consistent with the strategic layout of WeChat Stores in 2025, and are officially listed as benchmarks for full-area operations, meeting the three major operational strategies emphasized: full-area operations, marketing closed loop, and ecological integration.

#菜菜美食日记

Features: Full-chain operation not only improves merchants' short-term and long-term market competitiveness, but also provides a more diversified development path for the entire ecosystem

Global operations and channel linkage: Caicai Food Diary has achieved global operations within the WeChat ecosystem, including WeChat, small stores, mini programs, official accounts, video accounts and other channels, forming a comprehensive content display and sales system;

Content linkage and complementarity: The content of different channels is linked and complementary to each other. For example, the short videos of the video account show the production process and finished product of the food, and the articles of the official account introduce the nutritional value and cooking techniques of the ingredients in detail, realizing the organic combination of content and sales.

Specialty food products: The account sells specialty products related to food, such as ingredients, seasonings, kitchen utensils, etc. These products are highly relevant to the content of the account, can meet the user's demand for related products during the cooking process, and increase the user's willingness to buy;

Long-term value output: Through long-term high-quality content output and professional product recommendations, the account has established good brand trust and reputation. This realizes what WeChat emphasizes: brands should not only rely on short-term marketing activities, but also focus on long-term value output and maintenance of user relationships.

#Saudi Meat Sister

Features: Organic combination of content, brand, and private domain users to promote seamless connection from content to sales

Multi-matrix operation: Roujie’s account not only has a main account, but also has expanded multiple matrix accounts, such as “Daily Stories”, “Choose Good Things First”, “Daily Life”, etc. These matrix accounts can fully display Roujie’s life and recommended content to meet the needs and interests of different users;

At the same time, the content between different matrix accounts complements each other, forming a linkage effect, enhancing the attractiveness and influence of the account, and also building a complete link for conversion;

Personal IP brand building: Roujie successfully built her personal brand and established a distinctive personal image and style through her unique transnational marriage life and cultural differences. The audience can feel her personality and charm through Roujie's content, thus identifying with and trusting her brand;

Private domain operation: Roujie accumulates and converts users through social groups. WeChat has also repeatedly emphasized that the private domain is not only a gathering place for fans, but also an important place to promote the conversion of content into sales.

Continuing from 2024, this year's WeChat Open Class still took the form of a closed-door meeting.

But everyone who listened to the entire thing in the backstage may have already had a clear plan for the results of the coming year.

This is a new opportunity brought about by changes in ecology and traffic.