Latest announcement: WeChat Mini Store begins upgrading to WeChat Mini Store

In the wave of digitalization, the upgrade of WeChat Stores is not just a simple iteration, but an important step in building a closed business loop within the WeChat ecosystem. As Peter Drucker said, "Change is the only constant." The upgrade of WeChat Stores to WeChat Stores marks another in-depth layout of Tencent in the field of e-commerce. This is not only an innovation in the business operation model, but also a comprehensive improvement in the user shopping experience.

Yesterday (October 22), the official WeChat account of WeChat Mini Store released a "Solicitation of Opinions on the Announcement on the Upgrade of WeChat Mini Stores to WeChat Mini Stores". The announcement stated that "starting from October 21, merchants will be officially supported to upgrade WeChat Mini Stores (hereinafter referred to as Mini Stores) to WeChat Mini Stores."

The announcement mentioned two key time points: From November 4, 2024, no new physical goods will be added to WeChat Mini Stores, and all electronic redemption coupons will be removed from the shelves; from November 18, 2024, all physical goods in WeChat Mini Stores will also be removed from the shelves.

The official information released by the WeChat Mini Store official account shows that merchants can use their previous qualifications to quickly upgrade their Mini Stores to WeChat Mini Stores. Merchants can log in to the Mini Store computer terminal (https://shop.weixin.qq.com/) to operate. The current merchant's stock order processing and store fund withdrawal functions will not be stopped and can be operated on the Mini Store management terminal. And these orders and funds will not be synchronized to the new store, and need to be processed in the original Mini Store.

It is understood that after the store is upgraded, it is necessary to synchronize the products to the WeChat store in the small store, and then go to the WeChat store to publish and put the products on the shelves. Before publishing, the product qualifications and deposit requirements of various categories must be met. And when the products are synchronized, third-party products, offline verification, deleted products, etc. are not included. In addition, the original page decoration of the WeChat store will not be retained after the upgrade, and the WeChat store will support more page decoration capabilities in the future.

Please note that individual stores do not support direct upgrades yet. Merchants can register as individual businesses through the Industry and Commerce Bureau and then upgrade their stores to individual business WeChat stores. Official information indicates that WeChat stores will also support individual stores in the future.

WeChat Mini Stores were the first type of store launched by Tencent, followed by Video Stores, the second type of store, and the WeChat Stores launched on August 25 this year, the third type of store. As Video Stores and WeChat Stores are upgraded to WeChat Stores, these three types of stores will all be classified as "WeChat Stores." This means that if you want to do business better in the WeChat ecosystem and get more traffic, WeChat Stores will most likely be the first choice for future transactions.

With the launch of WeChat Stores, a series of changes have continued to take place in the past two months: On August 25, WeChat Stores were officially launched, and Video Stores supported upgrading to WeChat Stores, and the WeChat Store customer service function was upgraded. On September 5, the official released the "New Business Growth Incentive Plan" to encourage merchants to upgrade/open WeChat Stores. On September 25, the WeChat Store PC client was officially launched. On September 25, new products in the Video Store could not be added to the shelves. On September 27, WeChat Store's Preferred Alliance supports WeChat public accounts to bring goods. In early October, WeChat Store internally tested the WeChat Store Assistant APP. On October 21, merchants were officially supported to upgrade WeChat Stores to WeChat Stores. On October 25, Video Stores that have not been upgraded to WeChat Stores will no longer support the function of adding products to the live broadcast room.

The series of changes in the three store types mentioned above ultimately point to one answer - the WeChat platform is "collecting transactions and building closed loops" around WeChat stores - this was also the summary of Zhang Dongqing, the founder of Xiaoliebian, in the Jianshi live broadcast room yesterday.

The first purpose is to collect transactions, hoping that as many transactions as possible in the WeChat ecosystem will be deposited in the official WeChat store, providing a unified transaction experience and fulfillment guarantee for WeChat's C-end users.

The second closed loop is to build a closed loop with WeChat stores as the core, including the closed loop of goods and the closed loop of WeChat store customer service channels.

All of the above changes are driving the construction and improvement of WeChat's omni-channel e-commerce. Zhang Dongqing also pointed out that WeChat stores are the most important outlet for WeChat ecosystem from 2024 to 2025!