The experience of giving gifts via WeChat is quite simple, but something is still lacking.

Text | Wang Yuchan

Editor | Qiao Qian

Before the Spring Festival comes, the WeChat e-commerce team responded to the eager expectations of merchants and arranged an entrance for the "Send Gift" function that cannot be overlooked. That is, right below the WeChat conversation box - it is placed between "Red Packet" and "Transfer".

Last month, when the "Send Gift" function started the gray-scale test, 36Kr once wrote that it might be a genius invention comparable to the "WeChat Red Packet" - it also appeared when the year was coming to an end, and it also met the needs of users to maintain interpersonal relationships. It only lowers the action threshold without creating new needs - although bank transfers can also send money to relatives and friends, it is not as easy and interesting as the WeChat Red Packet, so the former will never be as high-frequency as the latter.

Screenshot of the gift-giving interface

At the WeChat Open Class in January, the lecturer of the open class said that the outside world had "overpraised" this function, but immediately after, the WeChat team used the method of opening up a "key resource position" to confirm the internal's true attention to this function.

Now, what is the experience of giving gifts to friends on WeChat?

The E-commerce Team Falls Behind, and the Product Team Makes Up

Open the conversation box with a friend, click the plus sign in the lower right corner, and select "Gift", and you can enter the message and gift selection interface.

On the first-level recommendation page for gift selection, the gifts that are shown are "Everyone Is Sending". According to the observation of 36Kr, generally, the gifts that "a friend has sent recently" and "the most friends have sent" will be ranked at the top.

This shows Zhang Xiaolong's consistent product thinking, that is, emphasizing "recommendations based on social relationships" rather than machine recommendations. This is also the core spirit of the "Look" and the information flow design of the Video Account.

In the top search box, enter the brand name or product name to enter the WeChat Store and select gifts in a wider range.

In order to evaluate the cost performance of giving gifts on WeChat, 36Kr has counted the commodity prices of well-known brands in several major gift-giving categories such as clothing, beauty, 3C, and food in the WeChat Store and made a comparison with Taobao Tmall and JD.com. The results are as follows:

Chart made by 36Kr (Click the image to enlarge and view more details)

In the above figure, the channels marked with yellow color blocks represent the most cost-effective channels to purchase the commodity. Among the ten sample commodities, only 2 in the WeChat Store have supply or price advantages. Among the above ten brands, half of the brands either do not have an official WeChat Store, or the number of SKUs in the store is much lower than that of the flagship stores on Taotian and JD.com.

It has to be admitted that The WeChat Store is currently weak in terms of brand completeness, the number of SKUs, and subsidy capabilities.

It is particularly necessary to mention that Although brands such as Uniqlo, Lululemon, HM, Nike, Gucci, Tiffany, and Prada all have official mini-program stores, in the interface of the WeChat Store, neither the official stores nor the official commodities can be found. Except for searching for "Nike" to find the supply sources of dealers such as "Topsports", for the keywords of the other several brands, no related commodities can be found, and only white-label products with homophonic brand names can be found. This proves that the WeChat Store has not yet been properly connected with the mini-program store. At the WeChat Open Class in January this year, the WeChat lecturer spent a lot of effort explaining that "the mini-program should cooperate well with the WeChat Store".

According to the planning of the WeChat team, in the WeChat e-commerce system, the WeChat Store, mini-program, and Service Account will form a "trinity" system. The WeChat Store undertakes the unification of transactions, orders, and after-sales experiences; the mini-program is responsible for providing functional services, membership systems, and marketing gameplay; the Service Account is responsible for user precipitation and repurchase, etc.

Now it seems that to transfer the "territory" of the mini-program e-commerce to the WeChat Store, obviously, there are still many procedures to be completed.

Of course, giving gifts on WeChat also has some parts that have a better experience than going to traditional e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com - in a word, it is "The lessons that the e-commerce team missed are made up by the product team." When giving gifts on WeChat, there is no need to ask the recipient for the style and the recipient's address, no need to meet the platform's full reduction or get coupons, and there is a more beautiful UI interface for the gift receipt prompt. And, most importantly, because WeChat masters social relationships, the set of behaviors of greeting + giving gifts appears more natural here.

WeChat gift-giving prompt message. Top: Before the revision. Bottom: After the revision

To summarize in a sentence, the "WeChat Gift" at this stage is sufficient for buying New Year's goods and getting closer to relatives and friends. But if you really have interpersonal relationships that need to be maintained by giving high-end gifts, this set may not be enough.

What Will the WeChat Gift-Giving Function Bring and Welcome?

For the current WeChat e-commerce business, competing in SKUs and prices is not its strength. WeChat's real strength lies in mastering social relationships - and although the gift-giving function is not yet mature, it precisely utilizes this point.

At the open class, the WeChat lecturer said that the impact of "Send Gift" on merchants is not only to increase sales but also to help merchants reduce promotion costs based on the gift-giving behavior of social relationships. Moreover, Because only goods with qualified quality can be spread through the social relationship chain, it is a valuable virtuous cycle. "If all merchants are committed to this, the ecology of WeChat transactions will definitely undergo a huge change," the lecturer said.

In addition, because social relationships themselves have the effect of "viral spread", The gift-giving function is expected to drive more new users who have never used the WeChat Store to enter the WeChat Store through the behavior of giving or receiving gifts and complete their first consumption.

Next, to optimize the experience of giving gifts on WeChat, in addition to doing a good job in brand settlement and waiting for the e-commerce ecology to become rich from barrenness, there are also some things that the product team can do.

At this month's open class, the WeChat team demonstrated two exciting new gameplay that the "Send Gift" function will launch next: "Goods for Merchants to Send Gifts" and "Offline Scan Code to Send Gifts".

Regarding "Goods for Merchants to Send Gifts", it means that merchants can make exclusive "page decorations" for gift-like commodities in the WeChat Store, and can also customize stickers and custom package cards to make the entire gift-giving process more delicate and attentive - it sounds like the significance of the "Red Packet Cover" to the WeChat Red Packet product.

"Offline Scan Code to Send Gifts" benefits offline merchants, allowing offline customers to directly send gifts to WeChat friends online by scanning the QR code presented by the store. It can be said that it adds a new entrance and new scenario to the "Send Gift" function and also brings a new sales channel to offline merchants.

A snack WeChat Store merchant told 36Kr that since the WeChat gray-scale test of the gift-giving function in December, they have rushed to launch a batch of gift box products to welcome the new customer dividend brought by the new function. They are looking forward to the gift-giving needs brought by the upcoming Lunar New Year, Lantern Festival, and Valentine's Day. "The demand for giving gifts always exists. The new function does not create demand but reduces the difficulty. This makes us very excited," the merchant said.