After such a long wait, Tencent has finally joined the Double 11 battle.

WeChat Mini Shop is ramping up efforts for the Double 11 shopping festival, vying for merchants and orders with real money subsidies.

However, some merchants are no longer willing to work overtime for the big promotion, and even take time off for themselves.

WeChat, which is still improving its infrastructure and strengthening operational support, also needs to give cautious merchants a reason worth investing in.

01

People Shifting to WeChat Mini Shop

This year, veteran e-commerce practitioner Lao Mu started cooperating with traditional factories in Hebei. He helped them adjust their online product portfolios, connect with content creators, and even tried livestreaming himself. His business focus has been placed on WeChat Channels and WeChat Mini Shop.

What he values is the supply chain and price advantages of the industrial belts, as well as a platform that he believes has not yet been crowded out by merchants.

WeChat is also speeding up its pace. This year, WeChat Mini Shop announced that it will "officially participate in the Double 11 promotion for the first time". The event kicked off on October 12 and will last until November 15, spanning 35 days in total.

The platform has rolled out more subsidies. For three types of "high-quality shops" covering brands, service providers, and best-selling products, eligible discounts can be fully covered by the platform in maximum cases. Merchants and livestream promoters can also use exclusive streamer coupons that can be stacked with cross-store full reduction offers, while activities such as order placement challenges and shopping credits are set up in livestream rooms.

Discounts are also spread through WeChat's social connections. To share the expanded coupon, users need to send the coupon to their friends to unlock bigger discounts together, and the increased part is subsidized by the platform, which reminds people of the social dissemination path of Pinduoduo. Exclusive streamer coupons can be shared in group chats and private chats, helping merchants close deals outside the livestream room.

However, Lao Mu did not know that the official would hold the Double 11 event this year. In e-commerce exchange groups, there is not much discussion about WeChat Mini Shop's Double 11, and some group members even mistake WeChat Mini Shop for the "Weidian" that emerged many years ago.

Most of the posts about WeChat Mini Shop on social media are published by service providers and lecturers, with no discussions about actual merchant operations.

Chen Jie, who has long tracked Tencent's e-commerce business, told us that brand merchants should have a stronger perception of this year's Double 11 due to the large subsidy intensity. Small and medium-sized merchants have relatively fewer products signed up for the event, and the subsidy intensity is also lower. He said, "WeChat carries a huge amount of traffic, so it is necessary to strictly control the products sold."

In fact, as early as 2024, WeChat Mini Shop held the 11.11 Goodies Festival, offering transaction target incentives, cross-store full reduction, and main venue display slots.

Chen Jie said that what makes WeChat Mini Shop special this year is that it held a large-scale investment promotion conference in Shanghai, and has invested more funds to subsidize participating merchants since the 618 shopping festival.

02

Late Catch-up Lessons

WeChat has been engaged in e-commerce for many years. Why is it still regarded by some merchants as a new channel with dividend opportunities?

In fact, WeChat's e-commerce attempts have not moved forward continuously along a single path. The 2014 version of WeChat Mini Shop mainly relied on Official Accounts, and was announced to be offline in 2020 as it was no longer maintained. Later, Mini Stores and WeChat Channels Mini Shops emerged one after another.

It was not until 2024, when WeChat Channels Mini Shop was upgraded to WeChat Mini Shop, that transactions began to expand to more scenarios within WeChat. Stores and products can be accessed in Official Accounts, WeChat Channels, Mini Programs, and WeChat Search, but for merchants, how to do business through these entries still requires exploration.

On mature e-commerce platforms, "platform account managers" are involved in investment promotion, event organization, and merchant operation. For a long period of time, WeChat has delegated many specific tasks to service providers.

This is related to WeChat's positioning of its own role. Relevant person in charge once clearly stated that the company's idea of doing e-commerce is to act as the "connector" in the e-commerce ecosystem, rather than engaging in the very "asset-heavy" links in e-commerce.

WeChat will not sign performance bet agreements with merchants. "The way of coming up and saying how powerful we are and giving a little traffic support doesn't work for us." Judging from the public ideas at that time, WeChat was more inclined to provide transaction tools to integrate business into existing social scenarios, while leaving specific operations more to merchants and service providers.

However, business did not grow naturally. Some small and medium-sized merchants tried to operate in the early stage of WeChat's e-commerce development. They recalled that there were no account managers to connect with them at that time, and neither public domain nor private domain brought the expected traffic and orders, so they withdrew after a period of exploration. The previous experience made them more cautious.

Lao Mu still has expectations for WeChat Mini Shop, which is related to his early private domain operation experience. In his view, people who know the brand and have bought its products may be more willing to watch, interact and place orders after entering the livestream room than strange users. These connections have the potential to help merchants start from a single livestream and then fight for more organic traffic.

Chen Jie believes that these issues need to be viewed in the context of the platform's development stage. WeChat Channels has a long development history, but the upgraded WeChat Mini Shop is still supplementing its infrastructure and increasing support for merchants in terms of personnel.

Public information shows that in 2025, WeChat Mini Shop expanded part of its operation team, adding merchant and industry operation positions responsible for introducing brands and formulating industry strategies. Brand introduction and operation guidance have also become the tasks of relevant teams.

Nowadays, WeChat's expectations for e-commerce scale are more direct. At this year's WeChat Open Class, relevant person in charge emphasized that the team pays attention to scale indicators such as GMV and user volume, and also values whether merchants, livestream promoters and service providers can obtain profits.

03

No Longer Working Overtime for Double 11

When WeChat is ramping up efforts for Double 11, some merchants and consumers are no longer chasing this big promotion.

A few years ago, Lao Mu would wrap himself in a military overcoat and stay in front of five or six large screens, watching the GMV figures jump up with his colleagues. This year, some of his e-commerce friends simply took time off to travel. "That's the battlefield of big brands and capital. If a small team like ours squeezes in, we will end up in a terrible situation."

During the promotion period, merchants and content creators compete intensively for limited users and traffic. Big sellers have more budget to invest in traffic placement and have brand endorsement; the traffic allocated to small teams is limited, even if they increase investment, the attracted users may not be as accurate as usual, and the return after investment may be lower than usual.

Similar sentiments have emerged in e-commerce exchange groups. Some companies no longer require overtime during Double 11, and some people think that the "crude hawking" is nothing but unnecessary trouble. A clothing merchant complained that the account manager is still saying "our platform, our industry is still growing this year", as if he is still living in a dream.

At the same time, consumers no longer have the reason to wait specifically for Double 11. Promotions come one after another, and shopping can be completed at any time. When the discount is not obvious enough, filling the shopping cart in advance and waiting to pay at midnight loses its appeal.

The more realistic problem is that merchants have limited budgets, and their profits cannot withstand repeated trial and error. Reconfiguring the team and adjusting the product portfolio both mean costs, so they are more likely to allocate money to channels that they are familiar with and can estimate the input-output ratio.

WeChat Mini Shop already has impressive brand transaction cases, but the customer base, team and content creator resources of big brands are not available to all small merchants.

The acceleration of WeChat Mini Shop has just encountered these two kinds of caution: a big promotion can hardly make merchants increase their investment easily, and a new channel cannot get investment just by imagination. Platform subsidies can reduce part of the cost for merchants, but mature, referable operation cases can give merchants more reasons to increase their investment.

Original title: Double 11 is almost dying, and Tencent finally steps in

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "True Research Lab", written by HUANG Ge, edited by ZHANG Duo, and published with authorization from 36Kr.