Digital Life and eCommerce in the Philippines

Thomas Price

This article continues our recent focus on the Philippines, from general insights and analysis to a look at the most popular eCommerce platforms in the country. Filipino Consumers The Philippines is home to a young and tech-savvy population with a cultural identity all their own. The Philippine melting pot infuses the local population with a …

7 Essential New Retail Mini-Program Features

Thomas Price

New Retail mini-programs (or ‘applets’) have become the standard among major retail brands. Official reports from WeChat say that in 2018, retail Mini-Programs served users 200 million times. The same year, more than 1500 online supermarkets were launched. According to statistics published by Aladdin, retail Mini-Programs account for 21% of the top 200. As they …

Senior App Design: Age-Proofing Mobile eCommerce

Thomas Price

Senior app design is becoming more relevant than ever. According to a recent Nielson Norman Group survey, the ability of users aged between 25-60 to properly utilize web pages and apps has dropped by 0.8% year-on-year. Meanwhile, middle-aged and senior users were found to 74% less efficient at doing the same than users in younger …

Baidu Mini-Program: eCommerce Applet Breakdown

Thomas Price

WeChat has lost its monopoly on Mini-Programs. In the second half of 2018, Baidu, Alipay, ByteDance and TikTok launched their own Mini-Programs to rival WeChat’s dominance. According to Baidu’s data published in May 2019, “since the official launch in July last year, there have been over 200 million active Baidu Mini-Program users each month, over …

ByteDance Mini-Program: eCommerce Applet Development & Strategy

Thomas Price

ByteDance has entered the Mini-Program later than Baidu and Alipay (and certainly later than applet pioneer WeChat, who kicked off the craze). However, by launching Mini-Programs on its two hugely popular apps, Douyin (TikTok outside of China) and news and article platform Toutiao, ByteDance is standing as a real contender in the Mini-Program sphere. These …

Mini-Programs and Brand eCommerce: The Perfect Match?

Thomas Price

Previously an eCommerce trend in China had been marketplace centralization, with the domination of T-Mall and its associated brands. Now, however, we are seeing the space becoming increasingly decentralized, as social media selling takes hold. This is especially true with the advent of Mini-Programs, which can integrate online store-based selling into the social media apps …

China’s Mini-Program War: Will One Unseat WeChat?

Thomas Price

WeChat may have pioneered them, but today several other apps have stepped up to do battle for the title of Mini-Program king. Bytedance (parent to video app sensation TikTok/Douyin), Alipay, Tencent QQ, and Baidu are among the major players that have rushed to launch their own Mini-Programs and incorporate them into the core of their …

Welcome to The Age of Mobile Payment in China

TMO Group

China’s mobile payments industry has entered a new and exciting phase, by reaching approximately 16.3 trillion yuan ($2.5 trillion) in 2015. Convenience, speed of transaction and discounts are the main factors encouraging the use of mobile payments over traditional payment options. Whether it’s buying plane tickets or ordering food deliveries or even paying utility bills, …

Three of Every Five Chinese Customers Use Online Payment Offline

TMO Group

While PayPal and other payment methods are still struggling to gain acceptance as ways to pay in U.S. stores, Chinese consumers have quickly adopted online payment solutions as major method to pay in offline stores and restaurants.   Three in every five Chinese consumers are using mobile wallets China is the world’s largest single mobile market, …

More Than 300K Offline Retailers Have Launched WeChat Payment

TMO Group

It’s been almost two years since WeChat, China’s most popular social platform enables WeChat users to pay with WeChat payment in offline retailers. During a WeChat Payment partner conference recently, The number of offline retail stores integrated with WeChat Payment has been revealed: over 300,000. According to the released data, over 200 million WeChat users …