WeChat opens door to small merchants

Ehaoyao.com, a leading pharmaceutical online retailer, is one of the companies that has opened a shop on WeChat.

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Zhang Dingding, marketing director of ehaoyao.com, said that the new WeChat store feature is very useful for small businesses, which are weak in technology.

"A small team of one or two people can manage the operation and maintenance of the store," Zhang said. He declined to

reveal sales figures for the company's WeChat store, but he said that the performance of the store has been "beyond expectations".

Analysts said it will be a challenge for Tencent to truly transform the huge traffic of WeChat into great sales numbers for stores.

Lu Jingyu, an analyst with the Beijing-based iResearch Consulting Group, said that Mobile Taobao accounts for about 75 percent of China's mobile shopping market. "For WeChat stores to grab some serious market share from Taobao takes time, and it is not something that can be achieved within one or two years," she said.

She said that Taobao's mobile shopping is a very open system, in which customers can easily search for the products they want.

However, the WeChat store is a closed system, where people can only buy from the official accounts they follow. "So the selection on the WeChat store is relatively limited.

"Tencent is clearly testing the waters in mobile e-commerce via the WeChat store. It is likely that the messaging app will launch new features in the future to optimize its shopping function," she said.

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