Over 10 million businesses in China have WeChat accounts, and it is becoming increasingly popular for small businesses to only have a WeChat account, forgoing developing their own website or mobile app completely. WeChat combines a chat-based interface with a vast library of add-on features such as a mobile wallet, chat-based transactions, and chat-based media and interactive widgets, and exposes it all to businesses through a powerful API that enables businesses from mom and pop noodle shops to powerhouses such as Nike and Burberry to “friend” their customers and market to them in never before imaginable ways. That’s what China’s doing - they’re accessing markets for the first time through mobile apps and payments.” - Brian Buchwald, CEO of consumer intelligence firm Bomoda Rather than having to deal with all the infrastructure created 200 years ago, you could hit the ground running on the latest technology. Imagine if you were going to start a city from scratch. “They’re doing things we’re simply not doing in the U.S. Yes, on WeChat you can chat, but you can also conduct a myriad of shopping-related activities: WeChat is reminiscent of what Yahoo might be if you crammed it all into a single mobile app. While in the US, the trend for apps has been to “ unbundle” themselves into separate, use-case specific apps, in China the trend is quite the opposite. How stores interact with customers on WeChat. In three short years, WeChat has exploded in popularity and has become the dominant mobile messaging platform in China, with approximately 700 million monthly active users (MAUs). The product was created by a special projects team within Tencent (which also owns the dominant desktop messaging software in China, QQ) under the mandate of creating a completely new mobile-first messaging experience for the Chinese market. WeChat was created by Chinese holding company Tencent three years ago. “If you can get ahold of Facebook’s product roadmap, it’s a giant WeChat clone.” - William Bao Bean, SOS Ventures and Chinaccelerator Here is a look at the major initiatives and forces shaping this trend: 1. Increased sophistication of notifications that are context-aware and available across devices to provide an always-on, intelligent interface layer with consumers.Īt my company, ZipfWorks, we build and scale intelligent shopping platforms and applications, so I pay close attention to emerging trends impacting digital commerce such as chatbots and mobile commerce.The integration of seamless payment technology into devices, increasingly accessible to third parties via APIs.The rise of sensors, wearables, the quantified-self movement, and advances in data science and analytics are bringing never-before imagined levels of personalization and predictive assistance capabilities (as well as rising concerns over privacy).Inflection points being reached in artificial intelligence and natural language processing that enable 90%+ accuracy in machine parsing and understanding spoken or typed requests.The growing usage of mobile messaging applications and an entire generation of mobile-native consumers who are comfortable and fluent with messaging as an interaction paradigm.The key trends driving this movement include: Commerce is becoming not only more conversational but more ubiquitous and seamlessly integrated into our lives, and the way we interact with brands will be forever changed as a result. Smart companies are finding new and innovative touch points with consumers that are contextual, relevant, highly personal, and, yes, conversational. The fact is, technology overall is becoming more deeply woven into our lives, and the entire ecosystem is enjoying tighter cohesion through the increasing availability and sophistication of APIs. While messaging and voice interfaces are central components, they fit into a larger picture of increasing infusion of technology into our daily lives, which in turn is unlocking new potential for brand-to-consumer interaction. The net result is that you and I will be talking to brands and companies over Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, and elsewhere before year’s end, and will find it normal. voice) to interact with people, brands, or services and bots that heretofore have had no real place in the bidirectional, asynchronous messaging context. …utilizing chat, messaging, or other natural language interfaces (i.e.
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