WeData Analytics: Get Better Insights from Your WeChat Mini Program

WeData (We分析 in Chinese) is WeChat’s official analytics tool for mini programs. Owners sign in at wedata.weixin.qq.com with the WeChat account that manages the mini program, then follow real-time data, user acquisition, retention, page performance, transactions, and custom events and funnels. It works with no extra setup, but its interface is in Chinese.

A WeChat Mini Program has many uses for a business, especially one that targets Chinese customers. Many Chinese people use WeChat intensively every day: they scan QR codes to pay their bills, and they use mini programs to order food, call a taxi or shop online. Life in China is hard to imagine without WeChat, because it contains almost everything in one app.

If you have a website, you very likely use an analytics tool on it. In 2022, BuiltWith counted 73,175,294 websites using Google Analytics. Website owners want to know what visitors do, how the site acquires users and how each channel converts.

Analytics matter just as much in a mini program, but owners use them less often. Yet you can get valuable insights into your mini program users too. Which tool should you use, and how do you get the most out of it?

Which Analytics Tools Work for a WeChat Mini Program?

Three analytics tools are commonly used on a mini program:

• Google Analytics
• Baidu Tongji
• Tencent WeData

Here is how they compare, before the details of each tool:

Tool	Made by	Strength	Main limit
Google Analytics	Google	Familiar interface, multilingual, free	Workarounds to integrate, data sent out of China
Baidu Tongji	Baidu	Same measurement as on Chinese websites	Chinese interface only
WeData	Tencent (WeChat)	Works out of the box, official support	Chinese interface, data limited to the mini program

1. Google Analytics

Pros	Cons
Multi-language	Integration requires more technical knowledge and workarounds
Convenient if you’re already familiar with the Google Analytics interface	Not supported by Tencent; Universal Analytics stopped processing data on July 1, 2023, and in 2022 no ready-made tool supported Google Analytics 4 in mini programs
Free of charge	Possible compliance issues due to data being sent out of China

2. Baidu Tongji (百度统计)

Pros	Cons
Easy to integrate with many valuable tools	The interface is in Chinese only
If you are used to the Baidu Tongji interface, it measures the same way as on a Chinese website
It is a credible tool in the Chinese tech industry
Data can be used interchangeably

Our page on Baidu Analytics (Baidu Tongji) describes the tool in more detail.

3. WeData (We分析)

Pros	Cons
Works out of the box, built into the mini program environment	The interface is in Chinese only
Official support from Tencent	Reports only cover data from the mini program environment
Free of charge in 2022	Released in 2021, later than its counterparts

What Is WeData?

Released in August 2021, WeData, or We fēnxī in Chinese, is an analytics tool launched by Tencent for mini program owners. It provides core data and insight analysis. With it, you can collect data to optimize your mini program, understand your users in depth, build successful marketing campaigns and give users a better experience. WeChat’s documentation describes mini program data analysis as a tool for developers and operators, with key metrics, real-time monitoring and custom analysis.

Our WeData page covers its behavior analysis features. In this article, we use WeData to show its reports and how to get value from them for your marketing on the mini program.

How to Sign In to WeData

Go to https://wedata.weixin.qq.com, the login page of the tool, and sign in with the WeChat account that manages the mini program.

Which Reports Does WeData Offer?

1. Real-time analysis (实时数据) shows your mini program audience in real time: how current users interact with the mini program, and how your new campaigns and features perform.

2. Acquisition analysis (访问分析) shows how users found your mini program, with an estimate of the visitors who open it or become registered users. Users commonly arrive from Official Accounts (公众号渠道), QR codes (扫码渠道) and mini program sharing (分享渠道), and WeData provides a sub-report for each channel.

3. Retention analysis (留存分析), also known as cohort analysis, shows the users who come back to your mini program. Returning customers are crucial to a business, so this report matters. You can filter users by behavior, or create and track retention on a custom behavior.

4. Page analysis (页面分析) shows the performance of each page and reveals problem pages. You can check bounce rates (跳出率), the average time users stay on a page (次均停留时长) and more, to fix or improve pages.

5. Transaction analysis (交易分析) works with WeChat Pay to analyze the e-commerce activity of your mini program. It measures sales and payment data, so you can improve your sales funnels.

6. Business analysis (经营分析) gives insights into your business operations. It breaks down into:

• Business overview (经营总览), which shows your e-commerce results with different metrics, a useful basis to improve your e-commerce functions or pages.
• Traffic analysis (流量分析), which shows the number of visitors, split into new and returning customers, and the conversions of each traffic source.
• Product analysis (商品分析), which details the products and services sold through the mini program, using data from the checkout process.
• Customer analysis (客户分析), which shows conversions and spending levels by user group (new and returning users).

7. Event analysis (事件分析) tracks how users interact with specific events, such as adding a product to the cart, sharing a page or changing an order status.

8. Funnel analysis (漏斗分析) follows users through defined steps, so you can measure the success of each funnel in your mini program.

How to Turn WeData Reports into Insights

WeData also provides user demographics and tag analysis, and lets you run A/B tests to see which version of a page works best. It gives marketers, data analysts, developers and managers a lot of information about the mini program.

Data alone does not help your business, though. You need to turn it into insights, which means understanding your customers in depth. WeData does not do that for you, and neither does any single report: business intelligence solutions bring mini program data together with your other sales data.

Plan analytics from the start of the project. Decide which events and funnels matter before development, so that they are tracked from launch: our article on how to develop a WeChat Mini Program places this work in the project steps. On the Go City mini program, which sells attraction tickets, we adopted WeData to strengthen data processing and support business decisions.

What Should You Do Next?

Start with WeData: it is official, built for mini programs and ready to use. Add Baidu Tongji or Google Analytics only when you need to compare the mini program with a website already measured by one of them.

If you need a team that can set up the tracking and turn WeData data into insights, QPSoftware can help: we are a digital agency in Shanghai, and our WeChat Mini Program development covers everything from custom development to marketing. We work with our clients to make their mini programs succeed. Consult with us for more details.

References:

1. Google Analytics Usage Statistics: https://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Google-Analytics

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