What is the difference between WeChat Mini Programs and Official Accounts?

Published: 2018-01-30

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What is the difference between WeChat Mini Programs and Official Accounts? WeChat Mini Programs have launched. Some friends may still not be very clear about it. The following brings a comparative review of WeChat Official Accounts and WeChat Mini Programs. Let's learn about it together!

Differences between WeChat Mini Programs and Official Accounts:

　　1. Different positioning (Official Accounts serve marketing and information transmission; Mini Programs are oriented toward products and services)

　　Official Accounts are mainly used for information transmission to realize the connection between people and information. With H5, they can achieve simple interaction, mainly focusing on marketing and information transmission, with simple services as a supplement.

　　Mini Programs are strictly distinguished from Official Accounts in terms of functions (they do not support marketing methods such as following and message push). On the one hand, this prevents products and services from being submerged in Official Account marketing information. On the other hand, it supports interaction and traffic diversion among Official Accounts, Moments, groups, and Mini Programs, allowing developers to focus on products and services. Thus, it brings WeChat a large number of long-tail services and, combined with WeChat's own heavy services, creates an ecosystem from social connection to information connection and then to services.

　2. Differences in implementation technology (Official Accounts are based on H5; Mini Programs are based on WeChat's own development environment and development language)

　　Mini Programs are cloud applications within WeChat (so no installation is required). They are not native Apps. Through WebSocket two-way communication (ensuring instant communication without refresh), local caching (local caching of images and UI reduces interaction delay with the server), and optimization of WeChat's underlying technology, they achieve an experience close to native APP.

　　Official Accounts are developed and run based on traditional H5. The traditional H5 runtime environment is a browser. The WeChat Mini Program runtime environment is not a complete browser. H5-related technologies are used during development. The WeChat Mini Program runtime environment is a built-in parser completely reconstructed by WeChat based on the browser kernel. It has been specially optimized for Mini Programs and, combined with its own defined development language standard (optimized based on H5), improves Mini Program performance.

　　In terms of system permissions, WeChat Mini Programs can obtain more system permissions through the WeChat APP, such as network communication status, data caching capability, etc. Here, the WeChat APP is equivalent to a new operating system built on top of the original system. Mini Programs indirectly interact with the system through WeChat, enabling an experience similar to native APP.

　　This is exactly the shortcoming of HTML5 web applications, causing them to be mainly used in applications with simple business logic and interaction.

　　3. Different functions (Official Account functions revolve around information display and marketing; Mini Programs are oriented toward products and services)

　　WeChat and Official Accounts have significant differences in functions such as development languages, design specifications, marketing methods, and review mechanisms.

　　An Official Account is a type of account that provides users with an information and consultation publishing platform. It provides a new way of information dissemination and builds a better communication and management model with readers. After combining with H5, Official Accounts can also provide some simple interactive functions. Mini Programs are mainly intended to provide services. Compared with Official Accounts, they run more smoothly and can provide more complex products and services.

　　Official Account functions mainly revolve around information transmission and marketing. Mini Programs strictly control marketing functions to distinguish themselves from Official Accounts, so that the service experience and convenience of Mini Programs can be improved and they will not be drowned in excessive marketing information from Official Accounts.

　　4. Differences in experience (Official Accounts have greater operation delay; Mini Program experience is close to native App)

　　In Official Accounts, after clicking an application function, a green progress bar appears at the top and you need to wait for a while. For applications with complex business logic and high interaction requirements, the experience is relatively poor.

　　Mini Programs are very smooth and require almost no waiting, as smooth as ordinary APP operations. The main reason is that Official Accounts have no local cache, so every time they are opened, they request the server to refresh the page, resulting in a longer delay and degraded experience. Mini Programs cache UI and images locally and only request interaction data from the server. Page switching does not require refresh, so the experience can be close to the smoothness of native APP.

　　What are WeChat Mini Programs?

　　Simply put, Mini Programs are WeChat versions of various APPs installed on your phone. For example, your phone may have APPs such as 美图秀秀, 携程, 唱吧, 航旅纵横, 滴滴, and 大众点评 installed to meet your needs for photo editing, travel, hotel booking, restaurant reservation, etc.

　　In the past, you needed to open each APP separately to operate. Now all of this can be achieved by using the Mini Programs of these APPs in WeChat. Yes, it can all be completed in WeChat without jumping out of WeChat to open those independent APPs!