Mini program development and operation carry the hopes of countless entrepreneurs, but as XZS Tech, a Shenzhen development company, sees it, although over a million mini programs are now live, not many people understand the rules and workings deeply. Recently a user reported receiving an official violation warning over their mini program. Many may wonder: apart from outright illegal ones, what else gets a mini program flagged? Let us find out.
1. User complaints. WeChat is a consumer-facing product where the user’s interests always outrank the merchant’s. Once a dispute arises over a transaction inside the mini program and gets reported, punishment is likely. So stamp out false advertising, counterfeit selling and other dispute-prone behaviour inside the mini program, and do not count on luck.
2. Bait and switch. When submitting for review, the mini program’s service category must match its business licence. Providing services outside the registered category after launch also triggers the review mechanism. Passing off another entity’s official account, enterprise or product names without permission counts as infringement: the content gets cleared with a deadline to rectify, and failure to comply means removal from the shelves.
3. Inducing or misleading users. Social fission is a great power of mini programs, but many operators chase virality and push, even force, users to forward the mini program, which badly hurts the experience. Note that guiding users through customer service messages, forcing users to hand over personal information to proceed, and steering users to tap ads all count as inducing violations.
4. Plug-ins and fake traffic. Voting activities are hugely popular inside WeChat, and vote rigging often follows, creating unfair competition. Offering vote or follower boosting for others inside a mini program is not allowed, and commissioning third parties for fake orders, ad clicks or paid sharing can get the account banned.
5. API abuse. A mini program’s abilities come from the interfaces WeChat provides, so abusing them also brings punishment: monitoring user screenshots, pushing marketing through template messages, recording the user’s clipboard, collecting private user data, all count as misuse, and complaints or detection bring penalties.
6. Suspected illegality. Using a distribution plug-in to run multi-level distribution, publishing news without the required internet information publication qualification, spreading rumours through the news section, or using a mini program to offer cash loans, pornography, gambling, fraud, copyright infringement and other illegal services leads to a direct ban once discovered.
7. iOS virtual payment. Because of Apple’s cut on virtual goods, WeChat’s iOS client currently forbids any virtual product transaction that bypasses Apple’s official channel, including the knowledge-paying, paid booking and tipping services common in mini programs. Note that not only is guiding users to pay elsewhere a violation; merely displaying the relevant product pages and payment buttons is not allowed either.
As the saying goes, nothing stands square without rules. Only by policing our own mini programs strictly can we keep this ecosystem healthy.
XZS Tech is a Shenzhen-based development company. We build custom mini programs, WeChat and mobile apps, e-commerce systems and corporate websites, covering requirement analysis, design, development and after-sales support, and we hand over the source code at delivery.
If you are planning something along the lines of what this article describes, tell us the scenario and we will come back with an approach and a cost range. Call 0755-82494862, or reach us through the contact page at hk.xiaozhushoukeji.cn/en/contact-en/. The first conversation costs nothing.
Want to talk through what you just read?
We work end to end, from product design to launch. Tell us about your scenario and we can start there.
Shenzhen XZS Technology Co., Ltd. · Tel 0755-82494862 · 13760424861