WeChat Official Account, The 2025 Setup Checklist

1. Choose the right account type

Pick the path that matches your market goals. Service Account is the common choice for international brands that want customer service, menus, and payment features. Subscription Account suits daily publishing, media, and frequent updates. Think about notification frequency, feature access, and how your product is sold.

2. Prepare verification and documents

Collect legal name, registration certificates, brand logo files, and a clear contact person. Decide where your entity sits, since that impacts verification flow and timings. Having this information ready saves days in back and forth. If you plan to use WeChat Pay, prepare your store information and payment scope in advance.

3. Branding and profile setup

• Account name, set a readable English or Chinese name that users can remember.
• Logo, 640 by 640 works well, keep it crisp on dark and light backgrounds.
• Profile, write a one sentence value statement, then a short paragraph that clarifies product and service scope.
• Welcome message, set expectations, link to a simple start here menu path.

4. Menu information architecture

Create two to three top level items that map to your primary goals. Use clear names like Products, About, Contact. Add one to two sub items per top level where it helps users complete a task. Point to live pages inside your account or to your mini program sections, not to dead ends.

5. Templates, auto replies, and keywords

• Template messages, define your main transactional messages, for example order updates and booking confirmations.
• Auto replies, cover common questions, for example pricing or delivery, and route to human support when intent is high.
• Keywords, map brand words and product names to handy links, for example typing price returns a pricing page.

6. Editorial plan and publishing cadence

Start with one article per week, supported by short posts that show product benefits and social proof. Keep a simple calendar, week one story, week two case, week three guide, week four announcement. Translate with care, avoid literal phrasing, and adapt imagery and examples to local context.

7. Analytics, KPIs, and reporting

Track follower growth, reads, shares, menu clicks, and form submissions. Define one primary KPI per campaign, for example qualified leads. Create a short weekly report, top article, top menu path, next action. This keeps your team focused and shows what is really moving results.

8. Security, permissions, and compliance

• Admin roles, avoid shared logins, assign least privilege to editors and developers.
• Domain whitelists, keep only the domains you actively use.
• Data access, centralize export rights, and document who can pull user data.
• Reviews, plan a light internal review for templates and menus every quarter.

9. Go live checklist

• Welcome flow tested on mobile, buttons and links working.
• Menus connected to final pages or mini program views.
• Auto replies returning the correct text and links.
• Template messages sending clean data with correct variables.
• Analytics events firing, test with a small pilot audience first.
• Support path visible, users can reach you in one or two taps.

10. Download the checklist

You can keep this as a one pager for your internal runbook.