ELECTRONIC commerce or e-commerce will play a much bigger role in the development of Sarawak, especially with our state’s focus on developing a digital economy.
For those unfamiliar with what e-commerce is, ecommerceguide.com presents one of the simplest definitions: “e-commerce refers to commercial transactions conducted online, so whenever you buy something or sell something over the Internet, you’re involved in e-commerce”.
For those of you who are involved in selling products or services over the Internet, or are interested in setting up an online business, it may be useful to learn what the current scenario of e-commerce is like in Malaysia.
Recently, iprice.my came up with ‘The Map of E-commerce in Malaysia’ for the first quarter of this year, which ranked the country’s top e-commerce players, namely the online marketplaces, based on their average quarterly traffic, mobile application ranking, social media followers and number of staff.
The list of online marketplaces included e-commerce players with more than 100,000 visitors per month or at least 100,000 social media followers.
For this article, we’ll only look at the Top 5 e-commerce players on this list, based on average monthly visits, which is led by Lazada with 48.5 million visits, followed by Shopee (13.7 million), 11 Street (13.2 million), Lelong (9.6 million), and Zalora (2.5 million).
Unsurprisingly, most of the same players also had the largest following on Facebook, namely Lazada with 22.8 million followers, followed by Sephora (17.4 million), Shopee (9 million), Zalora (7.2 million) and 11 Street (1.6 million). On this list, however, only 11 Street featured country-specific numbers of Facebook followers.
With social media playing a big role in terms of creating awareness on the latest deals for their customers, figures such as the number of followers on the main social networks are an important aspect of business for these online merchants.
No doubt, these online marketplaces are familiar to most online shoppers, and as such for those of you thinking of starting your online business, some of these could be the perfect platform for you, while others may not be a good fit.
When looking for the best online marketplace, you should find out what they have in terms of training support, market rate commissions, shipping system, and the traffic that they have.
Most importantly, take the time to research each and every one of the platforms that you are considering so that the online marketplace you pick will be the best fit for your online business.
This is a weekly column by SarawakYES! – an initiative driven by Faradale Media-M Sdn Bhd and supported by Angkatan Zaman Mansang (Azam) Sarawak – to provide advice and stories on the topics of education and careers to support Sarawakians seeking to achieve their dreams. Join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.