How Malaysia’s ecommerce players stacked up in 2017

The latest figures by the Department of Statistics Malaysia indicate that the digital economy has contributed 18.2 percent to Malaysia’s GDP, amounting to approximately US$75 billion (RM290.9 billion) in 2016. Since then, ecommerce has continued to grow at a rapid rate, as both government and private sectors continue to invest in the digital industry.

To keep track of this fast-paced tech economy, we created our Map of Ecommerce to ascertain the key players in the country and reveal key insights.

Lazada extends its lead in Malaysia

Comparing online traffic between Q3 and Q4 2017, we saw an increase of 13.8 million average monthly visitors for Lazada. This widens the gap between Lazada and its closest competitors, 11street (with an increase of 5.9 million average visitors) and Shopee (with an increase of 5.3 million average visitors).

Until its competitors are able to find an answer to Lazada’s dominance, the Alibaba-backed ecommerce platform is set to widen its lead as its Chinese investors further pump in US$2 billion (RM7.8 billion) into Lazada.

Shopee also saw impressive growth as it replaced Lelong as the third most visited ecommerce platform in Q4 2017. This comes not long after parent company Sea obtained US$550 million (RM2.1 billion) in funding on September 2017, with plans to utilize most of it to develop its ecommerce platform.

Shopee overtakes Lazada as the top mobile shopping app

Though Lazada leads in terms of website traffic, Shopee ranks as the best app on both Google Play and the iOS App Store. This is significant, as Southeast Asia is a mobile-first region where consumers are more likely to search and compare products using mobile devices.

Our recent study found that 74 percent of online traffic in Malaysia comes from mobile devices (both smartphones and tablets). Shopee has been a mobile-first platform since its inception in 2015, launching its application as a mobile C2C marketplace across Southeast Asia.

Runners up after Shopee were Lazada, 11street, Zalora, and Lelong. The mobile shopping app also ranked the highest in number of downloads, engagement (app usage), revenue, consumer ratings, etc. It also had the least number of uninstalls.

Year-end promotions caused an average 30 percent increase in online traffic

Malaysia’s top 50 ecommerce platforms experienced an overall 30 percent increase in online traffic due to year-end sales. In fact, all vital ecommerce sale periods took place in the last months of 2017. Among the most popular online sale periods were #MYCyberSale (October 9 to 13), Single’s Day (November 11), Black Friday (November 24), and the 12.12 sale (December 12).

The most popular sale period was the 12.12 sale followed by Single’s Day, where searches for promotions on Lazada, Shopee, and Zalora were the highest in 2017.

Top five ecommerce platforms provided more than 1,000 jobs

The top five ecommerce platforms in Malaysia—Lazada, 11street, Shopee, Lelong, and Zalora—have created more than 1,000 jobs in Malaysia. We got this figure by searching for staff who were working in the mentioned ecommerce companies and who were currently in Malaysia. This number could be even higher, as not all employees have a LinkedIn account.

This is significant, given the Malaysian government expects its digital economy employment to surpass the global average by 2025.

Local fashion brands continue to dominate on Instagram

Malaysia’s local fashion brands were more popular on Instagram when compared to regional and international players such as Zalora, Sephora, and Lazada.

Methodology