A study on the digital economy 2018 conducted by Google and Temasek shows that up to 90% of the population of Southeast Asia currently access the internet mainly through smart mobile devices.
Along with that trend, the role of mobile applications in Vietnamese e-commerce has also become increasingly larger, opening up new opportunities for e-commerce enterprises.
In order to provide a better view of the situation of e-commerce in Vietnam, iPrice Insights in collaboration with App Annie published a study ranking top e-commerce applications in Vietnam.
iPrice’s research ranks e-commerce applications based on two criteria measured by App Annie technology: the total number of app downloads and the average monthly number of users (Monthly Active Users – MAU). If the numbers of downloads show which apps are most successful in attracting new users, the MAU numbers help indicate which apps are doing a good job of retaining customers.
Research results show that, in the second quarter of 2019, Shopee’s e-commerce mobile application holds the No. 1 position in the country in both rankings.
Shopee has long pursued a mobile-first strategy, making mobile platforms a priority. Since 2018, they have been focusing on activities that attract customers to the mobile application as well as developing their application to make it more and more convenient. In a report, market research firm Econsultancy analyzed: “Shopee focused on mobile from the outset and built the user interface around that goal. Their orientation drives the buying experience. Mobile shopping with Shopee is fast and intuitive. ”
Also according to the second-quarter iPrice Map of E-commerce, Shopee is leading the country’s e-commerce market in terms of average monthly website visits.
Ranked second after Shopee in the ranking of MAU is Lazada Vietnam. It is worth noting that while the traffic to Lazada’s website has been decreasing for many quarters, they still have high traffic on their mobile application. This demonstrates Lazada’s tendency to focus on mobile in recent years.
The biggest surprise from this research is the ranking of e-commerce platform Sendo. Sendo’s mobile app ranked second nationwide in terms of number of downloads, meaning Sendo is currently very successful in attracting new users.
Similar to Shopee, this success of Sendo is an inevitable result of the company bravely investing in mobile applications.
This strategy is also in line with Sendo’s orientation to focus on the provincial market. A large number of customers in the provinces are currently accessing the internet through mobile devices, having a strong mobile application will help Sendo reach this customer more effectively than competitors, according iPrice Group’s analysis.