What Happened in the E-commerce Market in 2018

          Before embarking on new ventures in the new year, most people tend to reflect on the events of the past year to prepare for potential recurring issues. This is similar to the e-commerce business, where the rise or fall of graphs often results from a combination of various factors, such as annual festivals, long holidays, and organized campaigns. iPrice has compiled the key highlights of the year for everyone to see, categorized into three interesting topics: 1) The most searched e-commerce platforms in Thailand, 2) The most visited e-commerce platforms in Thailand, and 3) The most visited e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia. Let's take a look at what’s interesting!

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The Most Searched E-commerce Platforms in Thailand<\/span>

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• Lazada postponed its Lazada Birthday campaign by one month, but the response was even better.
  
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            Normally, the Lazada Birthday campaign is held in March every year, but in 2018, Lazada announced that the celebration would be postponed to April 25-27, 2018. However, the response did not diminish. Data collected using Google Trends revealed that the Lazada Birthday campaign was the most searched campaign of the year, unlike the data from 2017, where the 11.11 Sale and 12.12 Sale campaigns were the most searched.
  
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  • JD Central officially launched on June 18, 2018.
    
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              Following the news of the partnership between JD.com and Central, where they each hold half of the shares, the official launch of the e-commerce store JD Central took place on June 18, 2018. According to data from the Map of E-commerce Q3<\/a>, this new e-commerce store saw astonishing growth in several areas, including a 3200% increase in website visitors, a 2-3 times increase in app downloads, more than 100% growth in social media followers (Facebook, Line, and IG), and a 35% increase in employees (from 79 to 107 people).
    
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    • The 12 Sale festival outperformed the 11.11 Sale festival.
      
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                This year, more people searched for information about the 12.12 Sale festival than the 11.11 Sale festival, according to Google Trends data. Although it may seem that people were more interested in the 11.11 Sale festival<\/a>, whether due to the Singles' Day celebration or pre-event promotions, it could be that December, being the last month of the year, prompts shoppers to look for gifts for Father's Day, Christmas, or New Year's, making the wait for discounted products an appealing option.<\/p>

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      The Most Visited E-commerce Platforms in Thailand<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

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                If you were to ask which e-commerce store had the most website visitors, it would not be surprising for many to guess that it must be 'Lazada'. Although the answer remains the same this year, iPrice has highlighted some interesting points for analysis.<\/p>

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      • Lazada<\/strong><\/span> is the local store that never falls out of favor. Whenever data is collected, the graph consistently shows it leading. This year, while the results clearly indicate its leadership, there was a noticeable drop in website visitors from May to August (though it rebounded afterward). Analysis of the data may suggest several reasons, such as campaigns not aligning with shopper needs during that period, changing consumer behavior favoring offline shopping or specialized online stores, or possibly the impact of JD Central's launch. This is something to keep an eye on.
        
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      • Shopee<\/strong><\/span> has seen a steady increase in website visitors with no signs of decline, making it one of the most noteworthy trends in 2018. The assumption that Lazada's visitor numbers dropped in May coincided with Shopee's increase in visitors during the same period. At the beginning of the year, the difference in website visitors was about 40 million, but by November, the gap had narrowed to only 23 million. It will be interesting to see when Shopee's graph will reach Lazada's level—perhaps in 2019.
        
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      • Zilingo<\/strong><\/span> is a fashion store that had 485,500 website visitors in January 2018, but recent data from November shows a nearly threefold increase, or over 188%. September was the month with the highest website visitors at 4,902,300. Additionally, comparing data from the Map of E-commerce for Q2 and Q3 shows that not only did website visitors increase, but Zilingo also climbed from 11th to 5th place in the app rankings (PlayStore) in Q3. It will be interesting to see what Zilingo has in store for 2019.<\/li> <\/ul>

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        The Most Visited E-commerce Platforms in Southeast Asia<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

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                  2018 was another golden year for the e-commerce business in Southeast Asia. One of the key highlights at the end of the year was Tokopedia receiving over $1.1 billion in funding from Alibaba and SoftBank in early December 2018. This Indonesian e-commerce giant is one of the driving forces in the region's e-commerce landscape. Additionally, Bukalapak has emerged as Indonesia's fourth unicorn. Two more points to watch in 2019 include Shopee closing the gap with Lazada to 66% based on November 2018 data, and the average number of visitors to the top 10 e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia increasing by 53% in 2018.<\/p>

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        Research Methodology<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

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        • Data was collected from Google Trends for the year 2018 using keywords for the five most searched e-commerce stores of the year. The Search Interest Index was used as an indicator of interest in searching for information about those e-commerce platforms on Google, where 100 indicates the highest interest and 0 indicates the lowest interest.<\/li>
        • Website visitor data was collected from SimilarWeb for each month from January to November 2018, both regionally and in Thailand.
          
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          Written and analyzed by Kanitha Sasa-kul iPrice<\/a><\/p>