Top 10 mobile shopping apps with highest Monthly Active Users in Vietnam in the first quarter, 2019. Photo: iPrice

Shopee’s mobile app recorded the highest Monthly Active Users number in Vietnam for the first quarter, according to an all-new ranking by iPrice Group and App Annie Intelligence.

Mobile shopping is quickly becoming an important factor in the e-commerce business in Vietnam.

iPrice Group also noted that during last year’s Singles’ Day, the rate of consumers accessing their e-commerce platform by mobile rose rapidly, from 62.5 per cent in 2017 to a whopping 80.4 per cent.

Facing such an important trend in customer behavior, e-commerce merchants in the country are now scrambling to improve and promote their mobile apps.

To provide a better understanding on the state of the competition, iPrice Group has cooperated with App Annie Intelligence to come up with a ranking for mobile shopping apps with the highest Monthly Active Users in Vietnam.

Taking first place in this ranking for the first quarter was Shopee, a reward for their clear mobile-first approach.

Shopee has been investing a great deal on campaigns to attract consumers specifically to their mobile app. Most noteworthy is their notorious Shopee Baby Shark video. Another one that happened exclusively in Vietnam was their “Shopping Festival 4.0”, a musical event featuring some of the country’s biggest pop stars.

When it comes to the app itself, Shopee is also not afraid to innovate. According to an assessment from marketing research agency Econsultancy in 2018, “Shopee has focused on mobile from the beginning and built its user interface around it. This made users’ mobile shopping experiences faster and more intuitive - users can buy or sell their items in less than 30 seconds - allowing Shopee to capture a large group of mobile users in Southeast Asia and Taiwan (China).”

Ranked at number two was Shopee’s biggest regional competitor, Lazada. This is perhaps a more surprising result, as according to iPrice Group’s previous Map of E-commerce Report, which ranks Vietnamese e-commerce companies based on average website traffic, Lazada’s monthly website traffic has been on a decline that puts them in third position in the country, behind Shopee and Tiki.

However, when it comes to mobile, Lazada is still fighting. It seems the e-commerce giant is now shifting to put a greater emphasis on mobile shopping.

Ranking in the top 5 behind Shopee and Lazada were apps from three local e-commerce platforms: Tiki, Sendo, and Adayroi. The three have also been recording good results in terms of average website traffic in recent quarters, making them worthy opponents of the two regional companies.

Behind the top 5 were AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba, all of which are currently not officially operating in Vietnam.

iPrice Group is a meta-search website operating in seven countries across Southeast Asia: Hong Kong (China), Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. On a regular basis, iPrice Group releases key insights on topics pertaining e-commerce, startups, and other matters. VN Economic Times

Thanh Thanh