iPrice study: Lazada, Zalora and 11 Street top e-commerce ranking

Lazada, Zalora and 11 Street have been ranked the overall top three companies in Malaysia's e-commerce scene, according to a recent study by iPrice. Titled "Map of E-Commerce Malaysia", the study ranks Malaysia's top e-commerce companies based on their monthly traffic, number of social media followers and number of staff members.Lazada, which received an overall average rank of 2.6, came out on top in monthly traffic ranking (29,367 million visits) and the number of Facebook followers (18,013 million). It took second place for app downloads (50 million) and Twitter (27,100 followers).Zalora, which came in second place, scored an overall average rank of 4.4, and was fifth in terms of monthly traffic (2,383 million). It was ranked third for the number of app downloads (10 million) as well as followers on Twitter (27,000) and Facebook (6,262 million).Clinching the third spot was 11 Street which had an overall average rank of 6.2 and 9,950 million monthly visits. It came out on top for Twitter (46,115 followers) and ranked fourth in the number of app downloads (1 million).As the top three companies were all founded in Southeast Asia, it was highly likely that their knowledge of the local e-commerce scene gave them an advantage over companies such as eBay and Sephora which are also readily available to Malaysians, the study noted.Malaysian fashion brands dominate InstagramBella Ammara, Naelofar Hijab, and Fashion Valet are the top three most popular e-commerce companies on Instagram, with over 800k followers, 556k followers and 518k followers respectively. According to iPrice, Bella Ammara was able to amass a huge following as it posted on Instagram 10 times lesser than Fashion Valet. Meanwhile, the study also noted that non-local fashion-centric brand Lazada came in sixth, with 350,000 followers, more than two times lesser compared to Bella Ammara.Another reason why those three brands are popular among Instagrammers is due to their owners' large following on the social media platform. Carl Samsudin and Belle Al-Yahya, owners of Bella Ammara, have a combined number of 574k followers, while Naelofar Hijab's owner Neelofa has more than 4.9 million followers. Vivy Yusof, Fashion Valet's owner, has more than 1.2 million Instagram followers.iPrice's study concluded that while not all fashion e-commerce companies received the same number of online traffic compared to their social media platforms, they still remained successful as their products are mostly sold through physical stores and e-commerce outlets such as Lazada and Zalora.[gallery link="file" ids="191547,191545,191546,191553"]While Malaysian businesses are shifting from brick-and-mortar shops to e-commerce, Malaysian fashion e-commerce brands are doing the opposite. Naelofar Hijab, for example, began selling its products online in 2014 and opened its flagship store a year later. The e-commerce model is beneficial to the operations of fashion brands in Malaysia as it enables them to efficiently scale their business according to consumers' needs, said the study.iPrice utilised public data provided by SimilarWeb, LinkedIn and social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to gather statistics regarding online traffic, number of staff and followers on social media.