Qoo10 vs Lazada vs Carousell vs Shopee - A comprehensive guide to online platforms

Tuesday, January 16, 2018 Jes SnackFirst 14 Comments

Online platforms are popular nowadays as they dangle discounts and huge offers from major brands. As SnackFirst is an online shop and depends a lot on traffic, these online platforms are very useful to get more sales and attract new customers.


While searching for information regarding these platforms, I did not find many articles on them. I am sharing my information here as I think it will be very useful to other online retailers, even my competitors! All for free, no need to pay to attend online workshops. Well, it's easy to sign up with these online platforms but creating new products can really be a big headache. For Qoo10, it's like a terrible maze. In terms of traffic, Carousell is the top followed by Qoo10 and Lazada. The last would be Shopee but they are also the newest kid on the block. Check out Top 10 deals from Shopee here.

Let's take a look at the comparison table for Qoo10, Lazada, Carousell and Shopee. Things are always changing so they might not be updated:

Qoo10, Lazada, Carousell and Shopee (Update: Lazada does not have commission anymore!)

The table below represents my views only on the various online platforms, I am sure every sellers will feel differently about this and will have different strategy to sell at different platforms. Depending on your target audience and marketing, you might want to choose the best platform to list to maximise your time and effort.

The differences in my opinion

Qoo10
Qoo10 has a few roadblocks to new sellers, the first is that you will need to pay $100 just to sign up. It might put off some sellers, particularly when all other platforms are free. However, take note that the $100 which is converted to 10,000 Qpoints can be used to boost posts and do advertisement so it might pay off in the long run.

Not just that, the commission charges of Qoo10 is the highest among all. At 12%, it means sellers will have to raise their selling price in order to have the same profits. Otherwise, they can sell more to lower the commission rate as per the table below.

Qoo10 commission rate

I personally feel that the Qoo10 interface is very difficult to navigate. There are so many options to go through and if you have many products, it is a real headache. Though once you get the hang of it, the high traffic is worthwhile. Having high traffic also means competition is very stiff, making it very difficult to stand out when there are 100 other listings in front of you.

Actually the advantage of Qoo10 is more than just the platform to sell regionally. You can also go for auctions, promotions, group buys, time sales, daily deals and garner lots of sales from it. All these promotions are what you cannot find on other platforms. That is why SnackFirst was able to become a Good Seller within 2 months!

And that's just the first part to complete

Lazada
With the commission at 1 to 3% for electronics and 5 to 7% for all others (Update at 2019: Lazada is no longer charging commissions!), you will understand why electronics is the top selling range in Lazada. There is still a 2.14% payment fee for all transactions, even for failed delivery and cancelled orders. Including the 7% GST, my snacks under the groceries category add up to around 9.5%.

There is also a lot of options to play around during listings but I especially hate that I cannot open a lot of tabs to simultaneously list many products. It just makes listing products more cumbersome for merchants. However, the system is neat and tidy and pretty user friendly compared to Qoo10.

Lazada is pretty stringent in terms of penalising late shipments or errant sellers. To maintain good ratings, they encourage shipping out of products within 48 hours. I would feel even safer buying from Lazada due to their strict rules for sellers. However, the feeling you get is that they treat buyers better than sellers because of all the penalties imposed.

The neat page of Lazada University

The best part of all, for orders made from Lazada, Ninja van only charge me $2.90! That's definitely the cheapest in the market. Without Lazada, they charge at least $6 so don't even ask them for quotes, they don't entertain small businesses.

You would have heard of many complaints for both Ninja van and Qxpress. I think they are running on a tight schedule so it is inevitable they cannot reach the expectations of both sellers and buyers. On these online platforms, it is cheaper to go through the Ninja van (Lazada) or Qxpress (Qoo10) as they give a much discounted rate.

Lazada exclusively tied up with Ninja Van so you cannot specify other delivery services. They only allow SingPost and your own delivery van only if the product is too bulky for delivery. In a way, that is good because they are able to offer the lowest delivery charges in Singapore. If the orders do not come from Lazada or Qoo10, these shipping charges will be higher.

These are the Ninja van vs Qxpress rates through these online platforms.

Ninja Van delivery through Lazada orders, Qxpress rates through Qoo10 orders only

Carousell 
Carousell is not just for goods, they can also be used for listing of services, jobs and many others. They started off as a second-hand platform where people sell or trade their used items. It is still pretty useful especially to sell off used mobile phone and baby items. This high traffic and users are definitely helpful for merchants, but as they do not have a payment cart, users cannot buy products at the site directly. It is just a listing page which is why most people like to pay in person. Overall, I would just list for free eyeballs and as a advertisement page.



Shopee
Check out Top 10 deals from Shopee here. It's not easy being the new kid on the block but with strong backing of Garena, Shopee has become the combination of Carousell + Lazada. It combines the easy listing page like Carousell and a neat interface like Lazada. Best part of all, it charges Zero commission! That's super impressive considering all e-payments going through PayPal or credit cards do incur around 3 to 5% charges. They also approach sellers to give discount, where they will pay for the lower prices just to boost sales! Incredible.

However, I feel that the user base are younger than the rest, partly because Shopee focuses a lot on beauty products. In my opinion, they are also less willing to pay for high priced items but that may be just what is happening to my products.



Conclusion
No matter which platforms, I am sure consumers do not mind the competition as long as it leads to lower prices. Having said that, maintaining 4 platforms and replying to the inquiries can actually be a full time job because there is so much to be done.

All right, I hope you have benefited from this post. If so, don't forget to contribute to my online snack shop at SnackFirst, no matter which platform is fine!
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