Best Ecommerce Platforms in Malaysia 2022 for your Business

Due to the global pandemic, eCommerce industry was growing exponentially. Malaysia eCommerce industry in Q1 2021 was reported increase of  30% year-on-year with a record of RM254.6 billion. It is because more and more businesses on-boarding e-commerce websites and platforms as a means to cope with the pandemic and MCO (Movement Control Order) that restricted business operations across the country.

As opportunities continue to grow, businesses might want to consider having their own website to expand online presence and doing digital marketing to promo their business online, instead of solely relying on top eCommerce marketplaces like Shopee and Lazada.

Malaysia government has also double down on the efforts of supporting SME and MSME to take their retail businesses online. Many grants was initiated, one of them is SME Digitailization Grants, which initiated by the Ministry of Finance to help SMEs digitalise their businesses.

Definitely, one of the option to utilise SME Digitisation Grants will be developing a website or eCommerce website. For a newbie, there will be several questions in mind:

• How can I find a good web developer or web design agency?
• What much does it cost to build a website or eCommerce?
• I want to have a good website. How much will it cost?
• How would I know my website is good or bad in serving its purposes? or in term of technology?

Let’s explore some of eCommerce platforms in Malaysia 2022 to see how they compare. It is very important for businesses to evaluate the various platforms based on their own budget, specific needs and use cases.

 

Shopify

 

Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platform in Malaysia for selling, such as drop shipping. More than 1 million merchants use Spotify’s platform, across nearly 1.5 million websites. One of Shopify competitive advantage is because of its  flexibility. There are more than 2,400 apps in the Shopify App Store.

Shopify is good in strategy in market segmentation; i.e.  Shopify Light and Shopify Plus. Its most notable feature is its drag and drop interface for smallest business segment, whereas large enterprises will benefit from the additional features of Shopify Plus.

Shopify is considered good option to consider because 1) it design in responsive theme, 2) it has great SEO tool, 3) tons of tool for integration and most importantly 4) Great customer support.

 

Wix

Wix, a leading platform for DIY site-building, which also the first platform I used to build my very first own website. This platform features an easy to use drag-and-drop editor gives you total creative control, allowing you to add in all your content and position it wherever you see fit. It is thus really good for beginners who know very little or nothing about coding and website design.

Primarily a website builder, users can add a commerce module to make their website have e-commerce capabilities.

Wix is indeed a good choice for a beginner because 1) Easy to use drag and drop function, 2) 80+ categories and 800+ template to choose from, 3) advance built-in SEO and 4) 300+ built in app market. Wix recently upped their game in eCommerce store builders, offering many new apps & integrations for store building.

 

WooCommerce

WordPress, the world’s leading CMS leader in the e-commerce market, is currently used by 64.8% of all websites whose CMS system is known.

Primarily a website maker, e-commerce merchants can also build e-commerce websites using WooCommerce, the e-commerce plug-in and platform built by WordPress. WooCommerce quickly gained popularity among e-commerce merchants for its simplicity to install and customise as a freeware. With its immense selection of extensions and themes, WooCommerce is currently the most preferred choice among e-commerce players online.

Aside from its basic CMS functions, WordPress is also easily customizable with basic knowledge of CSS and HTML to easily tweak and adjust the website’s code to the user’s preferences.

WordPress is ideally suited for businesses of all sizes that are looking for customizability. There is also a large community for help and support.

It is most often used by starter stores and hobbyists, bloggers expanding into ecommerce, and brands utilizing developers most comfortable with the WordPress environment.

 

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is one of the biggest names in the e-commerce market, though not necessary holding the biggest market share.  It is simply because of the market segment it served as to facilitate large scale e-commerce businesses with a wide range of built-in features and CMS capabilities.

BigCommerce prides itself on their Fantastic SEO tools and flexible APIs that enable merchants to connect to other leading softwares and across multiple channels, including Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

In other words, BigCommerce is harder to use and its website development can be quite complex. It means not exactly a beginner-friendly platform.

 

EasyStore

EasyStore is a local based eCommerce platform in Malaysia for building branded e-commerce websites with the affordable price range. With 30,000 brands utilizing the platform, the startup company was able to grow their client base beyond Malaysia’s market and has now opened up to US based merchants.

Similar to Wix and Shopify, Easystore offers a variety of customization options when building a website on their platform without needing to have prior knowledge of coding. Users can select themes and even personalise logos, fonts, colours and more for free or certain amount of payment needed.

 

Final Words

It is not easy to find the best platform for their business. An efficient way is to narrow down their options is to identify

• the business model
• the business plan in different phase
• the primary requirements for their website
• the targeted budget to invest in Ecommerce website.

Best Ecommerce Platforms in Malaysia For Different type of Business

Small Business	We recommend small business to start small. Once your sales start to pick up, then only extend to to multi-channel, selling on other platforms and even countries. Recommended platforms: Shopify Wix WordPress Easystore
Startup and Beginners	Like small businesses, startups also need a platform that allows them to scale effortlessly and break through the already existing guys. It also depend on thier budget, but the best option will be WordPress as can have all-in-one with SEO integration for a very reasonable price. If possible, try not to DIY building your Ecommerce website as it has too many aspects to be considered and take into account for a success Ecommerce website. For instance 11 Key Features of an Ecommerce Website in 2022
For Dropshipping	For Dropshipping, we analyse the below factors: Ability to sync with supplier’s inventory Support of many dropshipping plugins Automating different suppliers or SKUs for the same product Tracking of order both from your and end customer’s side As conclusion, Shopify is recommended as the best for Ecommerce doing dropshipping.
Larger Businesses	Since you have orders ranging in hundreds or thousands weekly, you’ll need a platform that is scalable that gives you enough flexibility to connect different software, multiple store, currency and more.  Hereby recommend BigCommerce and WordPress. It is also strongly recommended to get a professional website developer to build it and then continue for web support and maintenance.