Fashion
Thai online shoppers are most active before leaving the office or school, according to research from online shopping startup iPrice Thailand.
Based in Kuala Lumpur, iPrice has a presence in seven markets across Asia and aims to uncover important e-commerce metrics from the perspective of thousands e-commerce practitioners, highlighting the differences and similarities in each market.
Its research draws on its proprietary data from more than 1000 e-commerce players in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
For Thailand, mobile traffic is the second-highest in Southeast Asia, where mobile traffic has grown by an average of 19 per cent in the past 12 months to now account for 72 per cent of overall e-commerce web traffic.
Indonesia leads the field, accounting for 67 per cent in the third quarter of 2016 and 79 per cent in the second quarter last year.
Therefore, mobile e-commerce traffic accounts for more than 70 per cent of overall web traffic, while desktop traffic is less than 30 per cent.
Meanwhile, Thailand’s conversion rate is lowest in Southeast Asia (conversion rate is the percentage of website visits that result in a product purchase). Along with the Philippines, Thailand’s conversion rates are 20 per cent lower than average.
The comparison between mobile and desktop conversion rates shows that mobile is 1.7 times higher on average. For Thailand, the desktop conversion rate is 1.3 times higher than mobile. However, there is an increasing trend of mobile e-commerce traffic.
Thai basket size is fourth among the six countries in the study. This metric measures the average total amount spent for every order made by customer over a defined period of time. Singapore has the highest basket size of $91, with a GDP per capita of US$90,530; on the other hand, Vietnam was the lowest with a basket size of $23 and a GDP per capita of $6880. Thailand’s basket size is in the middle with the value of $42 and a GDP per capita of $17,000.
On average, the basket size on desktop is slightly higher than the basket size on mobile. In Thailand, desktop conversion rate is 1.3 times higher than mobile, which implies that people in Thailand prefer using desktops over mobile phones when buying online.
Also, Wednesday shows the highest peak in online shopping in Thailand. Taking Monday as a base value, e-commerce merchants have an increase in conversion rate on Wednesdays of up to 15 per cent, but it dips up to 30 per cent over weekends, which is consistent across the region. For Thailand, the Wednesday conversion rate increases 8 per cent above the average while the weekend conversion rate drops 19 to 22 per cent.
For Thailand, orders increase in volume up to 53 per cent at 11am and reach up to 69 per cent at 3pm. A dip in conversion rate is noted across all countries between 5pm and 7pm.
Bank transfer and offline POS are among popular payment methods in Thailand.
Credit cards are used for 90 per cent of payments, but the credit-card transaction rate in Thailand is relatively low at 6 per cent, which is below the average of 9 per cent in Asean countries, according to Global Findex database 2014.
To work around this issue, Thai e-commerce companies offer alternatives. For example, 81 per cent offer a bank transfer option such as ATM, making the country rank third in Southeast Asia. Also, 46 per cent of e-commerce sellers offer offline POS such as counter service at 7-11, ranking Thailand second place when it comes to frequency of using this type of payment.
