Author Archives: Donna Le

According to the latest of Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 2022, the eCommerce industry’s revenue is estimated at 13.7 billion USD, increase 16% compared to 2020 and accounting for 6.5% of the total retail revenue of Vietnam. Due to e-Commerce SEA, Vietnam’s eCommerce will grow by an average of 25% per year from 2022 – 2025, possibly reaching 35 billion USD in 2025. 

The impact of the Covid-19 epidemic and social distancing orders, as well as changes in consumer behaviour, are driving the growth of this industry.

Thanks to super apps, such as Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, MoMo, and Zalo, it’s easier to deploy mini apps, creating a premise for inexperienced brands to build eCommerce systems to enter this billion-dollar market.

Shopee

Shopee is the most popular eCommerce market in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Shopee was founded in 2015 to provide people with an easy, safe, and quick online buying experience.

Shopee is gradually becoming an eCommerce super app, not only offering online shopping services but also owning various mini-apps such as Shopee Food, Shopee Mart, Shopee Wallet, insurance services from banks, booking flights, hotels and so on.

• Head office: Singapore
• Countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Taiwan, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Finland and Spain
• Rating: 4.3 stars out of 1.62M reviews (CH Play), 4.4 stars out of 1M reviews (App Store)

Lazada

Lazada, founded in 2012, is one of Southeast Asia’s biggest eCommerce marketplaces. This brand has always been a pioneer in fostering regional development via commerce and technology, intending to service 300 million consumers across Southeast Asia by 2030.

Like Shopee, Lazada has many mini apps and utilities for its own e-commerce business strategies, such as eM wallet, card and eVoucher recharge, online shopping, etc.

• Head office: Singapore
• Countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam
• Rating: 4.7 stars out of 19.5M reviews (CH Play), 4.7 stars out of 1.8M reviews (App Store)

Tiki

Tiki is one of Vietnam’s most successful eCommerce marketplaces. Tiki was founded in March 2010 as an online English book-selling site. Since then, Tiki has evolved into an eCommerce super app, focusing on delivering hundreds of thousands of goods from a variety of product categories.

Tiki has been a pioneering marketplace in applying digital currency to business concepts, as proven by the launch of Astra, to boost up eCommerce. At the same time, Tiki refined its ecosystem by creating a series of extensions with mini apps from brands in various industries, including finance, gaming, food, shopping, health, insurance, entertainment, lifestyle, tourism, and community.

• Head office: Singapore
• Countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam
• Rating: 4.2 stars out of 242K reviews (CH Play), 4.8 stars out of 368.7K reviews (App Store)

MoMo

MoMo is an e-wallet created by Online Mobile Services Joint Stock Company (M Service) that allows users to make mobile payments and transactions. Through partnerships with more than 90% of Vietnam’s banks and 10,000 local businesses, the company dominates more than 80% of the market for digital payments. As of 2022, MoMo e-wallet has more than 31 million users.

Since 2022, MoMo has developed a mini app technology, formally identifying itself as a super-payment app, helping small and medium companies to “climb on the shoulders of giants,” and construct an ecosystem for MoMo. In particular, utilities from businesses such as online shopping, restaurants, transportation services, tourism and hotels, investing and banking, medical services and so on.

• Head office: Vietnam
• Countries: Vietnam
• Rating: 3.2 stars out of 401K reviews (CH Play), 4.4 stars out of 201.3K reviews (App Store)

Zalo

Zalo was formally launched in December 2012, with the essence of a cross-platform instant messaging software built by the Vietnamese startup VNG. Zalo is a blend of Zing (a VNG-created social network) and alo (a phrase used to pick up a phone in Vietnam). Zalo has progressed to become a multi-functional, multi-platform social networking super app.

Like MoMo, Zalo created a new brand named Zalo Mini App to help other brands reach 65 million regular users on Zalo, and make diversity for this messaging platform. Since then, Zalo has also supported other services, primarily through partnerships with brands in finance, eCommerce, entertainment, games, restaurants and hotels.

• Head office: Vietnam
• Countries: USA, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Australia, Germany, Myanmar and Singapore
• Rating: 3.9 stars out of 2.03M reviews (CH Play), 3.0 stars out of 62.6K reviews (App Store)

As can be seen, the future of Vietnam’s eCommerce industry will continue to rely on these “giants,” thus businesses should incorporate eCommerce super apps into their business models as soon as possible to reap the full advantages of these applications. However, companies should not rely on these apps for long periods of time since it will result in a loss of customer data, income from commission per order, and so on.

With more than 8 years of experience in consulting and deploying eCommerce systems, SECOMM understands the challenges businesses face in implementing eCommerce business effectively. 

So we provide a free eCommerce consultation to help businesses catch on to this industry!

Fashion eCommerce is growing increasingly influential, particularly in markets with a young population, such as Vietnam, where demand for fashion and lifestyle is diversified.

Recognising this, several fashion brands have begun developing their own eCommerce websites to join this lucrative business swiftly.

1. Coolmate 

Coolmate is a men’s fashion business started in 2019. With a D2C eCommerce strategy as the centre for business development, after only 2 years of implementation, Coolmate had a successful capital call on Sharktank with Nguyen Hoa Binh for 500,000 USD. By 2021, Coolmate’s sales may reach VND 139 billion, an increase of 3.5 times compared to 2020, setting the 2022 revenue expectation at 440 billion.

• Fashion field: Menswear
• Website: https://www.coolmate.me/ 
• eCommerce platform: Laravel
• Traffic: 1.5M/month
• Rating: 854 (Vietnam), 55,047 (Global)
• Estimated value: $16,781

2. Hải Triều

Hai Trieu, which was founded in 1991, has over 30 years of expertise in the watch industry. To adapt to the changing industry and consumers, Hai Trieu has incorporated an eCommerce strategy into its business model with the objective of becoming a dominant watch retailer in Vietnam. Hai Trieu’s eCommerce website has received over 1 million monthly visits and is ranked among the top sites in the fashion eCommerce industry in Vietnam. (according to iPrice).

• Fashion field: Watches
• Website: https://donghohaitrieu.com/ 
• eCommerce platform: WooCommerce
• Traffic: 1.1M/month
• Rating: 807 (Vietnam), 51,641 (Global)
• Estimated value: $19.016

3. PNJ

The official name of PNJ is Phu Nhuan Jewelry Joint Stock Company, which was founded in 1988. PNJ has spent a long time developing a fashion eCommerce website to apply the omnichannel sales strategy. Because of the early adoption of eCommerce, PNJ has surmounted the tumultuous year of 2021 with net sales of over VND 19,547 billion, an increase of 12% over 2020.

• Fashion field: Jewelry
• Website: https://www.pnj.com.vn/ 
• eCommerce platform: CS Cart
• Traffic: 926.9K/month
• Rating: 791 (Vietnam), 49,842 (Global)
• Estimated value: $21,007

4. Juno 

Founded in 2005, Juno is a brand known for its line of women’s fashion shoes and bags. Juno saw the enormous potential of the e-commerce sector and invested early in technologies to make the online company more efficient. As a result, the eCommerce website of Juno is currently the highest-visited website in the fashion line of shoes and bags in Vietnam.

Juno has usually cultivated the clothes and accessories area to suit its clients’ increasingly broad consumer demands.

• Fashion field: Womenswear
• Website: https://juno.vn/ 
• eCommerce platform: Haravan
• Traffic: 899.3K/month
• Rating: 1,242 (Vietnam), 80,279 (Global)
• Estimated value: $20,688

5. Canifa

Canifa is a family fashion brand established in 1997, under Hoang Duong Service and Trading Joint Stock Company – a large fashion retailer in Vietnam. Canifa has built an eCommerce business with a reputation achieved in traditional fashion since 2012. Because of its long-term and sustainable eCommerce business strategy, this company opted to invest in establishing its own eCommerce website on the open-source platform – Magento and regularly upgrading this system to provide clients with the better eCommerce experience possible.

• Fashion field: Familyswear
• Website: https://canifa.com/ 
• eCommerce platform: Magento
• Traffic: 286.2K/month
• Rating: 2,537 (Vietnam), 155,488 (Global)
• Estimated value: $8,383

6. Hoang Phuc International

Hoang Phuc International (Hoang Phuc) was established in 1989 as a luxury fashion retailer of Kappa, Ecko Unltd, Superga, Replay, and Staple. This brand has decided to enter the eCommerce industry after three decades of using traditional strategy.  Hoang Phuc has utilised and changed numerous platforms to create the successful eCommerce website that it is now. This business is currently employing the Magento platform – an open-source platform specialised in eCommerce.

This firm utilizes KOL and Livestream strategies to boost market penetration, besides constantly improving its own eCommerce website for selling apparel online.

• Fashion field: Retail of luxury products
• Website: https://hoang-phuc.com/ 
• eCommerce platform: Magento
• Traffic: 258.0K/month
• Rating: 2,338 (Vietnam), 144,530 (Global)
• Estimated value: $19,895

7. Biti’s

Bitis began as a small factory in 1982 and has grown to become the market’s top shoe and footwear brand. However, when user behaviour changes and new “players” enter the market, this business appears to fall behind. After a long period of lagging, Biti’s new CEO, Vuu Le Quyen – the eldest daughter of Mr. Vu Khai Thanh – chose to change strategy, focusing on investing in eCommerce business model to accelerate and catching up with the market.

Bitis’s has made a dramatic recovery due to this new strategy, vying directly with worldwide brands such as Nike, and Adidas in the Vietnamese market after a number of years of losing market share.

• Fashion field: Footwear
• Website: https://bitis.com.vn/ 
• eCommerce platform: Haravan
• Traffic: 206.6K/month
• Rating: 2,549 (Vietnam), 149,642 (Global)
• Estimated value: $8,966

8. Orchard

Orchard, which was founded in 2004, is a supplier of more than 200 luxury perfume brands from across the world. Orchard has implemented eCommerce promptly to tap the “gold mine” of this industry and become the No. 1 perfume retail brand in Vietnam. Orchard’s eCommerce website is now the favorite destination for customers who want to buy perfume online.

• Fashion field: Perfume
• Website: https://orchard.vn/ 
• eCommerce platform: WooCoomerce
• Traffic: 134.8K/month
• Rating: 6,800 (Vietnam), 372,708 (Global)
• Estimated value: $4,437

9. ONOFF

ONOFF was established in 2005 with the goal of providing daily comfort to everyone. ONOFF has advocated for adopting an eCommerce strategy by investing in building Magento websites like Canifa in 2016. As a result, the brand is gradually synchronizing on online and offline channels, with a customer loyalty rate of 80% maintained at all times, allowing ONOFF to more firmly believe in its goal of becoming the leading lingerie brand in Vietnam and a chance to conquering the ASEAN market in the next three years.

• Fashion field: Lingerie
• Website: https://onoff.vn/ 
• eCommerce platform: Magento
• Traffic: 79.5K/month
• Rating: 10,061 (Vietnam), 518,911 (Global)
• Estimated value: $9,289

10. Rabity

Rabity is a children’s fashion brand that was launched in 2000. Currently, Rabity is the sole Disney and Marvel partner with image rights for children’s fashion lines ranging from 0 to 14 years old. Rabity is pleased to have been the pioneer in deploying the first eCommerce for children’s fashion in Vietnam. Rabity is now present on all eCommerce channels and has its own eCommerce website.

• Fashion field: Childrenswear
• Website: https://rabity.vn/ 
• eCommerce platform: Haravan
• Traffic: 12.3K/month
• Rating: 43,904 (Vietnam), 1,972,408 (Global)
• Estimated value: $15,335

Overall, fashion businesses are achieving several successes after developing their own eCommerce websites. However, the fashion eCommerce industry needs careful consideration of tactics to take the most successful actions in the short term and in the long run. Of course, to do that challenging task, fashion companies must find a well-known or build skilled IT team.

Furthermore, fashion is one of the “four pillars” of Vietnam’s e-commerce economy, accounting for 43% of all online purchases, trailing only the eGrocery industry. According to the e-Conomy SEA Report 2021, 47% of Vietnamese respondents think that fashion eCommerce has become a consumer purchasing habit.

Despite the numerous prospects, this industry has multiple problems, including numerous rivals, continually changing consumer preferences, pushing firms to diversify models, Omnichannel sales to create more customer touchpoints, and so on.

As a result, to properly deploy fashion eCommerce, company managers must examine various elements, including the fundamental factor of developing a website. Among eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce, Magento is renowned as a platform used by many famous brands to establish eCommerce, including Canifa, Hoang Phuc International, OnOff, and others. So, why have these companies selected Magento?

Fashion eCommerce requirements

Website interface

The demanding consumer base with excellent aesthetic sensibility is a common element of the fashion sector. This necessitates that fashion firms concentrate on the design of the eCommerce website interface, particularly the homepage, which must be professional and eye-catching.

The disadvantage of online fashion purchasing is that you cannot “See it with your own eyes, touch it with your own hands.” Therefore, the more detailed and colourful the image/video, the more authentic and trustworthy it will appear to buyers.

In terms of the UI (User Interface), visualisation affects the capacity of customers to engage with the website, helping to answer the question: “Has the user being able to navigate clearly from one page to another in a convenient way? “

Another website interface design is user experience (UX), from consistency in call to action button (CTA) or illustration locations, everything should be more convenient to create the most consistent experience for all website users.

Functional system

Many functionalities are required for an online fashion business website to satisfy industry requirements.

The fashion sector is distinguished by multichannel sales and numerous client touchpoints. For instance, on e-commerce platforms (Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, Sendo), social networking channels (Facebook, Tiktok, Zalo, Instagram), and e-commerce websites and applications. When implementing eCommerce for fashion companies, administrators must employ an Omnichannel approach.

Usually, the fashion industry will have a lot of product categories and collections, from clothes, and shoes, to bags and accessories, so consumers’ need to search for products on the website and e-commerce app is very high. From there, businesses should build multi-layer menus and advanced product search functions by keywords or filters to serve the needs of searching and navigating customers.

Furthermore, because fashion is a highly competitive market, the more influential the communication strategies, the more orders the brand will obtain. Loyalty Programs, Livestream, Shoppertainment, Affiliate Marketing, and other fashion-related communication strategies on websites and mobile apps.

Clothing, bags, shoes, and fashion accessories are frequently low-involvement goods, thus creating a rapid shopping cart function would assist consumers to speed up the purchase process, increasing online sales for businesses.

Businesses should construct a feature to help categorise consumers to take care of and tailor the experience for each type of client in the fashion sector, which frequently has several customer groups, such as new, old, and VIP. From there, organisations will gradually use the understanding of each sort of consumer to develop better business solutions in the future.

After all, fashion eCommerce systems must frequently manage high traffic levels during peak seasons.

Integration

Businesses require a highly integrated website construction platform to properly execute fashion eCommerce, including Omni-channel, management system, payment, shipping, analytics, and reporting.

Because the fashion industry is distinct, it needs considerable coverage across all sales channels to reach many potential customers. Therefore, while implementing eCommerce, businesses have to use an Omnichannel strategy. However, to synchronise all data from front-end to back-end when deploying Omnichannel, companies require a highly linked system across all sales channels.

Simultaneously, fashion firms frequently utilise several third-party management systems such as POS, CRM, ERP, and BI, so businesses must find an eCommerce platform that can combine and manage all data information on” a single screen”

Furthermore, companies must vary payment and delivery methods so that clients have more options when buying fashion goods.

Finally, organisations must integrate analytics and reporting tools to provide real-time measurements with the most user-friendly reporting table. From there, firms could provide more practical guidance in the future.

Scalability

Fashion businesses will have many different sizes, from startups, SMEs (small and medium enterprises), and new entrants to large corporations. Moreover, each business will have a different operating model, such as B2C, B2B2C, and so on.

All sizes and operating models will have unique requirements for each stage of brand development, so businesses need a platform to accompany them throughout the journey, preventing the circumstance of switching platforms consumes time and money when firms install eCommerce.

In summary, companies require a comprehensive platform to efficiently implement fashion eCommerce for the long run, including website interface, functional system, integration, and scalability.

How does Magento solve the eCommerce problem for the fashion industry?

Website interface

When designing a fashionable eCommerce website interface on the Magento platform, businesses have many choices, including using existing themes, customising themes, and designing their own interface.

For using existing themes, companies may find these in the marketplace, developer community, or partner for Magento-specific themes in the fashion industry. This helps businesses reduce the expense of interface design, but it limits firms’ brand positioning because the interface is easily imitated by other websites.

For customising themes, businesses can save money and add brand identification aspects like colours, fonts, layout and so on. However, to efficiently set up and customise the website interface, businesses require a team with significant knowledge and experience.

For designing their own interface, businesses will have a “tailored” website for their fashion brand. However, this will necessitate a more significant investment in development expenditures and a more competent workforce.

When using Magento to develop an eCommerce website, most fashion businesses often choose a customised theme or design their own interface to support a centralised eCommerce business.

Functional system

The Magento platform has all the capabilities needed to create a comprehensive eCommerce website, from essential to complex. At the same time, this platform permits the development of custom functions to tackle unique difficulties in the fashion business.

Basic features that assist businesses in running an efficient and seamless fashion eCommerce website, such as:

• Catalog Management: Manage all data, processes, categories, attributes, prices, inventory quantities, and images/videos to operate and optimise the efficiency
• Store Management: Manage product inventory and each branch’s business activities and personnel
• Cart and Checkout: Manage the shopping cart and customers’ information when they check out
• Customer Management: Manage customer information to increase marketing efficiency, purchase experience, and customer satisfaction
• Marketing Management: Optimize SEO and implement marketing strategies with tools to increase business sales
• Sales Management: Create and manage sales, order, payment, and shipping processes
• Content Management: Create and optimise all content elements for CMS pages, image storage, customise themes, and design websites
• System Management: Delegate administrators to review the best methods for website security and maintenance
• Analysis and Report: Support tracking and measuring eCommerce system performance and developing future strategies

Advanced functionality that enhances the online shopping experience for consumers, such as:

• Advanced features that improve the online buying experience for customers, such as:
• Advanced search (Elasticsearch, live-search) to improve the website’s ability to locate items.
• PWA (Progressive Web Apps) allows the website to have the same mobile functionalities and interactions as a native app.
• Advanced SEO to examine indexed web pages, assess the SEO quality of each page and make recommendations to improve website ranks.
• MSI (Multi Source Inventory) aids in the administration of items across several stores, significantly increasing inventory management.

Specific functions are those that assist businesses in dealing with fashion industry issues, such as:

• The multi-layer menu aids in displaying the range of fashion products
• Advanced search to help consumers find the product they’re looking for
• View 360 to see fashion product details
• AR/VR to replace the real shopping experience

In general, Magento can create any sophisticated functional system, with infrastructural development before and after depending on the demands of each organisation.

Integration

Magento is well-known as an e-commerce platform with significant connectivity with a wide range of third-party services, including Omnichannel, administration software, analytical and reporting tools, payment and shipping.

• Payment: Easily link the Magento system with current popular payment methods such as card payment (VISA, Mastercard), e-wallet (MOMO, Zalopay), payment gateway (OnePay, VNPay, PayPal) or COD to help diversify payment methods
• Shipping: Easily integrate shipping providers like Giao Hang Nhanh, Giao Hang Tiet Kiem, Ninja Van, Viettel Post and shipping tracking applications to optimise delivery processes
• Administration software: Integrating with back-office management and operation software (ERP, CRM, POS) like SAP, Salesforce, Ocracle to help operate all processes and resources in the organisation
• Business Intelligence tools: Link with business analysis tools like Power BI, Tableau, and Looker to offer database-driven analysis and reporting
• Omnichannel: Combine all sales channels on the same system to control data and operations from offline to online business

Scalability

Magento allows organisations to extend from one website to many distinct websites on the same system to satisfy the requirements of company-scale development. This implies that organisations can access and manage data from a single central Magento system.

With Magento’s language-switching functionality, businesses can create an attractive eCommerce website with customer-friendly content and languages. Furthermore, the Magento system enables businesses to effortlessly exchange currencies, allowing them to grow into new markets in a variety of nations.

From then, Magento can help businesses scale and function effectively without switching to another eCommerce platform from the beginning of business through the period of expansion.

In a nutshell, Magento is an e-commerce platform that caters for the demands of all types and sizes of fashion businesses, from website interface design and functional system development to integration and scalability. However, there are numerous challenges that firms must overcome when implementing fashion eCommerce with Magento, such as high installation costs, long construction times, and the requirement for highly skilled employees.

Recognising the aforementioned business difficulties, SECOMM provides free consultation services on technology and resource solutions for each company. 

Contact SECOMM now for more details!

eCommerce has become an essential business model that fashion brands must utilize not only to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic but also to assist companies in adapting to changing customer behavior, providing competitive advantages for future breakthroughs.
As a result, fashion eCommerce has become a crucial business trend for many fashion businesses today, from start-ups to “giant” corporations.

1. The potential of eCommerce in the fashion industry

According to Statista, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the fashion eCommerce market is predicted to be 14.2% from 2017 to 2025. The CAGR is forecast to reach a value of USD 1 trillion by 2025, in which the US market accounts for about 20%, equivalent to 204.9 billion USD.

In the Vietnamese market, fashion eCommerce is the second most important sector, just after eGrocery (The Vietnam eCommerce White Paper in 2021).

2. The advantages of implementing eCommerce in the fashion industry

2.1. Increase the breadth of your business

The use of eCommerce will provide fashion firms with a new sales channel, along with offline commercial activity in showrooms. For geographical factors, eCommerce transcends place and time to allow customers to purchase whenever and wherever they choose.

Simultaneously, eCommerce is a prominent avenue for reaching customers, particularly in the sphere of fast fashion for women. Marketing activities such as Livestream, Shoppertainment (Shopping with entertainment), Affiliate, and so on are more effectively carried out, leading to the extension of the commercial scope for enterprises.

2.2. Adapting to changing customer behavior

Following the COVID-19 epidemic and the social distancing order, consumer behavior has shifted dramatically, with the transition from physical to online buying rising over time in all categories. In the fashion business alone, the percentage of online customers climbed from 18% to 48% in 2020–2021. As a result, it is critical for fashion businesses to implement eCommerce.

After the epidemic, consumer behavior altered drastically, such as waiting until D-Day to purchase items.  Furthermore, by utilizing eCommerce technologies, organizations can follow, analyze, and synthesize the consumption behavior of each target group, something offline purchasing cannot accomplish. This ensures that businesses always have enough aggregated and forecasted data to implement business plans.

2.3. Improve the user experience 

When technologies that improve user experience in e-commerce are used, customer purchases will be made faster.

Visual experiences such as photos, movies, virtual reality experiences, and so on provide customers with full product information and expertise, enabling a speedier purchasing process. VR / AR technology enables people to shop for garments, accessories, and shoes online in the same way they would in a store.

For example, the American Apparel company has used AR to show shoppers more product information, like detailed descriptions, availability, colors, and buyer reviews.

eCommerce allows businesses to tailor the experience for consumers by collecting, evaluating easily, and summarizing the consumption habits of each target group, often with the following features: Recommend products, Products seen, and so on.

eCommerce provides a seamless experience for customers across many channels such as social media (Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Zalo, etc), eCommerce marketplace (Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, Sendo, etc), eCommerce website, and mobile app.

3. Case study

3.1. Shein – The unicorn of the fashion eCommerce industry

Shein is a Chinese eCommerce site created in 2008 that specializes in apparel and accessories. With the motto “everyone can enjoy the beauty of fashion,” the company pushes to give consumers a diverse selection of product options. Shein is currently regarded as a fashion “empire” with a valuation of $ 100 billion – more than Zara ($ 69 billion) and H&M (23 billion) combined.

Shein focuses on the youthful client sector of Gen Y and Gen Z, who use the Internet often. As a result, this brand has used technical components to reach more consumers in an appropriate and exact manner.

Shein created an eCommerce system that included a website and a mobile app to target overseas markets such as Europe, America, Australia, and the Middle East. Shein then advocated Social Commerce, Ecommerce Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, KOC, and other tactics to improve brand awareness and engagement.

In 2021, Shein’s mobile app exceeded 7 million monthly active users in the US alone (Airnow Data), and the hashtag #Shein garnered more than 10 billion views on TikTok (Jing Daily). Revenue reached $15.7 billion in 2021, up 60% from 2020 ($9.8 billion). It can be seen that Shein is a clear example of the effective application of eCommerce to capture market share in the fashion industry.

3.2. Coolmate – The missiles in the realm of fashion eCommerce in Vietnam

Coolmate is a menswear startup that was established in 2019. Coolmate is a mix of the words “cool” and “mate,” which means that the brand’s major purpose is to be a fashion buddy for customers. After barely two years of operation, this company received a $500,000 funding call from Sharktank Vietnam.

Coolmate utilizes the Direct to Customer Ecommerce (D2C eCommerce) model and concentrates on developing its own fashion website to provide a quick and cost-effective buying experience. At the same time, this brand prioritizes product quality, which is 100% made in Vietnam and meets export standards at low costs. Furthermore, to implement e-commerce faster, Coolmate advocates thoroughly apply the strategy of Ecommerce Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, etc.

Aside from the $500,000 agreement for a 12.5% interest, 2.5% of the consultancy shares pledged, this fledgling business has other noteworthy statistics. Coolmate’s sales will reach VND 139 billion in 2021, up 3.5 times from 2020, with revenue expected to reach VND 440 billion in 2022 and an IPO (Initial Public Offering) by 2025. In general, eCommerce has considerably contributed to Coolmate’s development, as well as providing the groundwork for fashion businesses to follow to grow by market trends.

3.3. Yody – The behemoth chose to compete in the fashion eCommerce race

Yody (previously Hi5) is a family apparel label that was founded in 2014. To provide Vietnamese fashion goods made of high-quality materials to customers in various regions of Vietnam and throughout the world. Yody now employs over 700 people and has 90 outlets around Vietnam.

This fashion brand prioritizes the “tripod” of human resource development, product quality, and technology investment. Yody focuses on talent recruiting and culture training to engage employees in human resource development. In terms of products, Yody designs for comfort and convenience, and can be utilized in various situations, such as going to work, going out, attending meetings, and so on.

Regarding technology, Yody focuses on implementing an online sales strategy across Omni-channel such as eCommerce marketplaces, an eCommerce website, Facebook, Livestream, and so on to compete in the eCommerce race, as well as adapting to changing consumer behavior.

In 2016, Yody was selected as one of the ten outstanding young start-ups in Vietnam. By 2021, Yody’s physical sales will have dropped by 65%, but the internet segment has increased by more than 10%. Therefore, the company continues to aim to increase online revenue by 20% in the next year.

In a nutshell, how to apply fashion e-commerce will depend on the size and strategy of each company, but eCommerce is a prerequisite for successful business in this industry.

However, not all businesses are fortunate to deploy effective e-commerce because risks and wrong decisions when doing business can happen in any market, not only in the eGrocery market.

Some mistakes are fixable, but there are mistakes no matter how much budget and time it takes to make up. Here are some online grocery store mistakes that eGrocery business leaders need to know.

Building operating procedures for complex e-commerce systems

The grocery store business process in chain stores and e-commerce websites is entirely different. However, when implementing e-commerce, many businesses put the entire existing process on the website system without any customization or modification to conform to general operating procedures.

To shift business from offline to online, businesses must face difficulties such as synchronizing data from POS (Point of sale), e-commerce platforms, and e-commerce websites for other systems like CRM, ERP, BI, etc.

Grocery e-commerce is an extraordinary industry, with many complex features such as products with many units, selling methods, weight differences, constantly changing prices (day/week/month/year), expired products that need to be canceled, or imported new must have specific data, complicated payment processes, cumbersome warehousing operations, etc.

In particular, most products in the grocery store are fresh and fast food, so the damage rate is high, and the delivery time needs to be faster than in other fields. In addition, for these items, “housewives” also need to choose the correct delivery time.

Because of the complexity of the operation process, the requirements for the e-commerce system are also more unique compared to other industries, making it difficult for managers to grasp the business situation and not be able to manage the number of products in stock in each branch.

Enterprises should build their in-house team or look for experienced grocery e-commerce developers to design the system operation process for specific industry and business problems that SaaS platforms cannot provide.

Wrong choice of an e-commerce platform for egrocery

An e-commerce platform is software that businesses use to build an e-commerce website. Choosing a platform is always the first step in the e-commerce business process, so choosing the wrong one will lead to the entire online grocery store strategy going down.

After a period of using the unsuitable platform, businesses are required to “change blood” with another platform. This mistake wastes time and budget to build an e-commerce website for businesses without bringing about the expected results. It takes time to recruit and train employees to get used to the new platform.

To avoid this unnecessary mistake, businesses need to clearly define short-term and long-term goals for the brand, thereby building the criteria for choosing the most suitable e-commerce platform. To do that, businesses can do their research or seek professional advice before making a final decision. Of course, this takes time, but it will save time in the long run for the business.

Currently, businesses that want to implement e-commerce step by step often choose Saas (Software as a service) platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and Haravan in the early stages. This helps businesses save budget and time in the short term, market exploration, etc. Then, switch to open source platforms (Open Source) such as WooCommerce, OpenCart, and Magento to upgrade and expand the website system with convenient features for users and businesses.

Businesses with a long-term e-commerce business orientation often choose open source platforms right from the start to long-term companionship with businesses. Starting and developing continuously on an open source platform helps businesses save money and time to switch platforms, and own and fully control the system from source code to customer data, efficiently and proactively develop new features suitable for users and markets.

However, similar to building an operating process, choosing an e-commerce platform does not have a typical “recipe” for all businesses. Hence, each business needs to understand its business strategy, operating model carefully, and so on. in each stage of development.

Not investing in website interface design

The interface is essential in the grocery business, and it is necessary to meet UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience – User Experience) standards. These are two crucial factors in any e-commerce website. However, many businesses forget these two factors when designing websites, leading to consequences such as an unattractive interface, not showing the characteristics of the business and the grocery, poor website performance, and page loading—slow, poor navigation, and few specialized functions for e-commerce, etc.

The UI / UX standard design has not been emphasized. However, the user experience on the enterprise’s website becomes worse, unable to retain users, affecting the revenue and brand positioning of the business.

So when choosing an e-commerce platform, businesses should also choose platforms that can help businesses customize the interface and functionality of the source code.

Currently, there are 3 ways to design the interface for a website:

• First, use existing themes (interfaces): Businesses can choose from themes available in the market, development community, or cooperation units. This will help businesses save costs, but brand awareness is low because it is easy to duplicate with other websites.
• Customize the interface based on the existing theme: Similar to the above, businesses can customize their characteristics by affecting the code in the front end. From there, businesses both save costs and express their characteristics.
• Design your interface: This is often more expensive than using a theme, but it meets the business’s most specific and specific needs.

Inappropriate feature build roadmap

At the right time, the functional system is not what “needs not to have” and “what has is not needed.” For example, in the early stages of entering the e-commerce market, businesses often do not have a certain number of users, so the functions of the Loyalty Program (loyalty program) are not necessary. Instead, businesses should focus on building functions that help exploit potential customers. Then, after having a stable number of users, businesses can gradually build more specialized functions, solving industry-specific problems.

Building a functional system that is not suitable for users’ needs at each time will waste time and cost to build a website without providing a satisfactory shopping experience, affecting revenue efficiency and can be left behind competitors in the industry.

In general, egrocery is the “golden opportunity” for businesses to implement e-commerce. However, to capture opportunities and market share, businesses need to pay attention to many factors, especially the mistakes to avoid mentioned in this article.

With experience in successfully implementing complex grocery e-commerce systems like An Nam Gourmet, SECOMM understands grocery businesses’ obstacles. Contact SECOMM now for a free consultation on detailed e-commerce system development solutions!

Not only was grocery eCommerce appearing in the Vietnamese market but also globalization. For example, in the United States market, egrocery has an annual growth rate of 200% (according to Statista).

Businesses must swiftly develop an eCommerce system fit for industry and customers to capture changes in the market. However, administrators must consider several concerns while implementing grocery eCommerce to efficiently engage in the market.

Choose the right eCommerce platform

Choosing the right eCommerce platform is essential for any business, not just the grocery industry. An eCommerce platform compatible with business strategies will help companies save time, accelerate the digital transformation process, and save money on deploying eCommerce websites in both the short and long term. In addition, businesses do not need to switch platforms many times, saving time and budget for recruiting and training personnel to familiarize themselves with the system.

Some grocery business eCommerce platforms include Ziel Commerce, Haravan, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. In particular, Ziel Commerce is a platform designed explicitly for eGrocery businesses.

SaaS platforms like Haravan and Shopify are suitable for SMEs (small and medium enterprises), startups, or new entrants to eCommerce. WooCommerce is ideal for businesses that need to own the source code and customize the website at an affordable cost. The Magento platform is suitable for many different business models (B2C, B2B, B2B2C, etc) and many different business sizes (SME, startup, large corporation, etc).

This platform meets the needs of building an industry-specific eCommerce website under its characteristics, with full ownership of the source code and the ability to customize the website. However, due to the prolonged deployment time and high prices, many businesses are hesitant to use Magento, while many enterprises trust it.

Building a system of industry-specific features

A big problem that egrocery businesses need to pay attention to is that the grocery industry has a relatively complicated operation.

Grocery products have many units of measure, weight differences, and different ways of selling; prices constantly fluctuate and update continuously by day/week/month/year.

The import and export of warehouses are complicated (general warehouse, store warehouse, warehouse for each area in the store), so when deploying an online grocery store, businesses need to synchronize the price and quantity of products so that when restocking, the data will not be lost. Weight and cost data on branches are changed under control, avoiding the lack of synchronization between frontend and backend, causing data processing to be interrupted.

At the same time, grocery products are mainly fresh foods such as meat, fish, eggs, milk, etc, so they need to be refrigerated, delivered quickly, or selected with the correct delivery time.

Handling all the problems in the complex operating process of the grocery industry requires a team of highly qualified IT and eCommerce personnel to design an eCommerce system that is suitable for the specific process and requirements of the business – something current SaaS platforms are not enough to meet.

Enhance customer experience

When running an online grocery store, the user experience requirements are very high; from navigating shopping behavior to the checkout process, order delivery needs to be optimized. Because user experience increases the likelihood of customers placing their first order, it also gives customers more reasons to buy again, contributing to a competitive advantage over competitors in the same industry.

There are many ways for businesses to enhance the user experience, such as layering product categories to navigate customers more intuitively and building specialized functions such as quick add products to cart, fast checkout, search enhancements, and product recommendations based on collected data, etc.

At the same time, personalizing the user experience is an essential factor in the customer’s shopping journey. Businesses exploit, analyze, and leverage data to build the right customer journey, match consumer behavior, and increase the user experience level of personalization.

Personalize from CMS content and display products to navigate the shopping journey for businesses to increase loyalty and customer lifetime value (CLV).

Implement attractive promotions

The secret of doing an online grocery business is building incentive programs suitable for customer segments.

Some popular promotions that businesses can apply in the early stages include free shipping, buy one get one free, gifts/vouchers, or promotions with specific conditions (certain items reach a particular value).

After that, businesses can deploy loyalty programs such as accumulating points for purchases, VIP membership, converting reward points into discount codes, donating bonus points to charities associated with the brand, subscription plans, etc.

Applying omni-channel

Omni-channel is one of the inevitable eCommerce trends in 2022; the application of Omni-channel will help businesses do online grocery business more conveniently.

Omni-channel will help customers’ shopping experience be seamless from the physical store to the website, helping businesses follow customers from eCommerce platforms, social networks, websites, etc.

In addition, by collecting and analyzing information from Omni-channel, businesses can efficiently study customer behavior, preferences, and psychology and know whether they are satisfied with the product, service quality, or not to take reasonable measures to change.

It can be said that the grocery eCommerce business has both opportunities and challenges, requiring business managers to think carefully about tactics to make the most effective steps. But, of course, that work is not easy, finding a companion is also tricky, building an in-house team is not easy, and businesses have to pay a lot of opportunity costs and time to reach the “finish line” themselves. 

With experience in successfully implementing complex grocery eCommerce systems like An Nam Gourmet, SECOMM understands grocery businesses’ obstacles. Contact SECOMM now for a free consultation on detailed eCommerce system development solutions!

With the boom in recent years, ecommerce is a potential business form pursued by many businesses, especially egrocery stores. According to Statista, the grocery ecommerce market in the United States is likely to exceed $24 billion by 2023.

Realizing the potential of the egrocery market, several businesses have deployed grocery ecommerce websites early and experienced breakthrough growth, such as Grofers (Blinkit) and BigBasket in India, Bach Hoa Xanh, An Nam Gourmet, Farmer’s Market, WinMart, and Organica in Vietnam.

The common thing that makes the success of the above brands lies in the ecommerce platform. Therefore, to develop and operate an effective ecommerce website, the role of platforms is enormous.

So which ecommerce platforms are suitable for the grocery industry?

Platform selection criteria

User interface and administration interface

For the website interface, in addition to meeting basic needs such as UI/UX standards and showing the brand’s characteristics and the eGrocery industry, businesses also need to focus on the presented product images. Therefore, on the website, everything needs to be synchronized and precise.

The administrator interface (admin) must be easy to use, navigate, control, and manage all data in the system.

Functional system

With eGrocery, the system of ecommerce features needs to be diverse from basic to advanced, solving complex characteristics of the grocery industry such as products with multiple units, weight difference, and price volatility, export-import complex warehouse, and synchronized data throughout the system.

Some functions required in a grocery ecommerce website system such as:

• Primary functions: Meet the most basic needs when operating an ecommerce system, such as order management, checkout, payment, shipping, etc
• Advanced Functions: Functions that enhance the consumer experience and accelerate the shopping process such as order tracking, abandoned cart recovery, similar product recommendations, product search fast products, multi-layered product portfolio, etc
• Specific functions: Functions that help to thoroughly solve the difficulties of implementing specialized grocery ecommerce, meeting the needs of customer segments and businesses such as fast delivery, choice of time delivery point, etc

Integration capabilities

To have a seamless online volatility store system with multiple sales channels, businesses must integrate their ecommerce website with other payment services, shipping services, management software, analysis, report, and distribution systems:

• Payment: Integrate various payment methods from domestic cards to international cards, such as payment gateways (Paypal, Stripe, OnePay), e-wallets (Momo, ZaloPay), etc.
•  Shipping: Integrate with international shipping providers like DHL Express, Fedex, Ups, USPS, and popular shipping providers in Vietnam like Fast Delivery, Economy Delivery, Ninja Van, etc. With order tracking applications to help process and operate the delivery processes
• Management software: Easily integrate CRM, ERP, and POS software to get a seamless connection on all supply channels from offline to online
• Analysis and reporting: Integrate analysis and reporting software such as Business Intelligent, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, etc.

This integration helps businesses overcome the limitations of the “rice-powered” process, increase the automation of the system, limit business mistakes, and ensure high accuracy and performance.

Ability to extension

To accompany businesses to develop over time, from startups, and SMEs (small and medium enterprises), to large corporations, from B2B, B2C, and D2C business models to B2B2C, commerce electronics platforms must be highly scalable. High scalability helps meet all future business growth needs, such as multi-site, multi-country, and multi-currency, all manageable on “one screen.” Not only that, but highly scalable platforms also support businesses to operate the system stably regardless of the traffic in promotion campaigns.

Evaluate 5 ecommerce platforms for egrocery business based on each criterion

Ziel Commerce

Ziel Commerce is a readymade grocery ecommerce platform with all the features designed to support an online grocery store business.

Website interface

Ziel Commerce provides a repository of themes specifically for the grocery industry, allowing businesses to customize according to their needs, helping to both reflect the characteristics of the industry and position the brand image.

Remarkably, the interface for administrators is also invested by the founders to make it most accessible for businesses to use. But currently, Ziel Commerce is not popular in the Vietnamese market, so there is no Vietnamese version for businesses.

Functional system

As a platform designed specifically for the eGrocery industry, Ziel Commerce can meet all the most specialized needs of businesses, including fundamental to advanced functionality systems and existing industry-specific solutions.

Integration capabilities

Ziel Commerce has a significant drawback in integrating the website system. In addition, this platform only supports add-ons available in its ecosystem, so businesses will not be able to link with the ERP, POS, CRM, BI, etc., systems in use. Therefore, when using Ziel Commerce, companies need to transfer all existing data to the server of this platform.

Ability of extension

Although it does not own the source code, Ziel Commerce is still a highly appreciated platform for its scalability compared to SaaS platforms. Ziel Commerce supports businesses to expand their ecommerce website system from one to many stores/websites, multi-language, multi-currency without many obstacles. However, in the long run, Ziel Commerce cannot support businesses to expand or develop new functions because firms cannot affect the source code; if it affects it, it will cause instability for the commercial website system. 

→ Rating: 3/4

Ziel Commerce provides an almost comprehensive online grocery store website building solution for businesses, from website interface and functional system to scalability. However, the implementation cost is relatively high, about $50,000/project in 6 months. Therefore, Ziel Commerce is only popular with retail chains, has high functional demand, and operates mainly abroad. However, when using Ziel Commerce, businesses should consider adding the platform’s integration, limiting instability in the operation when 3rd party systems are not compatible with the platform.

Shopify

Shopify is a SaaS ecommerce platform favored by the international ecommerce business community because of its fast implementation time and reasonable starting cost.

Website interface

Shopify provides a variety of interfaces, including grocery industry and UI/UX standards, but cannot be edited according to the characteristics of the business.

Functional system

Shopify’s functional system is relatively complete, meeting the basic needs of businesses. But to use advanced functions, companies have to pay a certain amount of money every month, leading to an increased cost of using the functional system. In addition, even Shopify can barely provide eGrocery industry-specific resolution functions.

Integration capabilities

Because it is a SaaS platform, businesses cannot affect the source code, and it is not easy to integrate with many 3rd parties. Companies can only integrate utilities provided by Shopify or a platform partner.

Some utilities that companies can integrate with Shopify include:

• Payment: Paypal, Stripe, SagePay, AliPay Global, etc
• Shipping: DHL Express, USPS, UPS, etc
• Administration: Microsoft Dynamic 365 (ERP), Oracle NetSuite (ERP), Acumatica (ERP), etc
• Marketing: Google Tools, MailChimp, Facebook Pixel, etc

Ability of extension

Similar to the ability to integrate, the scalability on Shopify is not high because businesses cannot influence the source code to edit and upgrade the website. Therefore, online grocery businesses can only use Shopify for the first time.

→ Rating: 2/4

Shopify is only suitable for businesses new to the ecommerce market, startups, or SMEs (small and medium enterprises) because of the reasonable development cost and time to deploy an online grocery store business website.

Haravan

Founded in 2014, Haravan is an ecommerce platform based on Shopify. Currently, Haravan is a popular platform in the Vietnamese market with more than 50,000 business people and trusted brands.

Website interface

Haravan has many standard UI/UX interfaces suitable for the grocery industry, including free and paid. At the same time, the interface for administrators supports Vietnamese and is easy to use, so businesses do not face many difficulties when using it.

Functional system

Haravan provides many utilities – functions for online grocery stores in Vietnam.

In addition, similar to Shopify, to use more advanced functions, businesses have to pay a monthly application fee of about 100,000 VND/month/app.

However, businesses can’t find parts that deal with the grocery’s specifics in Haravan’s app store and can’t develop in terms of specific functions. Enterprises can only use the functions included in the package and app store.

Integration capabilities

For integration capabilities, Haravan can integrate with Haravan’s partners such as transportation (Economic Delivery, Fast Delivery, Ahamove, GrabExpress, etc.), payment (Ngan Luong, VNPAY, Napas, PayPal, etc.), etc.).

It is difficult for businesses to integrate for 3rd party utilities outside Haravan’s ecosystem on their ecommerce website.

Ability of extension

As for the extension of the ecommerce website system, Haravan can only support the multi-language – currency but cannot expand from one to many websites/stores. It is challenging to manage all the data on a foundation.

As the business gradually grows and expands, Haravan will no longer be functional enough to maintain an online grocery store business. As a result, companies are forced to switch to more specialized platforms such as Magento, WooCommerce, and OpenCart. But, of course, switching platforms will create many other problems such as costs, time, personnel, etc.

→ Rating: 2/4

Similar to Shopify, Haravan is only suitable for businesses new to the ecommerce market, startups, and SMEs. But Shopify can support online grocery business globally, and Haravan only stops at the Vietnamese market.

Woocommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source platform in the form of a WordPress plugin, allowing businesses to use it completely free.

Website interface

WooCommerce and the community provide businesses with various themes designed for the grocery industry. At the same time, this platform also allows influencing the source code to customize according to needs, helping businesses quickly convey brand messages and images.

Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, the admin will continue to manage the website on the WordPress interface itself. This makes it easy for businesses using WordPress to adapt, use, and navigate on the WooCommerce dashboard.

Functional system

WooCommerce supports a variety of features, from basic to advanced. However, this platform has some limitations on features specific to the grocery industry because interfering with developing these functions will easily cause instability for the website system.

Integration capabilities

Thanks to the advantages of the open source platform, WooCommerce has flexible customization capabilities and supports integration with many 3rd party utilities.

In payment, businesses can use amount plugins such as Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Square to their ecommerce website system with high security and safety. In addition, companies can integrate with many shipping providers such as Fedex, Ups, USPS, and DHL Express. The WooCommerce platform also allows businesses to integrate with management software such as Odoo, Square POS, WP ERP, and Marketing software such as Google Listings, Google Ads, and Facebook Pixel to support businesses in effective business management. More fruitful.

Ability of extension

Contrary to the integration capabilities, the extensibility of WooCommerce is not appreciated. Because the system is easily overloaded with plugin themes, and the number of products does not exceed 2000 SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit). Therefore, businesses wishing to expand their website system need to consider when using this platform in the long run.

→ Rating: 3/4

WooCommerce is the right platform for grocery businesses that use WordPress and are looking to develop an ecommerce system. But when using WooCommerce, companies should consider the limitations of integration, extensibility, and customizability of specific features.

Magento

Magento is a popular open source commerce platform in ecommerce, with nearly 200,000 websites in use. Currently, Magento has 2 versions: Magento Open Source (free) and Magento Commerce (paid).

Website interface

Although Magento does not own a rich theme store like other ecommerce platforms, businesses can look to the developer community, market (Envato), or design their own. Having many options when designing the interface helps Magento websites to have their uniqueness, avoid overlapping the interface with many different websites and bring a higher shopping experience.

Previously, the admin interface on Magento 1 was often considered difficult to use and took a long time to adapt. As a result, Magento publishers developed Magento 2 with a more intuitive and easy-to-navigate dashboard to overcome this problem.

Functional system

The Magento platform has a highly diverse system of features from basic and advanced to industry-specific to help grocery businesses quickly build and develop a sustainable system.

A basic functional system, including catalog management, product management, customer management, report analysis, etc., helps meet the basic needs of a convenient online grocery store business.

In particular, Magento also has many advanced functions for ecommerce, such as multi-language support, multi-currency, multi-store, PWA, MSI, ElasticSearch, etc. Shopping happens faster.

Magento does not have built-in features only for the grocery industry regarding specific features. Still, businesses can quickly build a system of particular features such as category classification, quick search, and delivery time selection thanks to flexible customization on open source code.

Integration capabilities

Thanks to the advantages of the open source platform, the Magento website can be easily integrated with any 3rd party utilities, from payment, shipping, and business administration.

Regarding payment, Magento easily connects with today’s popular payment methods such as card payments (domestic cards, VISA, Mastercard), e-wallets (MOMO, Zalopay), and payment gateways (OnePay, VNPay, etc.) PayPal) or COD, which helps to diversify payment methods.

Magento can integrate with shipping providers such as Fast Delivery, Economy Delivery, Viettel Post, and order tracking applications.

Magento can be integrated into back-office management software (ERP, CRM, POS) such as SAP, Salesforce, and Oracle to help operate all resources and processes seamlessly in the enterprise.

In addition, Magento also supports integration with business analysis tools such as Power BI, Tableau, and Looker and analysis and reporting utilities such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Facebook Pixels to exploit all data from the system. As a result, Magento plans to improve its business strategy.

Ability of extension

Magento allows businesses to expand from one website to many different websites on the same system to meet the needs of business development. In addition, with the available support for language and currency conversion from Magento, businesses can build a grocery ecommerce system with content suitable for a diverse audience of customers around the globe.

In addition, open source customization enables Magento developers to build functional solutions specific to the grocery industry. This advantage makes Magento expand the system of capabilities according to each business size, from small businesses to large-scale corporations.

→ Rating: 4/4

Because Magento possesses many outstanding advantages, from website interface and functional system to the ability to integrate and expand, Magento is suitable for a variety of grocery business models from B2B, B2C to B2B2C, a multiform of enterprise-scale such as startup, SME, enterprise (large corporation). However, the time to deploy ecommerce on Magento is usually long – from 6 months to 1 year, with high construction costs of about 50,000 – 100,000 USD/project. At the same time, businesses also need to have a professional team or cooperate with experienced units to develop an effective grocery ecommerce system. Therefore, Magento is popularly used in the community of large-scale businesses that need many functions to increase user experience.

Choosing the right platform is the first and most significant step when building a grocery ecommerce website. Selecting the right ecommerce platform will help businesses save budget and time in building a website while increasing competitive advantage and sustainable growth. On the contrary, choosing the wrong forum will cost businesses a lot of time and budget to deploy and switch platforms. Therefore, companies need to consider the goals and problems in the current model to choose the most suitable platform.

With experience in successfully implementing complex grocery ecommerce systems like An Nam Gourmet, SECOMM understands grocery businesses’ obstacles.

Contact SECOMM now for a free consultation on detailed ecommerce system development solutions!

SaaS eCommerce Platform

A SaaS eCommerce Platform is a service delivery paradigm for developing a software-based website system. Data is kept on the provider’s server system under this approach, and that platform is in charge of dealing with technical concerns for the business.

Advantages of SaaS eCommerce Platform

Available eCommerce system

The provider pre-designs the SaaS platform for the full system, from hosting, interface, and features to technological infrastructure maintenance. As a result, organizations can quickly create and manage a website system without worrying about technological concerns.

Furthermore, the platform developer offers firms 24/7 assistance through live chat, desk help, or a hotline while the platform is in operation.

Various interfaces and functionalities

The SaaS eCommerce Platform includes a multitude of functionality and appealing UX/UI interfaces, making it suitable for a variety of businesses.

Furthermore, these platforms include a wide range of essential eCommerce functions, including product administration, order management, customer management, marketing, business analysis, and reporting to let firms quickly develop an e-commerce website. Moreover, extensions such as Omni-channel, Affiliate Marketing, E-Payment, E-Logistic, and so on are constantly added to these platforms to strengthen the e-commerce system.

Quick implementation

The time it takes to establish a website on a SaaS eCommerce Platform is quite fast, ranging from 1 to 7 days on average, depending on the website’s setup.

Affordable investment budget

The initial building cost is pretty cheap because firms would pay monthly or yearly use fees (subscription-based) to establish a website using SaaS eCommerce Platforms, such as:

• Haravan: 
  • Standard (200,000 VND/month): Appropriate for independent sellers
  • Pro (600,000 VND/month): For organizations who wish to implement Omnichannel
  • Grow (1,500,000 VND/month): For firms need automating processes to take care of and resell current customers
  • Scale (3,000,000 VND/month): Help establish loyal customers
• Shopify:
  • Basic Shopify ($29/month): Suitable for new businesses with small sales.
  • Shopify ($79/month): Appropriate for growing online enterprises
  • Advanced Shopify ($299/month): Ideal for firms that need to expand and want advanced reporting capabilities.
• BigCommerce:
  • Standard: $29.95/month for businesses with more than $50,000 in revenue
  • Plus: $79.95/month for enterprises with more than $180,000 in revenue
  • Pro: $299.95/month for companies with more than $400.000 in revenue
  • Enterprise: For firms with high sales volumes, costs will be calculated depending on the brand’s online sales

Aside from the monthly/yearly licensing charge, businesses must pay extra expenditures such as interface fees, new features, expanding the number of backend users, and POS (Point of Sale) to grow the eCommerce system.

Disadvantages of SaaS eCommerce Platform

Having no control over the source code and data

Because the enterprise’s whole website system is housed on the provider’s server, ownership and control of the website source code will belong to that platform, not the firm.  Businesses who transfer platforms can no longer utilize the previous site source code and must rebuild from scratch on the new platform. Moreover, data loss or misalignment is usually unavoidable.

The enterprise’s data, like the source code, is likewise kept on the provider’s server, thus ownership and control over the data remains constrained. There are many difficulties for not owning and controlling data, such as linking data between departments, customizing users, and so on.

Poor scalability and flexibility

Because the website system depends on the SaaS platform, customization and expansion are currently limited. When it comes to upgrading existing features, developing new functions for the company’s development, in line with the particular requirements of the product and industry, and optimizing the user experience, SaaS platforms are frequently unable to adapt. As a result, switching platforms after a period of usage is unavoidable, and of course, this change will take significant time and money for the company.

Usage costs increase over time

Because you must pay monthly or yearly license fees, the longer you use the higher the overall cost of use. Furthermore, the SaaS eCommerce Platform charges on the revenue online sales.

For example, various Shopify apps, such as DCart (Create Discount Codes on Cart), OctaneAI (Similar Product Suggestions), Ali Reviews (Product Reviews), and others, would charge a monthly fee, average $10 /month/features. The more applications that are installed, the more the monthly or yearly expenses will be.

Businesses can use the SaaS platform if they wish to enter the e-commerce industry rapidly, have minimal need for customization, and do not need to enhance the system. As a result, SaaS systems are frequently selected by startups, SMEs (small and medium enterprises), and businesses just getting started in the e-commerce industry.

Open Source eCommerce Platform

Open Source is software whose source code is publicly available and freely used by anyone.

Because the data and source code will be housed on a separate server system, Open Source eCommerce Platforms have the opposite aspects of SaaS platforms. Businesses that use open source platforms must collaborate with professional website developers or build a highly specialized in-house team for the website system to achieve maximum efficiency.

Advantages of Open Source eCommerce Platform

Control the data and own the source code.

Businesses have complete ownership and control over the source code and data on the system due to the characteristic of being housed on a separate server system. As a consequence, while deploying an eCommerce website, companies only need to pay development expenses in order to utilize the source code, rather than monthly/yearly license fees just like SaaS platforms. At this point, you could reuse the previous source code if you change developers or platforms. Furthermore, security is improved, reducing hacker attacks, server failures, and technical faults from staff and consumers.

Customize the interface to meet your requirements.

Businesses have more choices in developing their website’s interface to boost brand image and maximize revenue since they use Open Source eCommerce Platforms.

Currently, there are three methods for designing interfaces:

• Use pre-existing themes: Like SaaS platforms, organizations can select and use pre-existing themes from the market, development community, or cooperation unit. This method will help businesses save the most money since a standard UX/UI theme costs between $50 and $200 on average.
• Customize the interface based on an existing theme: Similar to the preceding method, but instead of purchasing and using the same theme, firms may design their own traits by rewriting the website’s code at the front-end. Since then, organizations have cut expenses while also expressing their own distinct characteristics.
• Create your own user interface: To effectively position the brand on the website, the interface should be created individually. This is typically more expensive than utilizing a theme, but it addresses the most particular and specific requirements of the company.

Full of features and add-ons

In terms of website system features, Open Source eCommerce Platforms are quite superior to SaaS platforms. Not only have basic functions, but Open Source eCommerce Platforms also have many advanced features such as quick search, similar product suggestions, abandoned cart notifications, real-time products, and so on.

In addition, the Open Source eCommerce Platforms also has many add-ons that are improved, provided, and shared by the developer community.

Great flexibility

Because organizations control their own source code, they can simply update the functional system, build new features, or expand the system to suit business demands and meet consumer needs. At the same time, the open-source code’s flexibility allows businesses to easily link with third-party utilities in order to run the system.

Disadvantages of Open Source eCommerce Platform

Require a professional team or experienced developer

It is hard to build “tailor-made” systems for each firm with a system of various e-commerce features ranging from basic to complex, therefore systems developed on open source e-commerce platforms frequently have high accuracy.  As a result, in order to build and function efficiently, a specialized team or development organization must have strong knowledge and several years of experience.

Prolonged setup time

Deployment times for open source e-commerce platforms are frequently lengthier than those for SaaS platforms. Depending on the complexity of the functional system, the average amount of time for the IT team to build a website varies from 3 months to 1 year.

Expensive development

Using an open-source platform is basically free, but having a full e-commerce system from website to mobile app needs a significant commitment of your own labor. The in-house IT team will design interfaces and functions. As a result, the initial cost of developing an e-commerce website using an open-source platform is pretty expensive, an average of $10,000 per project.

The Open Source eCommerce Platform is suited for all sorts of enterprises due to its numerous features. However, budget and implementation time restrictions have kept many small and medium-sized businesses from utilizing it. Large firms frequently engage in these platforms to construct specialized and specialized eCommerce systems.

In general, the decision of which eCommerce platform to select will be determined by each firm’s business plan, budget, and time of eCommerce development.

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