Malaysia E-Commerce App Review — TikTok Shop vs Lazada

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Review Overview

0. Overall Conclusion

Lazada performs better overall than TikTok Shop.

1. Lazada does a better job with its first-order tutorial for new users; with its onboarding guidance, you can smoothly complete the first purchase. TikTok Shop (TTS) offers fewer eligible items for the first order — they either charge for shipping or don’t support COD (cash on delivery).
2. User experience: there is a noticeable gap in the scrolling smoothness of the product lists between the two. TikTok Shop’s product list shows obvious jank, and its load-more has a wait of nearly 1000 ms. Lazada’s experience is close to the level of Taobao and JD.com apps back in China.
3. Feature usability: Lazada’s payment flow is simpler, with no obvious friction points along the way. Linking a TNG wallet is especially smooth. TikTok Shop’s linking process requires jumping back and forth between two apps, and you have to manually enter a PIN verification code in between. The whole process takes several times longer than Lazada’s, and any mistake at any step causes the entire flow to fail.

1. Performance Experience

Instant-Open Rate

TikTok Shop

1. On first load with no cache, TikTok Shop takes longer than Lazada.
2. With cache, TikTok Shop has a fairly serious cache consistency problem. Cached products act like a fig leaf: they are displayed for a few hundred milliseconds and then updated to the online products. If the cached product’s background image differs strongly in color, it feels particularly jarring. Lazada
3. On first load, Lazada shows an obvious loading process; only after loading completes do you see the skeleton screen, and after a few hundred milliseconds on the skeleton screen, the products appear.
4. On subsequent loads, you see the skeleton screen every time.
5. There is no product jumping in between, and the page structure doesn’t shift.

Jank

TikTok Shop

1. When scrolling the homepage feed or channel-page feed in TikTok Shop at a normal pace, you can clearly feel image stuttering. This jank is probably caused by live-stream cards and video cards in the feed auto-playing, which makes the main thread’s rendering work heavy. After letting the list page sit idle for a while and scrolling again, the jank improves.
2. The scrolling of the same list is non-linear and doesn’t follow the finger. It is most noticeable on the first scroll after a cold app start.

Lazada

1. Scrolling is quite smooth, with rare jank or dropped frames.

Load-More Smoothness

TikTok Shop

1. During continuous scrolling, there is an obvious wait for load-more, averaging 1000 ms.
2. During fast scrolling, load-more doesn’t respond.

Lazada

1. During continuous scrolling, there is no wait for load-more; you can smoothly browse to the next screenful.
2. During fast scrolling, load-more waits about 200 ms. No noticeable sense of waiting.

2. New-User First Order

Onboarding

TikTok Shop

1. The onboarding is insufficient. Very few items simultaneously offer free shipping, new-user benefits, and COD (cash on delivery). My first order as a new user failed — I had no third-party payment wallet at the time, and the item I wanted didn’t support COD.
2. The new-user benefits don’t feel attractive subjectively. Lazada
3. The benefits in the onboarding are quite attractive; “buy five, get three free” is very appealing.
4. There is a fairly rich selection of items for new users, and many of them support COD (cash on delivery).
5. It has higher playability: after placing an order, you are guided to a game park, with a fairly complete coin and points system.

3. Feature Usability

Search and Recommendation

TikTok Shop

1. Search result accuracy is poor; searching for “water” or “bottle water” yields very few options.
2. As a new user, I was recommended many high-priced items, such as electronics — things I completely don’t need as a new user. Lazada
3. Search results are rich, possibly related to the rich supply of products itself.

Payment Flow

TikTok Shop

1. Linking a TNG wallet (a local Malaysian payment wallet) is an extremely tedious process.
2. The address editing page asks for too much input. Lazada
3. Linking TNG is very smooth.

Add-to-Cart Flow

TikTok Shop

1. During and after adding an item to the cart, there are many unnecessary interruptions and pop-ups. For example, after adding an item, there is first an add-to-cart animation where the cart icon wiggles, and then a seven-tenths-screen page pops up. Even when I repeatedly don’t tap any button inside it and just close it, it stubbornly pops up every single time. After adding to cart, when I want to go to the cart to check out, I don’t want to see a half-screen pop-up again.

Lazada

1. The add-to-cart process has no excessive interruptions. On the cart list page, there is a lot of marketing, such as “buy along” suggestions and “buy one get one free” promotions.
2. The cart comes in fairly rich forms: one fixed in the top-right corner, and a floating-window style on the right side of the screen.

Logistics

TikTok Shop

1. Logistics information is inaccurate and updates are severely delayed. For the TNG card I purchased, delivery was estimated at two weeks, but it actually arrived in less than a week. Even after I received the item, the app still showed it as in transit. Lazada
2. Logistics information updates are not timely. The things I bought had already been signed for by the property management two days earlier, yet the app still showed them as in transit.

4. Brand Perception

Brand Penetration

• Lazada’s brand recognition and penetration are higher than TikTok Shop’s. A topic in class happened to cover online shopping. The first thing several Malaysians and Thais in the class thought of was Lazada; in the end it was me who added TikTok Shop to the discussion list. Temu also has considerable name recognition in Southeast Asia.

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