Top mobile websites in Malaysia, Singapore and the need for speed

Top mobile sites in Southeast did quite well in all user experience aspects except for Speed, with average load time of more than 7 seconds.

Google has published Masters of Mobile: Southeast Asia Report back in November 2018 with focus on countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines.

Accenture Interactive has been commissioned by Google to study the user experience of 140 highest traffic mobile sites in Southeast Asia.

The study is being conducted in 5 key aspects:

• Findablity: How quickly and effectively can users find information on your website?
• Product pages: How clear are your presentation and calls to actions?
• Registration & conversion: Is form completion simple and safe?
• Mobile design: Are site pages designed for mobile users?
• Speed: Are page load times disrupting the overall experience?

In average, top mobile sites in Southeast did quite well in all aspects except for Speed! We will revisit this topic later in this article.

Let's first unveil the top mobile sites by user experience, with the scoring based on the 5 aspects mentioned earlier.

Top mobile sites in Southeast Asia

Top 5 brands in Financial Services:

1. AEON (TH)
2. NTUC Income (SG)
3. POSB Bank (SG)
4. Phillip Securities (SG) 
5. DBS Bank (SG)

Top 5 brands in Retail & Commerce:

1. iHerb (SG)
2. Thegioididong.com (VN)
3. Qoo10 (SG)
4. Bhinneka.com (JD)
5. Điện máy Xanh (VN)

Top 5 brands in Travel:

1. Expedia (SG)
2. Hotels.com (SG)
3. Klook (SG)
4. Travelbook (PH)
5. Traveloka (ID)

Guess what, there is no Malaysian website featured in any of the top 5 list above.

Top mobile sites in Malaysia

Top 3 brands in Financial Services:

1. Maybank
2. Hong Leong Bank
3. (No further brands scoring above 70%)

Top 3 brands in Retail & Commerce:

1. Shopee
2. Lazada
3. 11street

Top 3 brands in Travel:

1. Expedia
2. Traveloka
3. Easybook

Top mobile sites in Singapore

Top 3 brands in Financial Services:

1. NTUC Income
2. POSB Bank
3. Phillip Securities

Top 3 brands in Retail & Commerce:

1. iHerb
2. Qoo10
3. Amazon

Top 3 brands in Travel:

1. Expedia
2. Hotels.com
3. Traveloka

The need for mobile speed 

Let's take a look at the results below comparing mobile websites in Southeast Asia to China at 4.5 seconds loading time, which is the best in APAC.

Below is the average loading time of top mobile sites by each country:

1. Singapore: 7.0 seconds
2. Thailand: 7.5 seconds
3. Indonesia: 7.9 seconds
4. Phillippines: 8.5 seconds
5. Malaysia: 9.8 seconds
6. Vietnam: 10.1 seconds

In average, top mobile sites in Malaysia take more than 2 times the loading speed of China! Singapore is not much better too even with the best score in Southeast Asia at 7 seconds loading time.

This is definitely an area for website operators in Southeast Asia to improve, by considering that 53% of mobile visitors will abandon you if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load!

You can always test your mobile website speed here, recommendations to improve your site speed will be provided after the test.

According to Google, this is how you can improve your website speed in general:

• Cache static objects like HTML documents to prevent mobile site content from loading each time.
• Lighten the website by optimizing images and compressing text.
• Reduce server response time to prepare your site for high-traffic volume.

Interested to find out more? Download Masters of Mobile: Southeast Asia Report.