Trendy electronic items are always popular all around world. As the huge demand of electronic products such as Tablet PC， mobile phones, Smart devices，more and more business onwers are trying to locate and source the best electronic products for their business and bring the latest items to their own country. No doubt that most biggest suppliers of electronic products are located in China where factories, trading companies are working hard to serve customers from all over world. In this post I will choose the 5 most popular business website which labeled “China electronic products wholesale & retail”, and digg a little big about their business and service. No matter you are a business onwer trying to find the most reliable supplier or you are just a regular cusotmer trying to purchase a good Tablet PC, this post might be for you.
The 5 websites I am reviewing are:
Light In the Box (http://lightinthebox.com)- A NYSE listed retail & Wholesale company supplies thousands of different products for customers from all over world.
Deal Extreme (http://dx.com) – A Hong Kong founded company which carrying over 110,000 items for customers, famous for their electronic products.
Focalprice (http://focalprice.com) – A famous wholesale website with great shopping experience.
DHGATE (http://dhgate.com) – Unlike other websites, this is a wholesale marketplace which has tons of suppliers there.
TinyDeal (http://tinydeal.com) – They provide more than 50,000 elaborate merchandises and famous brand products online at cheap wholesale price.
Just keep in mind that there are way too many other businesses and websites supplying similar merchandises & service as these websites, the reason why I choose these 5 ones is that they are top rated both in Google search results and in the wholesale business circles. And these 5 companies are pretty much the most successful business for China (Hong Kong) located companies which shipping items internationally.
The review contains 3 parts:
1. Sku Capacity.
It is always frustrated when customers can not find the right item they want. More sku capacity means more products & choices. I will pick 10 most searched catalogue as keywords and search on each website. The more sku(s) & products found, The more scores the website will get. The score will be from 1-5. Website which got the lagest sku capacity get 5 scores, the Minimal sku website gets 1.
The 10 catalogue(keywords) will be:
Android Phone
Bluetooth
Tablet PC
Iphone 6 case
Ipad Case
Digital camera
LED watch
GoPro
USB 3.0
Power Bank
2. Price
What stops you buying from a business? The answer can be Varied，but the most common one could be “Price”. Here in this review, I will selected 5 different products, and checking price of each website to compare, the 5 prdoucts are:
MT8392 Cube 9.7 Inch WiFi/Bluetooth/3G/2G Android 4.4 Tablet
3.5mm In-ear Earphones
Elephone P6000 5.0″ Android 4.4.2 4G Smart Phone
KINGSTON 32GB 32 GB Micro SD TF Card
Slim 2.4GHz Wireless Optical Mouse
For each product, the websites with highest price gets 1 score, the lowest price website gets 5 scores.
3. Customer Satisfaction
Beside product quantity and price, Customer satisfaction is the most important part for an online retail & wholesale business( or for any business?!). Here I will collect Data from a 3rd part review & feedback & complain website(Trustpilot). Trustpilot has already offered the review scores for visitors. We will display it here.
Let’s get this start!
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1.Sku Capacity
| LIGHT IN THE BOX | DX | FOCALPRICE | DHGATE | TINYDEAL | ||||||
| Sku Quantity | Score | Sku Quantity | Score | Sku Quantity | Score | Sku Quantity | Score | Sku Quantity | Score | |
| Android Phone | 2608 | 3 | 2883 | 4 | 1394 | 2 | 79501 | 5 | 1076 | 1 |
| Bluetooth | 3803 | 3 | 14831 | 4 | 3505 | 2 | 190056 | 5 | 2157 | 1 |
| Tablet PC | 1895 | 3 | 2113 | 4 | 483 | 1 | 108624 | 5 | 965 | 2 |
| Iphone 6 case | 4927 | 4 | 2978 | 3 | 606 | 1 | 87814 | 5 | 1114 | 2 |
| Ipad Case | 2510 | 3 | 3681 | 4 | 217 | 2 | 50107 | 5 | 109 | 1 |
| Digital camera | 14855 | 4 | 9395 | 3 | 1320 | 2 | 29480 | 5 | 177 | 1 |
| LED watch | 253 | 1 | 463 | 3 | 308 | 2 | 42219 | 5 | 672 | 4 |
| GoPro | 2594 | 4 | 2189 | 3 | 140 | 1 | 14838 | 5 | 305 | 2 |
| USB 3.0 | 1734 | 2 | 18750 | 4 | 7318 | 3 | 15643 | 5 | 212 | 1 |
| Power Bank | 420 | 2 | 2018 | 4 | 200 | 1 | 49045 | 5 | 472 | 3 |
| Final | 29 | 36 | 17 | 50 | 18 | |||||
(All these data is up to 5 FEB 2015) From the Statistics table, we can see that DHGATE gets highest score on product quantity. This is very understable because DHGATE is a marketplace where many members operating their products instead of itself. So there are too many duplicate items. But after all it gets highest score. Beside DHGATE, DX is the best one amoug other 4 invidvidual merchants. And it is even better than Lightinthebox. Focalprice and Tinydeal are in the same level. During the procedure of checking SKU quantity, I have found that Focalprice has the worst “product search” function in these 5 websites, the search result is very Inaccurate. I have to check the quantiies manually.
So if you want to have large item quantity selection or compare price, DHGATE is a nice place to go, meanwhile you should notice that Dhgate’s products were uploaded by individual sellers, the pictures and description of products can be confusing or messed up. Otherwise, DX is better. Lightinthebox is good too and they are not just carrying electronic products, they also have got tons of other catalogues such as home decor, wedding, clothing,etc.
2. Price
The result of price checking was:
| LIGHT IN THE BOX | DX | FOCALPRICE | DHGATE | TINYDEAL | ||||||
| price ($) | Score | price ($) | Score | price ($) | Score | price ($) | Score | price ($) | Score | |
| MT8392 Cube 9.7 Inch WiFi/Bluetooth/3G/2G Android 4.4 Tablet | 219.99 | 3 | 195.99 | 5 | 219.99 | 3 | 199.99 | 4 | 226.99 | 1 |
| 3.5mm In-ear Earphones | 3.99 | 2 | 3.22 | 3 | 2.89 | 4 | 4.83 | 1 | 2.26 | 5 |
| Elephone P6000 5.0″ Android 4.4.2 4G Smart Phone | 159.99 | 3 | 159.99 | 3 | 169.99 | 2 | 179.99 | 1 | 156.11 | 5 |
| KINGSTON 32GB 32 GB Micro SD TF Card | 22.99 | 1 | 17.61 | 3 | 16.59 | 4 | 19.46 | 2 | 15.75 | 5 |
| Slim 2.4GHz Wireless Optical Mouse | 7.95 | 1 | 6.54 | 3 | 5.29 | 4 | 6.64 | 2 | 4.36 | 5 |
| Final | 10 | 17 | 17 | 10 | 21 | |||||
It is surpring to see that Tinydeal got the highest score on “Price”. Focalprice and DX are in the same level. Lightinthebox and Dhgate are selling their items with the highest price among all. For Dhgate, it is not easy to check their price compared to other websites. Cause it was announced as a “wholesale & trading” website, many items were sold at bulk. The price can be very confusing. For the same item, it could be much lower than other websites, but after you clicked into the detail page, you will find out that they need to order at least 100, 50,etc. So when I check Dhgate price, I only select from the lowest price which allow customer to order 1 unit. So if you are looking for some cheap deal for your business, I think you can give Dhgate a try, I am not saying their prices are much lower than other websites, but it does make sense to save some budget on bulk buying. But if you want better experience on products, description…, you better try tinydeal, DX or Focalprice.
3. Customer Satisfaction
Let’s bring up the review data first:
Lightinthebox
5 stars percentage- 77.3%
1 star percentage – 8.2%
DX
5 stars percentage- 59.2%
1 star percentage – 14.8%
Focalprice
5 stars percentage- 58.9%
1 star percentage – 19.3%
DHGATE
5 stars percentage- 10.5%
1 star percentage – 78.4% (WTF!)
Tinydeal
5 stars percentage- 47.6%
1 star percentage – 41%
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(All data up to 6 Feb, 2015)
After digging this review thing a little bit more, it is easy to find out a fact that not only customer can write review on this website, anyone can write review including the companies themselves. So here I will not just compare them with the rating, I invent a new index called “Customer Satisfaction Index Score(CSIS)”. The Calculation method is:
Customer Satisfaction Index Score(CSIS) = 5 Star Percentage / 1 Star Percentage
The more 5 star a business gets, the higher CSIS will be. In contrast the more 1 star (bad review), the lower CSIS will be.
It is easy to write fake good review about their business, but no one will write bad review (1 star) abou their business.
Let’s bring this to sheet:
| LIGHTINTHEBOX | DX | FOCALPRICE | DHGATE | TINYDEAL | ||||||||||
| 5 star(%) | 1 star(%) | CSIS | 5 star(%) | 1 star(%) | CSIS | 5 star(%) | 1 star(%) | CSIS | 5 star(%) | 1 star(%) | CSIS | 5 star(%) | 1 star(%) | CSIS |
| 77.30% | 8.20% | 9.4 | 59.20% | 14.80% | 4 | 58.90% | 19.30% | 3.1 | 10.50% | 78.40% | 0.13 | 47.60% | 41% | 1.2 |
If you compare my CSIS to the scores Trustpilot provided, you will find out that the Rank is almos the same, except my CSIS is much more apparent to the fact how customer(s) feel.
Lightinthebox gets the highest customer satisfaction scores, DX and FOCALPRICE are in the same level, Tinydeal’s service looked awful. For DHGATE, 78.4% of their customes gave them 1 star (FYI, 1 star is lowest, no 0 star there)
Just need to remind you that, though this post’s subject is about “electronic products”, these review data are not just about electronic products, they cover everything customers buying from these websites.
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It’s easy to sum up some fact here:
1. Dhgate has large selection of product quantity but with worst customer satisfaction.
2. DX and Focalprice are pretty much in the same level of products and service even the price.
3. In these 5 websites, Lightinthebox has got the best customer satisfaction, but their prices and products quantity are not good.
4. Tinydeal’s price is the best in all but with worse customer satisfaction and sku quantities.
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If you have any experience about any of these business or website, feel free to comment on this post 🙂
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