The Digital Mall Experience Our eCommerce Sites Forgot

For more than two decades, Western eCommerce has focused relentlessly on optimising for convenience. The fundamental structure—search box, product listings, checkout process—hasn't changed significantly since the early 2000s. But on the other side of the world, Chinese platforms have been quietly revolutionising online shopping by prioritising entertainment, social connection, and community over pure efficiency.

In my conversation with digital strategy expert Bj?rn Ognibeni on The eCommerce Podcast, we explored this fascinating divergence and what Western businesses can learn from China's approach to create a more engaging online shopping experiences.

The Forgotten Element: Experience

The stark contrast between Western and Eastern eCommerce approaches reminds me of the Blockbuster vs. Netflix debate. We gained convenience with Netflix but lost the experience of choosing a film with friends, the anticipation, and the ritual. We lost the story.

Netflix was also going to win over Blockbuster, but did we lose something in the process? And has Western eCommerce become like Netflix, where we prioritise frictionless transactions at the expense of the more social elements that made shopping enjoyable? Have we lost the story too?

As Bj?rn pointed out in our conversation, this focus on optimisation rather than innovation is partly because:

"We don't invent. We invent something when something is new. When there was no eCommerce, we had to invent eCommerce and there was a lot of innovation. At a certain point, we are finished. It's ready."

Once the basic model was established, Western platforms our obvious priority then became to optimise metrics:

"And at that point we have KPIs and we optimize these KPIs and convenience, how quick things are, how cheap it is, lowering costs. These are all very handy KPIs that we can optimize. Everything that we can put into Excel charts. How do you optimize experience? Kind of difficult."

Two Different eCommerce Paradigms

The Western Model: Search-Driven Commerce

Western eCommerce was built around solving a problem: making shopping more convenient. The entire user journey is designed to help customers find what they want as quickly as possible and check out with minimal friction. This search-driven paradigm assumes that the customer already knows what they want.

The Chinese Model: Discovery-Driven Commerce

Chinese platforms like Taobao and Xiaohongshu operate on a fundamentally different assumption: shopping should be entertaining. As Bj?rn explained:

"In China they at a certain point said, yeah, okay, we have this easy thing, but how about making shopping exciting, creating experience? And that's a goal that we never had, I think. And out of this grew something that you could call discovery driven eCommerce. So it's not Google, it's more Instagram or TikTok."

This discovery-driven approach doesn't assume customers are looking for something specific. Instead, it creates an environment where browsing becomes enjoyable—more like visiting a shopping mall with friends than executing a transaction. It brings back the story.

Key Features of Chinese eCommerce

1. Social Shopping

One of the most innovative aspects of Chinese platforms is the ability to shop with friends virtually:

"How do I go to some kind of eCommerce shop with friends to look at what's there? You see there on Taobao, they have a function where you have the Taobao app open. I hit a button, the app connects me to a friend. Just like what we are doing here. Screen sharing and looking at the screen. We both look at the same shop and talk to each other and then at the same time browse through the shop together."

This feature recreates the social experience of shopping at physical stores—something Western platforms have largely ignored.

2. Entertainment-First Design

Chinese platforms integrate entertainment directly into the shopping experience through live streaming, gamification, and interactive content. Users often come to these platforms to be entertained first, with shopping as a secondary activity.

3. Creating Community

Eastern social media and shopping platforms focus on building welcoming environments that feel like "neighbourhood pubs" rather than the confrontational atmosphere often found on Western social media. This creates a more conducive space for shopping recommendations and product discussions.

The Data Tells the Story

The difference in engagement is striking: users spend an average of 30+ minutes daily on Chinese eCommerce apps, compared to just 4-6 minutes per visit on Western eCommerce sites (Accenture Digital Consumer Survey, 2024).

This difference in engagement reflects deeper cultural and psychological frameworks. Research shows that collectivist cultures (like China) emphasise group harmony, social connections, and community welfare, which translates into eCommerce platforms that integrate social features and shared experiences. By contrast, individualistic Western cultures prioritise personal autonomy, efficiency, and customisation—values reflected in our streamlined, transaction-focused platforms (The Impact of Collectivism and Individualism on Customer Experience, 2022).

The Coming Convergence

Western platforms are starting to incorporate elements from the Chinese model—we've seen Instagram Shop, Pinterest's collaborative features, and TikTok Shop emerging as hybrid solutions. Meanwhile, Chinese platforms continue to improve their search functionality and logistics.

The future likely belongs to businesses that can merge the best of both worlds: the efficiency and convenience of Western eCommerce with the social engagement and entertainment value of Eastern platforms.

Practical Takeaways for Western eCommerce Businesses

1. Study Chinese platforms like Taobao, Xiaohongshu, and Pinduoduo to understand their engagement mechanics.
2. Consider implementing social shopping features that allow customers to shop together virtually.
3. Develop an "easy mode" for senior customers to make your platform more accessible to older demographics.
4. Prioritise experience metrics alongside conversion rates—measuring engagement time, return visits, and sharing activity.
5. Create content that entertains even when customers aren't actively buying—tutorials, live streams, or interactive experiences.

Conclusion

As Bj?rn noted at the end of our conversation, the key is not to copy Chinese platforms but to understand what makes them successful and adapt those principles to Western contexts:

"Don't copy what the Chinese are doing. That's also a very common mistake. Understand it and then adapt it to how we should do this. That's probably the other recommendation. And it's not like there's just one thing, it's the thinking that's different and that we should change. Becoming aware of stuff that isn't changing here."

The eCommerce landscape continues to evolve, and businesses that can balance efficiency with experience will be best positioned to thrive in the coming years. Perhaps it's time we stopped focusing exclusively on optimising what we can measure in Excel spreadsheets and started thinking more creatively about what makes shopping truly enjoyable.

Research Highlights

1. Cultural Psychology Impact: Collectivist cultures (like China) emphasize group harmony and social connections, which translates into eCommerce platforms that integrate social features and shared experiences. By contrast, individualistic Western cultures prioritize personal autonomy and efficiency—values reflected in our streamlined, transaction-focused platforms. (Source: The Impact of Collectivism and Individualism on Customer Experience, 2022)
2. Small Business Advantage: Social commerce models are more democratic for smaller merchants because they lower barriers to entry, provide access to massive audiences through affordable tools, and align with consumer preferences for authentic interactions. Research shows consumers are more likely to buy from small businesses on social platforms due to the personal and authentic nature of their presence. (Source: Forbes, Social Commerce Is A $1.2 Trillion Opportunity, 2022)