BukaLapak, E-Commerce With Traditional Approach

Copywriting is indeed an important part of a service, the way you talk to specific target audience can help boost the experience you're trying to give them, like Woot does. BukaLapak is one of that e-commerce sites that uses a more traditional approach of talking with their customer. One of that key value of traditional market in Indonesia is bargaining, the one thing you can't do when shopping on a modern market.

It's a small feature, but it really differentiate themselves from the other big e-commerce players. Too bad it's not exactly a strong key point, their competitors can always add the Bargain feature and they're left off with nothing. This factor has to be taken into account in the competition scene for Indonesian startups, most of them are not aware of this kind of situation.

The founders also claims that BukaLapak is the biggest marketplace for bikes with 4524 bike products, and next they're after Camera products. Although the problem is not only on how people products for sale, but also the number of items actually sold. That is two important factor from e-commerce website.

Other than that, i don't see BukaLapak has other strong differentiation compared to other e-commerce players. I really hate to compare one startup with others but in e-commerce you have to emphasize on a strong niche features in order to survive.