Through my purchase of the Mi 4i, I noticed some of the good practices of an online store and of course some of the standard hiccups, but I would like to point them out as more of a compliment to Xiaomi's efforts.

Prior to the setup of the Xiaomi SG online store, consumers can only get Xiaomi products through resellers via e.g Qoo10.sg or personally import from China through other means; the downside to such arrangements doesn't assure the authenticity of the products and will normally result in a higher selling price which may sometimes defeat the notion of getting Xiaomi at an affordable price. Even when the online store was up and running, there still isn't much of a compelling reason for me to buy from the site because of the limited range of products that was offered to SG. However, it was the global premiere #MiLaunch2015 that had me set sights on the Mi 4i and I purchased it last week the moment it was available in SG.

Account Creation

Setting up an account can be the most dreadful thing that shoppers can go through whenever they come across a new platform, but Xiaomi has simplified the steps and only needed minimum information. From the above image, it is very easy to get an account and proceed with the shopping spree~ To shorten the process and avoid any unwanted disappointment, I made the necessary preparations by simply creating an account, updating all the possible fields that is needed in the settings portion and logging in way before the actual launch time.



Adding to Shopping Cart
At 12 pm of the launch, the site was slightly flooded with traffic and it only loaded after a few constant refreshes with the "Buy Now" still grayed out. When it was finally available, I was kinda disappointed not to see the full selection of colour choices that was advertised and the worst feeling gotta be seeing that the "Grey" option was already SOLD OUT. What's left was only the "White" option and I was almost ready to give up on the phone.



For a moment, I thought that it could be an error and tried to access it through my phone, but I guessed Xiaomi rectify their mistake by totally removing the "Grey" option and replacing with a few different bundles instead.



Minutes after, I got over it and moved on to the "Next" step. I didn't buy any of the bundles or any accessories as I have already added the ones I needed beforehand, but I guess this is useful to present another opportunity to sell their products.



The amazing part was actually an ID is tagged to every item that is added to the cart and that gives you 2 hours to checkout before the ID expires. Upon checkout, consumers get a 12 hours period to make payment before it is probably cancelled and goes back to the inventory (Try at the potential risk of getting blacklisted)? Overall, I think this system prevents Xiaomi from facing out-of-stock situation after completing payment and that deserves some credit!



Once all the Item ID have been given out, new purchase requests will automatically enter their "Queuing system" where a lightbox will show a looping animation of being in the queue. Basically the wait will continue until the product is being SOLD-OUT and the system will notify everyone in the queue about it.



Before Checkout of Shopping Cart
Xiaomi will recommend Great deals based on items in the cart that have on-going promotion.


Payment & Post-Purchase

Basically, this 2 stages don't really matter as payment is pretty standard through credit cards or Paypal and post-purchase is just to keep a copy of the receipt in the email.


Delivery
Xiaomi promises to deliver normally within 5 days and 7-8 days maximum. For me, I got my items within 4 and I'm a happy customer!

Total Damage
Since this is the my first purchase on Xiaomi SG online store, I made full use of the free delivery for purchases over $50 and bought all the products that I wanted all along for a total of $344.98!!!

Disclaimer: This review is based off the Mi 4i launch and does not take into account of any other Xiaomi events / launches.