Shopee is one of the leading e-commerce marketplace in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. It operates in Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. It has traces of similarity to the Taobao model, in which buyers and sellers can communicate and transact directly. Shopee also unboxes opportunity for cross-border sellers from China and Hong Kong for selling to Southeast Asian and Taiwanese customers.
Shopee is a peer-to-peer online marketplace that allows you to easily upload your products using your mobile phone to sell. The best thing about selling on Shopee is that unlike other online marketplaces, selling on Shopee is commission free!
Other than zero commissions, Shopee also provides free shipping for the first 5kg (West Malaysia) and 1kg (West Malaysia to East Malaysia).
How to Start Selling on Shopee?
To start selling on Shopee, sellers need to submit an application form on Shopee Malaysia. Upon approval, you can start with downloading the Shopee app.
Note: It is mandatory to verify your phone number before you listing your products on Shopee.
Step-by-step process is elaborated below:
1. From the app tap the + button (Android) or the Sell button (iOS).
2. Product images are critical to e-commerce. To put a new photo of your product, tap the Camera button. For choosing an existing picture from your album/gallery, tap the Photos button. Filters and photo editing tools are available in the process. Sellers are enabled to import photos from Instagram. Up to 9 photos can be added for each listing.
3. Now comes the step to fill in product details such as Category, Price, Stock, Variation, Weight, Shipping Fee and Days to Ship. Ensure that you add hashtags to Shopee product, it enhances searches. Tap on “✓” (Android) or “Submit” (iOS) button. Your product is now listed on Shopee!
To become a successful Shopee seller, you will have to do optimization by:
⮞ Writing attractive headlines
⮞ Ensuring that you answer customer enquiries on time
⮞ Create compelling offers that are competitive with other sellers on the platform
⮞ Spend more on advertising and conduct more promotional activities on Shopee
The path to become Preferred Sellers starts by invitation only. So as to become eligible, a Shopee shop must have a high seller ratings, quality listings with competitive prices, and excellent sales and customer service records.
As a preferred seller, you must:
1. Meet the following benchmarks monthly:
3. Comply strictly with Shopee policies by ensuring you apply and are familiar with Shopee return/refund guidelines. Cancellation, late shipping and non-shipping of orders will be adversely affected your Shopee performance as a preferred seller.
Note: To maintain highest degree of standards in Preferred Sellers program, sellers who fail to comply with the requirements will get their Preferred Seller status be removed.
How Can I Be Featured in the Recommended Sellers List?
Marketplace is always under the radar of Shopee team that scans it every week and hand-picks few outstanding sellers to be featured. They have a selection criteria with these parameters.
1. Popularity (number of likes, views, followers, comments, orders)
2. Good Service (low return rate, low seller cancellation rate, positive ratings and reviews)
3. Adherence to Shopee Community Rules
Free Shipping can be enabled by providing a valid pickup address. If the indicated pickup address is serviceable for Shopee’s Free Shipping promo, the seller should receive an in-app notification within 7 days with instructions on how to activate the free shipping program.
A step-by-step process on how to add a pickup address is shown below:
1. Go to “Me page” > “My Account” > “My Addresses”
2. Enter complete Pickup Address and Tap “Set as Pickup Address”
Terms & Conditions:
✦ Sellers must enter a valid pick-up address which lies within serviceable areas covered by Shopee logistics partners (Xpost Integrated, Black Arrow Integrated, Zoom Courier and Ninja Van) in order to qualify for the free shipping program.
✦ Sellers’ products must fit within the official packaging provided by Shopee logistics partner so as to qualify for free shipping.
1. To get more views for your products you can use “Boost Now” function.
2. Go to “Me” page > scroll down to view your products as listed. Select the products for whom you need more views, and tap on “Boost now”.
3. Frequency – You can boost up to 5 products every 4 hours!
What Is Seller Assistant? How Do I Make Use of It?
Seller Assistant is an approach towards enhancing seller experience. It helps to organize your products, keep track of orders and manage your customers. It is accessible from Me page.
1. My Products – View all of your listed products on Shopee and sort them by Recent, Popular, Stock and Sold Out.
2. My Customers – View all the users having recent or past purchase history with you. A tap on their usernames gives entire list of products they purchased.
3. Shop Profile – Edit your shop name and shop description. You can also add promotion banner or YouTube video to show your shop personality and branding.
4. Shop Setting – Configure different shop settings i.e. Buyer-Seller Self Arrange, Allow negotiation, Allow Buyers to Call and Show Pick-Up Address.
5. Shop Categories – Enables you to create your own shop categories via Seller Center.
How Is Chat Response Calculated?
Your chat response rate is calculated as a percentage of new chat threads and offers that you responded to within 12 hours of receiving them. Your response can be a message or an offer acceptance/rejection.
Your response rate is based on the average of your responses to:
– the chats and offers you received in the last 30 days
– the most recent 10 chats and offers you received
Note: Auto-replies are not accepted in your chat response rate. Chat response rate is updated twice a day.
How to Enable Vacation Mode?
Shopee enables you to change your status to vacation mode easily via “Seller Assistant” > “Shop Settings”.
Enabling Vacation Mode quickly disables all of your listed products.
When in vacation mode:
– All of your product listings will appear as “Sold Out” within 1 hour, and they are made invisible to be browsed or searched for by other buyers
– No new orders can be placed on your shop
– Though you still are responsible for fulfilling previously placed orders
– Editing or adding products is disabled
The processing time for enabling Vacation mode can take up to 1 hour, and cannot be disabled while being processed.
Upon exiting vacation mode:
– Your product listings will regain their previous stock count within 1 hour
– New orders can be placed again on your shop
– It may take time for your products to reappear on recommendations
– You gain full control on products to edit or add new ones
To fully disable the Vacation mode might take up to 1 hour. To activate it again, you will have to wait for another 24 hours.
Advantages of Selling on Shopee Malaysia
★ No need company registration. Individuals can start selling on Shopee
★ Sign up as Shopee seller is free
★ Sync Instagram photos to Shopee
★ Easy to upload products for sale using mobile phone
★ No store fee/listing fee
★ 2% payment gateway fee
★ Free shipping for the first 5kg (West Malaysia) and 1kg (West Malaysia to East Malaysia)
★ Chat feature lets you talk to your potential buyers without having to use your own private mobile phone number
Shopee Free Shipping Program is a program developed by Shopee to enable sellers enjoying fast and reliable logistical services by Shopee logistics partners to ship and deliver items to your buyer.
How does this program work?
1. Seller ships out order via drop off/pick up option with no upfront payment.
2. Shopee Logistics Partners (Pos Laju, DHL & J&T) process the delivery and bill Shopee for the shipping fee incurred.
3. Shopee then pay logistic partners the shipping fee incurred and releases payment of the orders to the seller.
4. If the actual shipping fee that charged by logistic partner is more than the estimated weight set by seller, Shopee will deduct the excess shipping fee from escrow and release the balance to seller.
Currently, there are 3 courier service providers that collaborated with Shopee for Free Shipping Program:
a. Poslaju Free 5kg Shipping Program
b. J&T Express Free Shipping Program
c. DHL Free Shipping Program
Shopee provides access to free entrepreneurship programs and workshops conducted by Shopee University to educate and empower more entrepreneurs to become part of the booming e-commerce industry. The curriculum of Shopee University is developed based on the best practices of Shopee’s top sellers, featuring more in-depth topics including online marketing methods for e-commerce, product photography and supply chain optimization.
Shopee University actively provides guidance on how to run an online business and insights into the latest mobile e-commerce trends for our sellers. Attendees are taught about Shopee, and are given exclusive updates on Shopee's latest features, products and promotions. Its main aim is to maximise the potential of Shopee sellers and empower more online businesses to utilise mobile e-commerce platforms as a revenue-generating platform.
Here are some of the most beneficial tips and tricks to help you stand out and to become a ‘Power Seller’ on Shopee.
1. Perform Competitor Research and Analysis
Whether it is online or offline, understanding your competitors market, strategy and operation is important to learn from their mistakes and create new selling ideas. The best way to do so is purchasing your competitor's products. When you purchase your competitor’s products, you will not only get to know the product quality through a direct means but also the steps they follow to sell and deliver the products. Check their product descriptions to understand their strategy of attracting the potential customers.
Secondly, you may also return the product back and learn about the after-sale customer service and return policy.
Lastly, check whether your competitor has a website of their own. If yes, try buying the same product from both the company website and online marketplace, and check the difference in their selling process.
2. Have Impeccable Product Descriptions in Place
All power sellers must ensure that all their products have the clear and concise product descriptions.
As online shoppers have no chance to touch and hold the products they purchase, they are completely dependent upon the images and the written content. Thus, there should be no compromise on the quality of the uploaded images and the written content.
3. Always Comply With the Shopee's SLAs
Shopee has certain Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that requires online sellers to fulfill certain conditions. Mostly, these SLAs revolve around the time in which the sellers must ship their sales orders.
Make sure you process and ship all the orders that you receive at the same or next day, so that you can delight your customers and also keep the Shopee satisfied.
4. Focus on Customer Complaints and Returns
With the growing competition in the e-commerce market, it is highly challenging to keep your customers happy and build a long-term relationship. This is because your mistake not only makes the customer unhappy, but also invites a penalty from Shopee.
When it comes to digital sale terms and conditions, most of the online marketplaces tend to favor the buyer. Therefore, the quicker you are in resolving customer queries, you are on the top seller list of the site.
The best way to do so is by focusing on after-sale customer service. Keep a track of your customer complaints and returns, so that no negative review can harm the reputation of your online shop.
On top of that, keep the return policies and procedure simple for your customers to easily understand. This helps to build a trust among your customers for your online shop.
5. Advertising and Promotion
Promotions, discounts and offers have the maximum potential to boost sales on any channel. Although running extensive promotions may reduce your overall earnings in the short run, but it is a great option to get noticed by both buyers and Shopee. Once your order frequency increases, you may optimize the promotions and focus on earnings.
Another important thing is to align your promotions with the Shopee's trends. Shopee carefully strategize about upcoming season sales and discounts and come up with relevant themes. The more your promotional offers resonate with that theme, the more conversions you will get.
6. Keep Your Store Updated at All Times
Remember that unlike an offline store, your online store in open 24 x 7. This means that a customer can visit and choose to buy your product even when you are inactive on the marketplaces. This requires you to keep all the products updated at all times, including all the promotions, stock and other information that is visible to buyers.
Apart from that, introduction of new products for sale is also vital in boosting your visibility and reach to customers.
7. Take Advantage of the “Boost” Button
The Boost function highlights the keyword you assign to an item so that when a buyer searches the same keyword, your item appears among the top results. The only downside is, if other sellers are also boosting items with the same keyword, you will have to compete with them too.
You can only boost 5 products at a time within 4 hours. When the 4 hours is over, you can then choose different or similar items to boost.
Apart from the boring category names like “Dresses”, “Tops”, and “Pants”, you may add categories with catchy names to attract buyers’ attention such as “New Arrivals”, “Bestsellers”, or “On Sale”.
9. Create Vouchers
Vouchers let buyers know that if their purchase reach a certain amount of order, exclusively from your shop, they’ll get a certain amount of discount. This is a great technique to encourage your customers to spend more from your shop.
10. Discount Promotions
The discount automatically applies to the item you choose to mark down. When an item is under a discount promotion, buyers will see the amount of the discount.
11. Nominate Your Items During Campaigns
Campaigns help your products get more exposure. For example, Shopee wants to highlight all men’s apparel for the whole week. Shopee then invites sellers to nominate their best men products.
To nominate a product, you set the best discount you could offer for it. Once set and approved by Shopee, that discounted price you set is going to be applied for the entire campaign duration. In return, Shopee will randomly display your nominated items on the Shopee homepage, giving you more exposure and a better chances to increase your Shopee sales.
Once the campaign is over, the price will revert automatically.
12. Maintain a High Chat Response
Buyers are more likely to purchase if there’s a human ready to give prompt answers to their questions.
High chat response let your customers know that you’re serious about selling.
13. Your Shop Rating Should Be Over 4.5 / 5 Stars
If you have a lower rating than that, it’s about time that you give it some serious attention. Is it the late shipment? Low chat response? Or the quality of your products? It isn’t too late to improve your shop rating up to 4.5 stars or above.
If the quality of the items is the main cause of your shop’s bad rating, fire your suppliers and look for another.
An order is considered shipped late if the time of shipment is later than 3 days.
14. Don’t Leave “Top Picks from Shop” Blank
Top Picks from Shop is a feature designed for sellers to boost sales for their products. With this feature sellers can create a collection of 4-8 items to display on their products' pages. You can create up to 10 collections, however only one can be activated at a time to be displayed across all your products.
While categories show up on your front page to help buyers navigate, Top Picks from Shop shows up on every item page your customers visit. This means the items you put under this function have a higher visibility rate, and therefore, garner higher sales.
Remember, your customers love it when you make them feel special. A little extra effort to give good customer service, on-time delivery, and high-quality product, can gift you with lifetime loyal customers. Your honesty, diligence and hard work can not only help you earn profits, but also get you recognized by Shopee and be a Power Seller.
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Edited by: 浪子
Bibliography
Cedcommerce. (2019). Everything You Need to Know to Sell on Shopee and Skyrocket Your Sales. Retrieved from https://cedcommerce.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-to-sell-on-shopee-and-skyrocket-your-sales/
Kevin Kwang. (2018). E-Commerce Site Shopee to Start Charging Transaction Fees From August. Retrieved from https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/technology/shopee-e-commerce-site-start-charging-transaction-fees-august-10524264
Lu Wee Tang. (n.d.). Why You Should Sell on Shopee Malaysia and How to Get Started in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneurcampfire.com/sell-on-shopee-malaysia/
Shopee Malaysia. (n.d.). How Do I Join Shopee's Free Shipping Program? Retrieved from https://help.shopee.com.my/my/s/article/How-do-I-join-Shopee-s-Free-Shipping-Program
Staff Writer. (2016). Shopee Partners Up with Pos Malaysia. Retrieved from https://www.marketing-interactive.com/shopee-partners-pos-malaysia/
SelluSeller. (2018). How to Be an Online Power Seller on Major Malaysian Marketplaces. Retrieved from https://my.selluseller.com/en/blogs/how-to-be-an-online-power-seller-on-major-marketplaces
Pisopinoy. (n.d.). How to Increase Shopee Sales for Free: 11 Effective Tricks. Retrieved from https://pisopinoy.com/how-to-increase-shopee-sales/
Shopee. (n.d.). What is Top Picks from Shop? Retrieved from https://seller.shopee.com.my/help/posts/104?type=file
Ultimate Guide to Shopee Sellers
Reviewed by 浪子
on
May 25, 2019
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Reviewed by 浪子
on
May 25, 2019
Rating:
