Alibaba was the answer to China’s and Central Asia’s connection to the US and European markets. However, the service’s precise Western focus has limited Alibaba’s potential as an Asian ECommerce hub, allowing Shopee to dominate the market alongside other equal competitors like Lazada and Carousell.
The 2020 pandemic has boosted many e-commerce businesses, allowing Shopee to leverage its higher online population to establish its presence in the Asia Pacific and become one of the biggest e-commerce giants in the world. From six million active users in 2020, Shopee has grown to 16 million active users in 2020 as of writing.
If you have plans to do online selling using Shopee in the future, here’s everything you want to know to help you get started and consistently generate Shopee sales.
Shopee: An ECommerce Giant of Asia
How It started
Shopee began as a customer-to-customer application similar to Carousell. The first Shopee app allowed sellers to post pre-loved items disqualified in most standard e-commerce platforms. Shopee made its profits with small commissions and delivery charges. Then, it included in-house product delivery and quality insurance.
Soon, the business expanded to a business-to-consumer model, allowing well-known brands to create their Shopee accounts and giving them specialized services and benefits. Shopee gave sellers specialized benefits to prevent alienating its existing customer seller population This move, in addition to quick and affordable delivery methods, attracted more customers and raised its number of active users daily.
How It’s Going
The selling platform saw an exponential population rise in 2020 after the world health crisis forced economic movement freezes worldwide. Shopee’s six million population during the pandemic’s start became 16 million in two years, with hundreds of thousands registering their Shopee store to start dropshipping, rebranding, or secondhand item selling.
Currently, Shopee’s features and online selling fees are highly viable for any aspirant to start selling on the platform. You’ll only need a device that can download the Shopee mobile app or access its website to get started.
Aside from this convenience, here are five more reasons to start selling and running an online business on Shopee.
5 Benefits of Selling on Shopee
1. Excellent Shipping Options
Shopee relies on experienced and established logistics companies to perform its deliveries. It primarily uses Ninja Van, J&T Express, UrbanFox, SpeedpostEconomy, and others in Asia. Shopee has its own “Fulfilled by Shopee (FBS)” logistics if no other logistics companies can deliver the package. FBS does not charge higher than its standard logistics partners.
2. Enormous Online Population and Digital Presence
Shopee overshadows many country-exclusive ECommerce platforms because of its wider global presence. With millions of visitors per day globally, the platform has a higher online presence than other e-commerce platforms like Lazada and Carousell. Many cross-border sellers in various parts of Asia register as Shopee sellers to gain better audiences in various parts of Asia.
Shopee runs online campaigns targeted at specific demographics per country. For example, a product that saw a great Malaysian following but is based on cultural preferences cannot be seen in other parts of Asia. On the other hand, a high-demand product used in many countries Shopee is currently servicing will feature that product as its seller worldwide.
3. User-Friendly and Frequently Updated Buyer and Seller UI
Shopee frequently updates its buyer and seller UI with continuous testing to ensure a smooth experience. The platform takes in Shopee account feedback from buyers and sellers to introduce upgrades to make the Shopee marketplace a stable platform for everyone.
4. Convenient Communication Facilities
Buyers and sellers can message each other with pricing offer as part of the platform’s bargaining feature. In addition, this communication channel helps sellers make promotions and buyers inquire about stocks of sold-out products. Lastly, the communication channels allow buyers and sellers to settle shipment issues, product problems, and other disputes before elevating it to Shopee’s effective refunding system.
5. Exceptional Account Security
Shopee has an extensive data and privacy security policy that protects users’ financial and delicate information within its database. In addition to protecting your data, Shopee also uses two-factor authentication and human-verified activity flagging to prevent spamming, ban scammer accounts, and ensure the quality of its buyers and sellers.
How to Be a Shopee Seller in Singapore: A Step-by-Step Guide
At this point, you’re ready to add your username and profile picture as a seller on Shopee. Here are the primary steps to get started using the platform.
1. Register for an Account With Shopee Singapore
Shopee lets all its buyers and users register using their Google or Facebook accounts. Clicking the respective signup button will lead to a separate portal with the service asking permission to use the new user’s data.
Next, make sure your username and photo are related to the products you’re making. There are many easy banner and logo creators available online that you can use. Avoid using a random combination of numbers and alphabets as usernames because Shopee can flag them as scam accounts.
You can also manually enter your email and password if you want to create an email-tied account. Most sellers use a separate email to declutter their communications, helping them perform accurate accounting consistently.
2. List Your Products
If you have no ideas for products to sell, you can check out Shopee’s prohibited products list. Your account can get banned if you sell any prohibited products on the platform. Shopee prioritizes cellphone number verification to make sure you’re a real person who can access their Seller Centre for additional seller advice.
The Shopee seller interface has a simple sidebar that has a “Product” section with a “My Products” option. Click this to list your products.
You will see text boxes that require your product’s description, brand name, and features. Shopee’s seller interface will require you to fill in the product’s inventory quantity and 9 pictures. Lastly, choose one of the product photos as its cover photo viewed on thumbnails presented to searching customers.
3. Find The Most Compatible Shipping
Shopee works with many professional logistics services, such as Ninja Van and J&T Express. The product description page’s bottom area will have you enter the product’s weight, producing the shipping options you can use to transport it to customers.
Once you’ve filled out everything, you’re ready to publish this listing and wait for customers to discover it. You can shorten customer product discovery times by using advanced publishing techniques we’ll discuss later in this post.
4. Select The Best Payment Method
Most Shopee Singapore payment methods use credit cards because of their convenience. However, ShopeePay is an excellent option because it allows you to activate free shipping vouchers frequently. Singaporeans can pay or fill their ShopeePay wallet using PayNow and DBS PayLah or linking an existing local bank account with enough funds. Find out more on the best credit cards in Singapore.
5 Tips to Boost Sales
New brands selling on Shopee are entering a customer-centric saturated market, meaning redundant selling of products isn’t guaranteed to create new sales. However, introducing unique products that your survey data recommends selling will not get high customer exposure and demand if you don’t employ any of these five tips to find potential customers when selling on Shopee.
1. Use Available Sales-Boosting Tools
Shopee offers several sales-boosting tools to help customers find their customers as they sell online.
2. My Campaigns
This feature gives sellers opportunities to have their products reach Shopee’s front page. All proposed products are subject to Shopee’s approval. Once approved, you can find them on Shopee’s outbound campaign banners on social networks, blogs, and other digital spots. Shopee may also include campaign banners with your products on email blasts and push notifications. Plus, it’s free to use!
3. Flash Sales
Shopee’s fans love its flash sales because they only last for an hour and give them discounts from 50-90%. For sellers, a product that displays on Shopee Flash Sales and does not generate sales still merits success because it exposes the product and seller to 4,000 views per minute. Unfortunately, only selected and preferred-ranking sellers get flash sale opportunities.
4. Paid Advertising
Most platforms with high web traffic have paid advertising services, which sellers can use to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to a business. In some cases, paid advertising can generate sales from interested parties conveniently.
However, paid advertising is an unsustainable marketing approach because it’s expensive and ad approval takes some time. However, paid advertising is an excellent tool if you need a sales and brand awareness boost during hot selling seasons like Christmas.
5. Vouchers
In the last ten years, vouchers have played a huge role in E-commerce and booking platforms. Shopee allows sellers to create their own shop-specific vouchers. For example, sellers can give a time-based discount voucher to their shop’s first-time followers that encourage them to buy. Some sellers use vouchers to give back to their community or raise awareness about a new product or service line available in their stock.
6. Use SEO Techniques for ECommerce
Shopee has its own search engine, which means many standard ECommerce search engine optimization (SEO) techniques can work on the platform. Here are some examples.
7. Keyword Research
Search engines are designed to find relevant content. Keywords are the terms you want them to find in your content and help you rank in Shopee. The most effective way to research keywords is to use a keyword research tool that will show you the items customers search on Shopee that are relevant to your products.
8. Thoughtful Product Descriptions
Writing thoughtful product descriptions means understanding the customer’s want or need use-case for the product. Sellers can write about a product’s precise impact by listing its features and benefits. Additionally, they can write about how the product impacts the customer’s lifestyle. Long-form product titles and descriptions are helpful for discerning customers and may urge them to purchase the product.
9. Include High-Quality Photos
In traditional shopping, attractive and well-displayed products attract window shoppers. Therefore, take excellent photos of products you’re selling in Shopee to increase its view count. Frequently-viewed photos increase your Shopee visibility, even if customers don’t purchase the product they’ve viewed.
10. Get Listed in Shopee Mall
Shopee’s virtual mall is massive and gives sellers a frame that indicates they’re a Shopee Mall vendor. Getting listed in Shopee Mall has a few challenging but rewarding requirements, such as being a brand owner or authorized reseller of specific products. Shops that support a 15-day refund policy, subscribe to Shopee Supported Logistics, and have many products with high ratings can get listed as Preferred Sellers or Shopee Mall Sellers.
11. Use Separate Business Accounts
Separate business accounts allow you to account for your overseas supplier purchases, advertising payments, and more. Some business accounts give you cashback for using specific products or services, such as a credit card giving discounts on using digital marketing and data processing software platforms for Shopee optimization.
Separating your personal and business accounts makes business tax accounting accurate. You can see all your business transactions in a dedicated account, making tax filing easier and making it easy to access the finer details of each item you’ve sold on Shopee.
12. Always Use Excellent Photos
Good pictures help a customer picture the product in their minds, which will make them more likely to purchase it. High-resolution photographs allow potential buyers to observe the product from every angle, look for blemishes, and easily fit the product to their intended use case.
You can take excellent product photographs through a good study of photography, photography equipment, and the right lighting tools. On the other hand, you can always work with professional product photographers for the best product visual presentation possible.
4 Types of Businesses You Can Do on Shopee
Most buyers selling on Shopee use the base ECommerce model of keeping inventory and issuing orders after buyers check out and pay for their items. However, it isn’t the only way you can do business on Shopee. Here are four models you can use for your future ECommerce business.
1. Rebranding
Product rebranding changes a product’s name, packaging, and brand image. Many original equipment manufacturers (OEM) allow ECommerce sellers to rebrand their products as the latter’s product line. For example, a Shopee seller who aims to establish itself as an alternative brand to well-known shoe manufacturers can release their own shoe line by working with an OEM.
Keep in mind that you can rebrand any OEM product if the manufacturer has given explicit and written permission for you to do so. In addition, remember that OEM rebranding is challenging because you’re planning an entire brand’s identity and personality.
2. Dropshipping
Dropshipping involves buying wholesaling merchandise at a lower wholesale cost to sell to the public at a higher price. In this model, retailers do not hold inventory but only order items from a wholesale manufacturer or supplier when their pre-order population limit is full.
Dropshipping is a viable Shopee seller model because it has zero investment costs and makes inventory easy to manage. Additionally, you can test a product’s popularity based on the pre-order numbers, giving you insight into which products have high market demand to sell for a profit on the next pre-order.
3. Manufacturer ECommerce Shop
OEMs who intend to sell their inventory by creating their own product brand can use Shopee to create their ECommerce shop. OEMs have solid manufacturing and logistics infrastructure, allowing them to fulfill orders at wholesale prices and without delays. With these in mind, a Shopee seller account is the best way to help OEMs profit and create their own competing brand.
4. Wholesaling
ECommerce wholesaling has a minimal difference from offline wholesaling. It still involves bulk products selling for a lower price. However, purchase processing and logistics differ between ECommerce and offline wholesaling. Shopee makes wholesale purchase payments online, while traditional wholesaling involves bank deposits and contracts.
One of wholesaling’s biggest advantages is becoming a sole source of rare OEM or branded items in a given region. For example, OEM manufacturers with a unique product that has high demand can greatly benefit from wholesaling.
Learn more on how to earn passive income in Singapore!
4 Famous Products You Can Sell On Shopee
Shopee product trends greatly change overnight. So far, these five products remain on high demand, possibly due to Shopee’s convenient online selling format, the product is a rare and in-demand brand, and other factors. Check out each of them below.
1. Mobile Phone Accessories
You can buy mobile phone accessories in virtually every Singaporean mall. However, traversing the MRTs to buy a single phone case or headphones isn’t worth your time and effort. Therefore, Shopee’s discounted offers and convenient door-to-door delivery won’t have you leave your seat and spend so much travel time for a single purchase.
2. Health and Beauty
Many health and beauty shoppers spend hours looking for the lowest-price beauty products available on Shopee, keeping the product category in consistently high demand. Many customers look for the most affordable makeup and lipstick brands on Shopee. While you can find many established international brands and their official shops, you can find sellers who can give them to you at a lower price.
3. Home Appliances
Most customers do window shopping on Shopee and compare appliance prices between stores and the digital storefront, giving this category consistently high exposure and demand. Ovens, washing machines, and refrigerator manufacturers and distributors are present in Shopee. If you’re an OEM appliance manufacturer, you can use Shopee to establish your brand and create your own following.
4. Baby Products
Parents who have zero time to switch between work and responsibilities to newborn children often browse Shopee to purchase their child’s milk, new bottles, toys, and other baby products they need. However, competition in this area is tight because many established international baby brands are already on Shopee.
Shopee Charges and Fees
Shopee Singapore charges a 2% fee from the total amount of each successful order. They deduct the fee after customers use vouchers and their Shopee coin cashbacks. In addition, sellers must pay 7% Goods and Services Tax (GST) per Singapore’s law.
FAQ for Further Reading
1. Can I Sell Anything on Shopee?
Yes, you can sell any product on Shopee if it isn’t included in their prohibited items list. Make sure to consult that list before listing anything.
2. How Can I Become a Shopee Preferred Seller?
Shopee’s Preferred Sellers have a strong sales record, reply promptly to chats, and offer good customer service. In addition, they fulfill all orders promptly while complying with Shopee’s seller policies. Lastly, customers respond positively to the shop, helping them achieve high product ratings.
It might take a few weeks to a month of consistent performance before a seller can become a Shopee Preferred Seller.
3. What Do I Write in Shopee’s Product Description?
Customers deeply research products that interest them, so write in detail about the product’s best features and use cases. Include a technical specifications section that indicates every single product measurement and capacity. Lastly, include the best photos showing the product’s various angles.
Closing
Shopee is one of Asia’s fastest-rising platforms. Singapore sellers who have a knack for ECommerce and have an interesting product line to sell will always find Shopee a great way to expose themselves to millions of potential buyers in Singapore and Asia.
Key Takeaways
- Shopee has over 16 million active users, with hundreds of thousands browsing regularly.
- You can easily register a Shopee account by downloading the app and following the steps we’ve listed above.
- Learn how to write good product descriptions and take the best product photographs to maximize your potential sales.
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