In conjunction with Covid-19, there have been a lot of businesses that face difficulty because they are unable to run their business as usual. Many resorted to selling online as that is probably the easiest way to earn a living. However, to sell online, there are several considerations to be taken into account such as, what to sell, exposure of your website / products, how to arrange for shipping and how to collect money from the buyer.
To address the above, the fastest way is to sell on Shopee. Reason being, you only need to have a phone number and bank account in Malaysia. You do not need to be concerned about setting up a website or getting a contract for your delivery partner as well as worrying about payment gateway as it is all covered. Since we know that the platform to sell on is Shopee Malaysia, now comes the biggest question. What to sell?
For those who are already in the trading business, this should be easy. However, for new sellers, some would consider shipping goods from overseas and market it in Malaysia. It is not wrong, but we have to look into the popularity of the product in the market. There are a few quick steps to be taken before thinking about what to sell or selling on Shopee Malaysia.
What to take note before selling on Shopee?
1. Market survey
Identify the type of category that is popular on Shopee Malaysia. You need to know what people buy online. It could be kitchen appliances, beauty products, car maintenance or even groceries. Once you get more insights about the monthly transactions that are in Shopee Malaysia, now you can begin sourcing for your products. Remember to take into account shipping, storage and manpower cost to fulfill the orders as well as the customer service team to answer to your clients’ enquiries. Bear in mind, if you are thinking that it is something you could manage by yourself, it would be rather challenging. Always plan as such that you have time to generate more revenue for the company because you are the business owner. For mundane tasks, either outsource it, or hire someone to manage it for you, as long as you could monitor the process. Market survey does not limit to just potential markets that you could serve, but also the team that is required to be deployed to ensure operations are running smoothly.
2. Price check and review
Before speaking to your suppliers, when you have a category of choice, start with ten products. These ten products may not be your final products but it gives you a good gauge of your target market. Quickly check the competing selling price from other sellers and most importantly, check the reviews from their buyers.
By doing so, it gives you a better gauge of what would potentially be the expectations of your target market. For instance, they could be particular about packaging, or protection of the product or free gifts. These are all costs to be considered, alongside with the purchase price. There is also the cost of packaging, bubble wrapping and the time it takes to complete one order. If it is too costly on your end because the volume is not quite there yet, consider outsourcing to an e-commerce fulfilment centre that could help you with storage, pick, pack and ship. It might not give you perfect control at all times, but they definitely have their standard operating procedures that are in line with the guidelines of Shopee Malaysia. This helps you to save time and allows you to have better costing, while you could focus on other areas of growing your business.
3. Values offered
To sell in Shopee Malaysia, in order to be outstanding, you have to maximise the potential of the marketing tools in Shopee itself. In addition to that, consumers love to compare products. To outstand yourself, consider providing value to your consumers. Either warranty, customer support, gift cards or customisation. It may sound like it is out of the norm than just trading. However, like it or not, if we ourselves are consumers, we tend to look out for services and values that are better. Continuously as a business owner, you have to think of different promotions and values to ensure that your customers are well taken care of and attract new customers to your stores.
One way to test out different promotion schemes would be to have multiple stores. It is a commonly applied strategy for different keywords used to see which one works best for different groups of customers. The only challenge is that maybe you have enough products on hand to multiply the listing. As long as you have something like an order management system or an e-commerce warehouse management system, this should not be a challenge. These systems would help to streamline your product inventory level so that you would not oversell and they should give you high-level data on how your products are selling.
Step by Step Process for How to Sell on Shopee
Step 1: Account creation
Firstly, click Sign Up on shopee.com.my. You have to include details such as your mobile number and email address to ensure your identity before you list your products online to your potential customers.
Step 2: Set up shop profile
Your store identity is very important to instil confidence in your potential customers.
- Create a unique Shop Name that is easy to remember.
- Upload images and videos to showcase about your store and products that you sell for better publicity and confidence.
- Have short but sweet descriptions to convince your buyers on your products and the services that you offer (such as, quick chat response, 24 hours shipping, etc)
Step 3: Start creating product listing
First check if the product is a regulated or prohibited product. Otherwise, continue the steps by filling up product description, attributes, proper weight and dimension (to avoid overcharge of shipping rate) and proper quantity. Don’t forget to add beautiful pictures.
Step 4: Shipping your order
Shopee has delivery partners for you to work at your convenience. All that you need to do is wrap the product with proper protection, seal it with packaging, stick the airway bill printed on it and handand it over to the delivery partners.
Step 5: How to stay ahead of the rest?
Your store identity is very important to instil confidence in your potential customers.
- Strong customer service to address to the chat platform from potential buyers
- Constantly improving product pictures and updating the descriptions.
- Nice and clean packaging with fast fulfilment.
- Utilising marketing tools in Shopee to drive more traffic to your store.
How does the shipping and warehouse work on Shopee?
Shipping has been made very simple with Shopee. Sellers do not have to worry about arranging their own delivery or bring their parcel to check weight and shipping rate at post offices. This is because Shopee has assigned the orders to any selected shipping provider.
Traditionally, once an order is received, the sellers will print the airway bill and order details for the picker and packer to perform the order fulfilment task. If the sellers have more than one store in Shopee, it means multiple logins have to be done to process all orders for the day.
This process could be streamlined by using Shoko eWMS because Shoko eWMS has already synced with Shopee and Lazada. Whether it is a single store, multiple stores, or cross selling bundle products, sellers just have to view it from the Shoko eWMS dashboard. Warehouse operations would be more efficient as pickers and packers just have to follow instructions from the system. Accuracy is guaranteed because it is system guided and you don't have to compromise in terms of speed because Shoko eWMS has a wave picking function to help you pick all the orders in the similar location, while packers will have clear indications of how many orders they are handling at once.
Key Takeaway
Throughout the pandemic, many consumers will purchase products that they are familiar with online. You could even bring in products from dropshipping platforms such as Kumoten. The differences would be business owners would just have to compete to provide better value and services to them. Once you gather a committed team to perform this function, whether or not you outsource it, this should be an automated activity to generate revenue for your business. The only differences would be on the initiative as business owners to bring in more products and innovative strategies to serve the market.