Shopee

Shopee has become a preferred online shopping website in the last few years. Due to easy accessibility and reliable services, people are shifting more and more towards this online shopping platform. Millions of people worldwide sit in the comfort of their homes and order products without any hassle on Shopee. 

Shopee is mainly accessible to people in South-East Asia, namely, in countries like Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. It is also a favorite in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Poland and Argentina. The company originated in Singapore in 2015 as a multinational digital shopping portal. 

In 2021, Southeast Asia recognized Shopee as the largest e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia. As of the first quarter of 2022, approximately 2 billion orders have been processed on Shopee. An example of this is Shopee’s escrow service: Shopee Guarantee. This service guarantees payment to the seller only after the customer has received the ordered product.

Let’s dive deeper into the specifics of this e-commerce marketplace. 

What is Shopee?

Shopee is an e-commerce company based in Singapore that came into service in 2015. Since then, it has spread its services worldwide. This company is now the largest e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, catering to consumers and sellers. It allows you to buy and sell your goods in many countries across East Asia, like Taiwan, Latin America, and Europe, and it also received the Singapore Start-up of the Year award in 2015.

This company is partnered with 70 courier service providers and is known for providing logistical support to its users. Start-ups like Ninja Van, POS Malaysia, POS Indonesia, Delhivery, and Ecom Express joined hands with the Shopee store to make product delivery and pickup more efficient.

Along with this, Shopee launched many other initiatives, one of which is Shopee University. It provides many workshops and tutorials to local entrepreneurs to help them set up their businesses. The platform also opened its Shopee malls in Singapore and the Philippines, where many retailers and brands sell their products. It also launched the China marketplace allowing Chinese merchants to ship their products for free in Singapore and the Philippines. The brand also launched Shopee Cares PH, a social media customer service provider in the Philippines, along with a food delivery service called Shopee food, for which it partnered with more than 500 merchants.

Shopee store has many brand ambassadors, such as the famous South Korean girl group, Blackpink and the South Korean boy band, Got7’s Bambam, which became the brand ambassador in Thailand. Apart from this, famous footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is the brand ambassador of Shopee. 

Shopee also has local ambassadors like Anne Curtis, Kim Chiu, Marian Rivera, Jose Mari Chan, Manny Pacquiao, Sarah Geronimo, Kris Aquino, Willie Revillame, and Alex Gongaza also joined Shopee. Gurmit Singh, Mark Lee, Didi Kempot, Nella Kharisma, the South Korean boy’s group ‘Stray kids’, and many other celebrities became ambassadors of Shopee in Indonesia. 

How Does Shopee Work?

Consumers usually wonder what Shopee is and how it works. It works just like any other e-commerce shopping portal where you browse products. Here customers can find their products in their desired categories with the help of the search engine, and they can also get a discount with the help of the flash Shopee sale and exclusive deals on those products. 

Shoppers also have the option to select their region and shop accordingly. Shopee provides services that match their country, region, and currency. Due to this facility, customers do not have to worry about shipping restrictions as this brand only shows you the available products in your region.

Shopee’s business model closely matches e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WebMaxy. Customers can use it from their computers as well as their mobile phones. On Shopee, you can buy or sell many products, from electronics and clothing to home appliances. Shopee gives more importance to the long-tail category products, and 35% of its gross merchandising value goes to fashion, mobiles, accessories, homes, and furniture. It provides free delivery without charging any commission from the sellers and follows a monetization model, depending primarily on advertising.

Shopee charges its retailer some transaction money for every Shopee sale. This is how Shopee earns its money. Apart from this, Shopee also earns from advertisements by individual retailers and merchants. It also connects buyers and sellers for a fee.

Shopee has become a successful e-commerce portal because it tries to expand its social media business, attracting many new customers. Apart from this, with the help of many influential brand ambassadors, the brand increases awareness on social media platforms and also advertises its products.

How Shopee Started: A Short History

Shopee started in 2015 in Singapore as the first mobile-centric market where buyers and sellers can easily browse, buy or sell products with the help of logistics and payment support. Shopee entered the world of e-commerce business quite late when no one knew what it was., but it did not prove to be a disadvantage. Rather, the brand got an opportunity to observe the market very well and understand its trends and areas to develop well-planned profitable strategies to boost Shopee sales. 

This platform first came as an app but later started as a website, giving tough competition to many e-commerce companies. Initially, Shopee allowed only consumer-to-consumer transactions. It uses a hybrid business model that allows consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer transactions.

Shopee is different from the rest of the e-commerce companies, and customers started preferring Shopee as it guaranteed security through its assurance service, Shopee Guarantee. On September 3, 2019, the brand created its first six-story regional headquarters at the Singapore Science Park after competing with several e-commerce companies such as Lazada. The height of this headquarters building was 244,000 square feet, and it had a lot of space in which at least 3000 employees could work comfortably. In this way, gradually Shopee was able to make a mark in the e-commerce business world. 

Is Shopee Safe?

Like all other online retail portals, Shopee is also prone to risk as frauds and scams rob customers and try to get their bank details, payment account, and parcel score. However, luckily Shopee educates its customers about all these situations on how to deal with fraud. Due to this, the customers remain alert and do not fall into the trap. Shopee provides many safety measures and recommendations to its customers, alerting them of the sale of fake items and banning and suspending users who break the rules if the system flags them. 

The “Shopee Guarantee”  ensures that the customer does not face any payment-related problems. Shopee frequently notifies its consumers to change their password and warns them to read sellers’ feedback before buying any product. 

To avoid scams, the e-commerce platform advises its consumers to buy products only from those sellers who have social proof to ensure safety. It further advises its customers to check the customer rating before buying any item, so they know more about the product from previous customers. This helps the customer make an informed decision. Apart from this, customers can also click on the name of the sellers to get every detail about their shop to gain more trust and have a satisfactory shopping experience.

How to Sell on Shopee?

What can you sell on Shopee?

You can sell products from top-selling product categories like fashion, home & living, baby products, mobile phones, accessories, health & beauty, and more, on Shopee.

How to sell on Shopee?

Only some get approval to sell products in Shopee, but everyone can apply. Selling products on Shopee is like selling products on other e-commerce portals. Shopee store does not charge any seller fee nor take any kind of commission. So the sellers can use this platform for free. However, the sellers have to make arrangements for shipping and inventory storage as Shopee handles its logistics through third parties, and it doesn’t have any warehouse for storing products. 

By connecting to Shopee, merchants can easily connect with their customers and make the shopping process much easier and more efficient. With the help of this portal, sellers can advertise their products and get further recommendations about the products. Shopee provides a very useful feature ‘Boost Now’ so sellers can promote their products even more. They can enhance their selling exposure on this platform by joining promotional campaigns.

Following are the steps on how to sell on Shopee by becoming a seller:

• First, the seller must provide their needful information by clicking the sign-up button and verify their phone number.
• After this, list your products by going to the ‘me’ tab and clicking on start selling. They have to select the ‘new product’ option and provide images of products and their related information like product name, size, type, category, attributes, and shipping details. Here, the seller can make their product even more attractive by providing high-quality images and a proper product description so that the consumers can get quality details. And then click on submit.
• In the next step, go to the ‘Seller Assistant’ to complete the shop setup and select the shop’s name on the job profile, which should be unique and memorable. Once it’s done, add 5 images or videos along with the shop’s description highlighting the USPs, history, and shipping location for the consumers and click on save.  

Following are the ways to sell on Shopee via the seller center:

• The sellers must provide their necessary information by clicking the sign-up button and verifying their phone number and email ID.
• To set up shop in the next step, go to the seller center and then the shop profile. Set the shop name and add 5 images or videos highlighting the shop’s history, location, and USP so consumers can get the necessary information.

After this, go to the ‘seller center’ and click on ‘add new product’. You can add the product’s name, which automatically adds three categories. Then choose any category out of those three, configure the product accordingly, and click next. 

After this, the sellers must provide all the information about their product, like its name, description, and attributes.

Then, they have to set the price of that product and inform the consumers about its stock account and variations. Following this, add high-quality photos of the products.

• Lastly, sellers must publish their product by adding shipping settings, including product weight, dimensions, and shipping fee. 

Ways to increase Shopee Sale:

• To increase the Shopee sale, the seller can integrate supply chain technology, with the help of which they can manage inventory and orders very efficiently.
• Here, you can try to understand the market trends by using analytics to help them reach the customers with their desired products.
• With Catalog Manager, sellers can insert many different products into their portfolio and update their product line. With the help of this, they bring diversity to their product and also improve their management system.
• To increase the last customer retention rate, sellers can routinely track orders and take required measures to enhance the shopping experience so that consumers can avoid any inconvenience.

What is Shopee Commission Charge?

On September 1, 2022, some changes were made to Shopee’s service fee and commission.

• The first is that Shopee will recharge the new marketplace sellers will be recharged only after they have completed 6 months on that platform after listing. 
• Secondly, Shopee will compute the seller commission and service fee of FSS/CCB programs separately, and the consumers can enjoy the benefits of free shipping specials and coins cashback. 
• Thirdly, marketplace sellers associated with the free shipping specials and coins cash back programs will pay their commission and service fees of around 2.24%. This rate is based on seller type, item category, and the programs joined. 

So if you want to expand your business in Southeast Asia or sell your product to the people, then the Shopee store is the best e-commerce option for you.

What Are the Top-selling Products on Shopee?

If you are thinking of creating a Shopee store and have no idea what you should sell, these are the products whose Shopee sale is highest.

Recently in Malaysia, customers have mostly ordered home and living products that give them comfort or convenience at home. They bought many household items such as the kitchen, living room, bedroom, and workspace. They also ordered kitchen storage, towels, cushions, hangers, and many DIY materials. Face masks, hand sanitizers, lip tints, eyebrow pencils, and sunblocks are some of the top-bought items from the health and beauty category. In the electronic category, they bought most mobile phone holders, power banks, storage-only straps, screen protectors, and laptops and ordered several snacks center noodles tax. Women bought a lot of women’s clothing that fits at home and counts in casual wear.

Whereas in Indonesia, the customer ordered many makeup and skin care products, some of which were also from big brand stores. They purchased sweaters, hoodies, and long dresses from the women’s fashion category. They also ordered humidifier appliances, storage containers, and many towels for the kitchen from the electronics, home, and living categories. Customers bought food and self-care items from the Toys & Hobbies category as well.

In other countries, such as Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines, customers mostly purchase from the Home & Living, Health & Beauty, Electronics, Women’s Fashion, and Toys & Hobbies categories. Consumers choose great quality products from these categories and fulfill their needs.

What is Shopee Guarantee?

Shopee Guarantee is a feature that Shopee store provide to protect buyers and sellers from fraud and ensures that they do not face any scamming. 

Whenever customers order any product, the Shopee store keeps their money with them for 3 days until you confirm that you have received that order. Only then do they transfer your money to the sellers. They keep the money safe until the customer confirms that the buyer has received the order. Suppose the seller could not ship the order for any reason. In that case, the order will automatically get canceled, and the buyer will get a refund of their payment to their account at the end of the Shopee guarantee period without any hassle. 

And if the seller ships the order successfully, the buyers will have to confirm that they received the order within the guarantee period so that Shopee can transfer the money to the respective sellers. 

However, if due, for any reason, the buyers did not receive the order even on the last day of the extension period or if they received an incomplete, wrong, or defective product, then they can request  Shopee for a return and refund after the end of the extension period of 3 days. But this request has to be made within the Shopee guarantee period. Otherwise, the payment will be automatically sent to the seller.

What is Shopee Free Shipping Voucher?

You can enjoy a discount on shipping costs by applying for a free shopping voucher at the time of checkout. These shipping discount vouchers are renewed every month and distributed to the buyers, so buyers should check the vouchers every month and claim and avail of significant shipping discounts. To view shipping discount vouchers, click My Vouchers under My Wallet in the My tab, and then you will see the vouchers you can claim. Buyers can also claim discounts by selecting Free Shipping on the Shopee app’s main page.

How to Ship Items on Shopee?

The faster and more low-cost shipping the buyers give, the more they show interest in buying that product. Sellers can keep track of shipments and arrange hassle-free shipping with the help of Shopee-supported logistics, which saves a lot of time and builds trust between them and the customer, thereby providing customer satisfaction as they are given every single piece of information about their shipment. 

Apart from this, sellers can also provide accurate weight and dimensions of their products, so buyers can avoid paying unexpected shipping fees. Before shipping any order, you must ensure that you ship out that product within the deadline and keep your shipping service promise. This will surely increase the Shopee sale, and the customers will also appreciate it. 

Following are the steps for shipping items on Shopee: 

• First, go to the seller’s center and select My Shipment to arrange the shipment. After that, in the next step, click on Arrange Shipment, select the I will Dropoff option, and click confirm.
• After that, find the nearest drop-off point after noting down the tracking number and print out the Air Waybill.
• For pickup, first, go to the seller’s center and click on My Shipment. After that, go to Arrange Shipment and press Confirm after selecting the I Will Arrange Pickup option.

Following are the steps to arrange shipment for non-Shopee supported logistics:

• Go to the Seller Center again and click on My Shipment. 
• Then if your order is already shipped, click on shift. There your order ID will be displayed above.
• Then in the next step, note down the delivery details like the receiver’s name, contact number, and address and select the shipping option.
• Enter the last tracking number from the list and click on ‘Ship’.

Following are the steps for printing shipping documents on the Shopee store:

• First of all, go to the center and click on ‘My Shipment’. After that, click on the mass ship and select the download shipment document.
• Here you can select the product which you want to prepare for shipping. And all the shipping documents you want to download or print can be selected below the mass download section.
• Lastly, click on Download Selected Documents. 

To view the order history of your shop, you must first go to the My Shop page in the Shopee app and click on View Sales history to view the Shopee Sale. After that view, your orders are under ‘Completed Cancellation and Returns & Refunds’, and for completed orders, filter them by shipping channel.

How to Receive Payments on Shopee?

Sellers will get their payment within 24 hours of the completion of the order. An order is complete only when the seller has tapped the Order Received button or when the Shopee guarantee period is over. If your bank account connects with the Shopee store, you can easily withdraw your payment from your seller balance during this time. 

Suppose, you haven’t received your payment within 3 to 5 business days even though you completed the order. In that case, you can take the help of customer service, who are available 24/7 to resolve your problems. 

What to Write in the Product Description on Shopee?

The product description is very important for the sale of any item. A good product description gives shoppers a better understanding of the product, enabling them to make an informed decision while buying the product. Consumers need not make product inquiries if your description is very informative. If you want to sell health and beauty products, you have to mention the direction to use them, their dosage, and their expiry date in the description. Similarly, if you sell clothing items, you must give its measurement in its care instruction description.

By following some of the tips given below, you can make your product description very catchy and informative:

First of all, you have to include the specifications of this product, in which you have to give important details to your consumers about that product’s material, weight, dimensions, and other unique factors.

In the next step, you must inform the consumers about your product’s benefits and features and how they can use those products.

If the warranty is available on those products, then the sellers have to inform their shoppers about it and also inform them about the warranty period.

• You can also include suitable images in your product description so that consumers can get better information and better visuals of those products. For example, if you want to describe the cloth material, you should also put a close-up shot along with the product description. This will give consumers a better understanding of what you are trying to sell.
  
• You can also add some text to the images included in your product description to attract more consumer attention. You can use words like “discount” or “sale” in these texts.

What is Shopee Assistant and How to Use It?

Shopee Assistant is a feature of the Shopee app that helps you easily manage shop settings and customers. 

1. Shopee Seller Assistant provides you with 3 types of tools. The first is Shop Profile, in which you can manage your shop profile information, such as the name of your shop. 
2. The second is shop setting, where you can manage your shop settings like vacation mode or auto-reply. 
3. Lastly, shop category, in which you can manage your products and also organize them according to their category. 

Advantages for sellers

• In Shopee, you get the feature of a ‘seller center’ in which you get many tools that can help you effectively sell the products. Shopee offers four features in its seller center, the first of which is targeted at improving listings.
  
  In this you get the listing optimizer which helps to identify the product listing which needs improvement. This is very important because it ensures that the quality of your product is good,attracting more shoppers and making your business grow. In this listing optimizer page, you get an overview of your product listings and an idea of ​​which listings need improvement and which products are already of good quality. This listing optimizer categorizes the products based on their improvement areas. If more than one area needs improvement in the listing, it will have the label Multiple Areas to Optimize.  
  
• Secondly, Shopee provides marketing tools that allow you to boost your Shopee sale and enhance your business. Shopee’s seller center provides many promotions and offers to shoppers, and they also help analyze how much they gain from those promotions. Each marketing tool page contains key metrics that inform you about the promotion’s performance and help you improve your subsequent promotions. The key matrix on “Bundle deal” and “Follow Prize” gives insights into your Shopee sale and shows how many orders and items you have sold in the last week.
  
• Apart from this, Shopee also helps you manage your promotions conveniently.

In addition, Shopee helps you manage your promotions very conveniently. You can search for specific promotions through Shopee, such as discount promotions, bundle deals, and add-on deals. And you can also duplicate your promotion for marketing tools, as it effectively attracts customers.

As you start getting more products, you will need to manage the products in bulk, for which you can use the batch tools you will find under My Product. You can use Mass Upload to upload multiple listings and click Mass Update to edit multiple product listings. Here you will also find attribute tools that allow you to edit categories, products, images, videos, and product attributes. You can also edit your shipping days’ information in one go. Apart from batch tools, you can also process your orders efficiently by mass shipping. 

Shopee seller center also helps in evaluating business strategies by providing business insights. These insights help the sellers by giving an overview of Shopee sale trends and performance and providing specific and in-depth insights. You can view the performance data of your product in this seller center and evaluate which product is in high demand and which is not.

These are 3 aspects of data that help in evaluating your product performance. The first is a product overview in which you can understand the interaction of your buyers with the product with the help of detailed metrics such as product visitors and conversion rate. The second is product performance, in which you can see the detailed matrix of individual listings and rank your product based on the selected matrix; lastly, product diagnosis, in which you can identify the product’s poor performance and take measures to improve them.

Apart from product performance, through the Shopee store, you can also analyze the performance of other aspects, such as chat and Shopee sale performance, which will lead to better growth in your business.

 With the help of these insights, sellers can analyze their current business position and its performance and create a better product plan for the future to take their business forward.

What is Shopee Brand Protection?

Due to the rapid expansion and reputation of Shopee, it is facing many counterfeiting problems. Despite so many safety mechanisms and authorized agents, the problem of counterfeiting could not be eliminated from Shopee. Even today, many counterfeit products are transacted on Shopee store platforms daily.

• To avoid this problem, Shopee has also adopted many methods.
  – The first is identifying the listings of counterfeited products. Counterfeiters always try to capitalize on the reputation of other brands and tend to associate trademarks that are very similar and identical to other brands.
  – And in this way, they cheat the consumers and sell them illegal products. These products are usually exact copies of the original product, which are very difficult to determine.
  – There is only one way to know the difference between the original and the duplicate product: paying attention to the trademark and seeing whether it is on the product or the product packaging without the trademark owner’s consent.
  – Once they identify counterfeit products, they must list them separately.

• Now, after listing those products, the next step is to collect evidence against them.
  – And for this, one has to generate many documents as proof and then make an IP Infringement Complaint.
  – Unlike other commerce platforms, Shopee does not require rights holders to subscribe to the brand protection program.
  – Anyone can file an IP infringement complaint on that platform with their IP rights after creating and registering a Shopee account.
  – The Shopee asks for some pictorial proofs, due to which sellers may also have to make some trap purchases from those counterfeiters.
  
• You must submit the IPR forms in the Shopee domain in the third step. The informant must enter their contact information in that IPR form, and supporting documents must be given along with it.
  
• In the end, you will have to wait for the review of Shopee for your IP infringement complaint. Soon the Shopee office or department will evaluate your infringement complaint, and if they feel that this complaint is legitimate, they will remove those complained listings from the assigned domain. If the counterfeit is caught, they may have to pay penalties.

How to Track Shopee Orders?

You can track your orders on Shopee by entering the tracking number in the tracking from above, after which you have to click on the Track Parcel button. Once done, you will get the latest information about your parcel from Shopee. It is vital to note that the Shopee order number and tracking number are two different numbers, and you need to provide the tracking number to track your parcel via courier.

What is Shopee Standard Express tracking? 

In Shopee Standard Express Tracking, Shopping’s local logistics partners deliver your items. It may take 2 to 4 days to update the tracking status, and you can also contact the seller directly for more information.

What is standard delivery Shopee tracking?

In standard delivery Shopee tracking, you will receive your order within 1 to 3 business days. If the delivery gets delayed due to holidays or extreme weather conditions, Shopee will also send you advisories. You can easily track your orders from the Shopee app, website, or standard delivery tracking site. If any changes occur in the delivery process, they will reflect in your delivery status within 24 to 48 hours.

What is Shopee 24 Express Delivery?

Shopee 24 express delivery is a new feature where buyers can get their orders delivered to their registered address within 24 hours. However, due to its logistical limitation, this feature is available only in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, and Putrajaya, where online shoppers enjoy this next-day delivery facility. Shopee guarantees that any order placed before 2:00 PM on the previous day will reach you by the next day. 

And if the Shopee fails to do this, their shipment will be completely free. This service is available every day except Saturday and Sunday, delivering more than 10000 items. And all the products eligible for next-day delivery are also given the tag of “Shopee24”.

What Makes Shopee Different From Other Marketplaces?

Shopee is one of the largest e-commerce platforms in the world today, and they are moving ahead at a fast pace giving tough competition to all the other e-commerce companies. Following are the factors that made it stand out and contributed to the rapid expansion of Shopee in the market:

• Shopee gives priority to its customers, and they try to provide a customized online experience to the customer so that they can get a better overall shopping experience. Shopee incorporates many unique features such as culture, language, and marketing strategies for each type of market in its operations, thereby providing greater customer satisfaction and engagement. Shopee used hyper-localized activities to determine the market behavior and come up with products that are most appealing to the market. 

• Instead of focusing on the advertisement, the Shopee store focuses more on promotion, free shipping, discount, and flash Shopee sale to capture the customer’s attention. Apart from this, Shopee has also added an interactive marketing strategy called “shopertainment”, which increases traffic and customer engagement. Shopee streams some of the events under this feature and interactive games, local influencers also host live streaming on this platform which are very popular among the public.

• Shopee understood that there is a lot of usage of mobile phones in South East Asia. For this reason, before launching the shopping website, Shopee launched its application, which can easily reach mobile users in the market. Shopee invested a lot of resources in app development. As a result, they created a user-oriented design that offers an end-to-end online shopping experience to both retailers and customers. It successfully provided a personalized and social experience to customers and retailers.

How Did Shopee Revolutionize Shopping on the Internet?

In today’s time, Shopee is very relevant in the e-commerce market. It is ranked the top app in Southeast Asia. According to a report, Shopee is the most used app of 2019. Shopee is quite different from the rest of its competitors as it prioritizes its consumers, takes great care of individual consumer needs, and implements various policies and services to enhance its shopping experience simultaneously.

The Shopee store a bulk of products from trusted brands and keeps its inventory up to date depending on the market trends and demands. It also takes measures to create a safe and protected shopping environment and prevent online fraud and scams. 

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