Shopee Chimes in on Expert Advice for Holiday Season Preparations

In this fourth part of our holiday season advice series from some of the world’s leading marketplaces, we speak with Shopee.com, the online marketplace serving millions of customers across Southeast Asia.

There is tons of great tips to consider, so if you haven’t quite finished your holiday season store preparations then you’re in luck!

If you’ve still not started your holiday season prep and got a little longer to read up on some advice from the world’s leading online marketplaces, check out our previous advice from Joom.com, Allegro.com and Rakuten.com for their holiday season advice.

What is the #1 piece of advice you would give e-Sellers to help get their stores ready and maximize their sales this year?

The #1 piece of advice would be to capture the upcoming campaign season on Shopee lasting till year end. Sellers should set up campaigns, such as a Flash Sale or a specific theme of campaign, well in advance, as this will present great opportunities to boost exposure and sales.

When it comes to the campaign preparation, the below 3 tips can help:

• Optimize the shop setting to be ready for the campaign, including prices, days to ship (DTS) and stocks.
• Pay attention to logistics updates to avoid penalty points caused by high non-fulfillment rates (NFR) late shipment rates (LSR) and penalty policies.
• Hire sufficient manpower for customer service and packing.

What trends are you currently seeing among e-Sellers on Shopee?

As the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to online consumption, more sellers have come online to meet the rising demand. Pre-pandemic, cross-border sellers were mostly those with e-commerce experience. But since the beginning of 2020 we found many sellers from various backgrounds jumped on the bandwagon. These included high potential SME sellers, export-oriented factories, and well-known Chinese brands.

We’ve also seen that sellers of a broader range categories have benefited from the diversified demand for online consumption under the pandemic. For instance, computer accessories, automobile parts, fabric & textiles, electronic appliances, kitchenware, sport & outdoor equipment, gardening supplies and pet supplies have experienced rapid growth on Shopee.

To help keep up with demand, sellers are leveraging integrated marketing tools to create a more interactive and entertaining shopping experience, to meet the evolving shopper habits and advancements in technology. For instance, live streaming has become an effective traffic driver for sellers. According to Shopee’s data, in 2020, the daily watch time has recorded 15 times increase, and the number of orders has increased by more than 6 times during live streaming.

Are there any special features you’d like our e-Sellers to know about that would improve their success this holiday season?

To help sellers improve visibility to potential consumers and better convert traffic into orders  Shopee provides a series of marketing solutions that integrate in-app features and external partners.

To drive traffic within Shopee:

• Sellers can use the basic marketing tools such as Shopee Ads, follow prize, add-on deal, and bundle deal to help boost sales directly.
• Sellers can also use our live streaming feature “Shopee Live” which enables sellers to interact with shoppers in real time and promote their products directly. By conversing with shoppers, sellers can better understand their needs and create an enhanced shopping experience for them.
• As the KOL culture continues to grow in Southeast Asia, we’ve introduced Shopee KOL Service (SKS) to match local KOLs for cross-border sellers. The service helps sellers break through language barriers and cultural differences, as well as make good use of the publicity to boost sales.

To drive traffic to your Shopee store:

• You can leverage ‘Shopee x Facebook Ads’ and ‘Shopee x Google Ads’ so that potential customers can easily enter your product page to place orders by clicking on the ads.
• Grow your brand presence with Shopee Affiliate Marketing Solutions (AMS) through Shopee’s extensive affiliate networks and partners, including coupons & cashback platforms, price comparison websites, content publishers, and KOL & influencers. In the first half of 2021, AMS brought a 13 times ROI for brands.

– Shopee Spokesperson

Stay tuned for more great advice from our next marketplace, Fnac/Darty.com.

Until then, wishing you a productive planning period and a terrific holiday sales season!

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