The Shopee platform currently has 8 sites around the world in Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Brazil. Among them, the sites where buyers can choose to open their first store are Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines. What are the characteristics of these sites, and how should merchants choose them?
1. In the Taiwan station, local buyers have strong spending power and are easy to place orders. For mainland merchants, there is no language gap. However, if merchants copy the best-selling products in other regions, , the effect will not be ideal, and we should still make targeted product selections for the Taiwan market.
2. Although Singaporean people have strong purchasing power, the current market is small, so the order volume is not large. In the long run, Singapore Station is more suitable for vertical boutique routes. Moreover, Shopee’s internal operations team will do some grading processing for merchants on the Singapore site. This is the most different thing between the Singapore site and other sites.
3. Buyers in the Malay and Indonesian stations are very price-sensitive, so when pricing products, multiple aspects must be considered. The payment and logistics system of the Malay site is much more mature than other sites, so it will be relatively easy to operate, but the competition will be greater, so the focus of operation is on product pricing; while the Indonesian site currently has various infrastructures It is not yet perfect, so there are not many businesses settled there, but its huge demographic dividend has also attracted many businesses to settle there.
4. The order volume of the Thai website is growing very fast, and it is very friendly to small and medium-sized sellers. Therefore, small and medium-sized sellers can use the Thai website as a new website to promote product transactions and conversions after the Taiwan website. The advantage of the Thai site is that the local network infrastructure is very complete and the Internet penetration rate is high. There are many users browsing and purchasing products on the platform every day.
5. The Philippine website and the Vietnamese website are newly opened in 2018, but the Philippine website has grown rapidly, and the current order volume is the same as that of the Thai website. Since the local shipping cost in the Philippines is relatively high, it is recommended that merchants choose some lightweight products for sale. The Vietnam site is the only site that can be transported by land, so many products that cannot be sold at other sites can be sold at the Vietnam site.
6. The three small language sites of Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam currently support the listing of English products. After being put on the shelves, Shopee’s local operations team will gradually translate the titles of the best-selling products into local languages. And at these three sites, the Shopee platform will also arrange for local customer service to respond to buyers’ inquiries.
In summary, each site has its own advantages. Novice merchants can choose a site that suits them to operate based on their supply of goods and familiarity with the market.