Shopee, the leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, continues to enhance its robust e-commerce ecosystem to help entrepreneurs and MSMEs go digital more seamlessly and effectively.
With most physical stores forced to close due to the pandemic, there has been a steady increase of online sellers onboarding the platform. With this, Shopee continues to expand its workable digital platform to help retailers future-proof their businesses, embrace digitalization, and establish a successful online presence. Shopee proves its commitment to support MSMEs by developing the Shopee Seller Education Hub, maintaining a robust digital infrastructure, and reinforcing partnerships with various organizations.
Martin Yu, Director at Shopee Philippines, points out how important it is for businesses to embrace digitalization. “The global situation has accelerated digital transformation, as more brands and MSMEs explore the opportunities of e-commerce to reach a wider audience. As the marketing landscape changes at a rapid pace, Shopee will continue to offer improved in-app features and initiatives to cater to the growing demand for e-commerce here in the Philippines.”
Shopee Seller Education
The Shopee Seller Education Hub hosts modules on how to cultivate an online presence and boost sales. It helps MSMEs ease their way into the digital world through seller masterclasses tackling various e-commerce topics. These include sharing how-tos on running effective campaigns and growing the business, proper guidelines on handling return and refund requests, managing listing assets, boosting sales using available marketing tools, and creating awareness of the target market through activity and business insights.
Strong Marketing Tools
Shopee continues to help sellers maximize the features of its platform, engage with customers online, and understand the industry as a whole. With in-app features such as Shopee Live and ShopeePay, sellers can enjoy a smooth and engaging selling experience on the platform.
Shopee Live is an in-app feature where sellers can interact with their customers and answer real-time questions and inquiries regarding a product. This feature gives the seller and the consumer a more connected shopping experience.
Shopee Live added three new features to make online shopping more engaging and drives sales for businesses.
- The ‘Mine’ Feature
Users can reserve an item during a live stream by tapping the ‘Mine’ button. It will generate the usernames of the first ten tappers so that the seller can contact the buyers to make the sale*.
- The Poll Feature Guide
Sellers can create engaging polls about trivia and questions. The Poll Feature also helps sellers decide which items are requested by the viewers.
- The Co-streaming Feature
Sellers can invite their viewers to join them in the stream and is best used when a seller wants to increase their engagement through games and interactions.
Seamless and convenient digital payments
ShopeePay, Shopee’s in-app e-wallet, on the other hand, allows shoppers to pay for purchases and sellers to withdraw earnings conveniently. Recently, ShopeePay also added more billers to its lineup. Users can now top-up RFID stickers, pay for NBI clearance applications, and pay for their Smart mobile plans, Meralco electricity bills, Maynilad bills, and many more.
Reinforced Partnerships
Through strategic partnerships with government agencies and various organizations, Shopee can reach more MSMEs effectively and help them expand their businesses on Shopee’s platform. Joint initiatives with the government include CTRL + BIZ: Reboot Now!, a series of webinars where MSMEs can learn how to transform their businesses digitally.
Shopee also partnered with regional and provincial DTI offices in providing masterclasses to sellers. Shopee assisted in onboarding sellers from Regions III, IV, and XII, and provinces such as Nueva Ecija and Zambales. Shopee partnered with foreign organizations such as USAID to provide more than 500 women entrepreneurs with integrated digital marketing training. These programs help sellers maximize the use of digital platforms to expand and boost their businesses.
Yu said, “Shopee wants to make e-commerce accessible for everyone. Our goal is to evolve quickly to cater to our customers’ and sellers’ needs. Shopee continuously provides different initiatives that enable our retailers to go digital easily and quickly. It is a commitment that we take seriously, and we will continue to connect people and businesses, support MSMEs’ transition to a digital economy, and power the next wave of growth in the industry.”