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The shift towards a new age of social distancing has led many brick-and-mortar businesses to change the way they interact with their customers. Due to the recent circuit breaker measures, many local SMEs are forced to take the situation in their stride and start placing their offerings on online platforms.
Earlier this month, Enterprise Singapore (ESG) rolled out The Singapore E-Commerce Programme to help SMEs with little or no e-commerce experience to start selling online.
SMEs who are affected by the current situation can now sign up for the programme on Lazada Singapore, Amazon Singapore, Qoo10, and Shopee directly until 30th September 2020.
To qualify for this programme, you need to be a Singapore-registered company that offers products on the online platforms stated above with the criteria that you do not have an existing seller’s account with them.
Retailers will receive a one-time support of 90% (capped at $9,000) of the cost and additional manpower support for retailers to onboard e-commerce platforms for domestic and/or overseas markets.
We have listed the seller platforms below, should you want to consider migrating your offerings from an offline to an online setting during this trying period.
When choosing a platform to sell your products, take yourself through the following steps to shortlist the one that best fits your business needs.
The platform that you select should be consistent with your target audience, their needs, lifestyles, demographics and personality. Recognize your target audiences’ pain points and decide which platform best addresses their needs (e.g. listing specifications, ease of use, etc.)
If you are a local seller who is planning on expanding your offerings to certain countries in the future, you can consider platforms such as Lazada, due to its availability of different platform avenues (e.g. LazMall, LazGlobal).
Apart from understanding your target audience, find out the various brands and sellers available under that product category. By doing so, you will be able to assess your competitiveness and decide which platform would give you a competitive advantage when selling.
Find out the top-of-mind product category that is associated with a particular platform. For example, if you are selling electronics, you may want to sell it on Lazada, and for fashion and beauty items, at Qoo10. This is because these sites are well-known for offering perhaps a more complete range of brands under that particular product category.
Most of the online platforms listed above offer comprehensive online repositories geared toward optimizing the selling process on their platforms for large-scale sellers, retailers, brands and private labels. Lazada and Amazon, for instance, provide step-by-step guides on how you can get started on their platforms, live webinars; and offer premium services from third-party vendors to help you grow your sales numbers.
In terms of shipping, find out if the carrier the platform is working with offers appropriate delivery options for the product that you sell (e.g. some carriers do not handle fragile or large products). At the same time, assess the level of customer service support and assistance the platform provides, and ensure that your customers have easy access to you should they need any form of assistance.
Learn about the different marketing strategies that these platforms employ (e.g. Black Friday sales) and how they would help you drive customers to your listings (e.g. recently viewed items).
Another factor of consideration would be the cost entailed when deciding which platform to use. As a whole, find out if the money that you are spending as a seller on the platform is within your company’s budget. You can tabulate the relevant costs for the product (e.g. from account registration to delivering products to the customer) that you are selling and make a decision from there.
There are other factors of consideration that are not included in this article. The points stated above are non-exhaustive, and aim to serve as a guide to help you shortlist the platform that may apply to your business.
In any case, it would be better to have a first-hand experience before deciding which platform to use. As it is, there is no one platform that suits all businesses. The most ideal way of selecting which platform would be suitable is to align your customers’ needs with what your company is looking for in a platform.
Disclaimer: This article is based on information that Lendingpot has received informally from partners. All the information is believed to be accurate; however, no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the information are made. All information, commentary, recommendations or statements of opinion provided in this article are for general information purposes only. We do not claim to be authoritative. If there are any errors in our reporting, please contact ask@lendingpot.sg for rectification.
Lendingpot.sg operates a Business Loan Marketplace that allows an SME to connect to multiple lenders with just one application, allowing the SME to know who its prospective lenders are and the rates that they offer, in a very short time.
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Jennifer loves helping SMEs in their business growth journey. She is also an epicurean and has perpetual wanderlust. During the weekend, she weaves poems out of thin air and buries herself in books.
