Online shopping in Indonesia has peaked in the last few years with over 132.7 million internet users seen in 2018. These numbers are expected to grow further up to 133.39 million by the end of 2021 with an internet penetration of over 50%!
As the country is at an early stage of digital growth with a massive potential consumer base, Indonesia is one of the most sought after regions in South East Asia for eCommerce sellers, businesses and brands to invest in.
It is completely safe to say that the scenario of the eCommerce market is going to expand even further in the near future in Indonesia with a great number of developments on the way that will lead up to more and more businesses starting their journey in eCommerce or moving to the online space from their traditional offline stores.
But with such a drastic move, it is also necessary to understand the possible hurdles that might occur in your way to becoming a top eCommerce seller and the most effective ways to overcome those difficulties. The biggest challenges faced by beginners or offline Indonesian sellers may include:
Major challenges when starting or moving to sell online in Indonesia
These challenges may seem difficult to manage at first, but with the right strategies and solutions, you can seamlessly begin your eCommerce journey or complete the transition from selling offline to online.
And so, if you are an offline Indonesia seller, retailer or business, or just a beginner looking to venture onto selling your products and services online in the growing eCommerce market of the country, then you need this blog to understand every bit about the market, why it is the top choice to sell online here and how you can leverage technology to position your brand as a top eCommerce platform.
Why to Sell Online in Indonesia?
As the largest population amongst any other South East Asian country and a rapidly increasing consumer base, Indonesia is estimated to reach the online market worth of $53 billion by 2025!
The reason behind such an increase is the fact that Indonesians have grown to like the ease of shopping online and the availability of cheaper options to help them lead a life of better standards. Also, there is a massive internet penetration of the Indonesian population as the county is ranked 4th highest for both Twitter and Facebook users and presently has over 130 million social media users.
Due to their active online presence, Indonesian shoppers have had the ease to search for products, compare prices, check reviews, look for offers, etc., before any purchase, all from the comfort and safety of their homes, making online commerce more favourable than offline
These massive numbers of online users in the region, make it even more critical than ever to take your business online and achieve higher profits and faster growth.
Moving from the ‘Why’ to the ‘How’, let us understand the best strategies, methods and techniques of making your eCommerce business in Indonesia a big hit.
Where to Sell Online in Indonesia?
Where to start your online selling journey?
The first step of starting your eCommerce business is to either integrate with an already existing marketplace in Indonesia or to build your own online site to take the direct to consumer or D2C route of selling.
While you can surely begin your eCommerce business by integrating on any of top marketplaces in Indonesia including Tokopedia, Zalora, Shopee, Lazada, Bukalapak., it is important to build your own independent presence in the eCommerce industry as it provides you with a loyal customer pool, boosts sales, maximizes profitability, increases productivity and offers the most successful results when you move your offline business online or star selling online!
Selling from your own website or eCommerce platform directly to your customers, your business gets the opportunity to identify the right approach and the best methods to ensure higher growth and better customer experience.
You can build your own eCommerce site using any of the popular platforms such as Pixitem, Shopify, Lime Commerce, BigCommerce, Kemana.com, Magento, Woocommerce, Jejulan, Sirclo, etc. that give you hundreds of options to choose from for the perfect look and feel of your website.
But before you begin your Direct to Consumer eCommerce selling using your own website, you need to analyze a few basics from the online ecosystem to be able to render the right services to shoppers. Some of the factors to research and work upon include:
- Identifying the right set of traffic
- Ensuring relevant product listings
- Enhancing product reach
- Providing better user experience
You can easily onboard a well designed and highly advanced multi-channel technology solution to enable you to manage all of your sales channels from a single panel by automating operations, saving you precious time and eliminating extra manpower cost.
| Looking for hassle-free integrations with the top marketplaces & carts in Indonesia? Sell on Lazada, Shopee, Shopify, Woocommerce etc with Unicommerce! Know more here: http://unicommerce.com/integrations |
Powerful Strategies to Quickly Expand Your Business Online
Follow the best strategies to ensute successful online selling in Indonesia
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Increase Your Social Media Presence
Keeping into perspective the dependency of Indonesians on social media, it should be your first focus to build a strong reputation for your eCommerce business amidst the consumers and be heavily active on all social channels such as Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, as well as WhatsApp to engage and educate people about your products.
To build a strong social presence, you can leverage:
- Good quality content
- Effective marketing strategies
- Relevant social media campaigns, targeted Google Ads, offers, etc
- Collaborate with top influencers with thousands of followers
All of these methods will help you promote your brand, raise awareness, enhance product reach, ultimately increasing your sales and boosting your business.
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Provide Personalization of Services
To show value to your customers, you need to offer them a personalized experience which will pay you to the greatest of length in terms of loyal and long term users of your products and services.
Once you have moved your business into the online space, start keeping track of the sales you make and what your customers most expect out of your service. Check the most common reasons they visit you, either for the price, the product range, delivery time, payment experience, etc.
To get a complete understanding of what your customers may be looking for, try to:
- Maintain shopping histories
- Monitor interests and choices
- Look for the most popular products such as clothing, electronics, etc.,
and based on these observations, offer your users suggestions and recommendations to get a more personalized feeling whenever they shop.
It is also very important to ensure that there are no stock-outs or delays in delivery as well if you really want to give your customers the best experience
You should also focus on promoting localization which can be done by promoting your products and services in the local language, converting prices into Indonesian Rupiah, etc. This will give your consumers the ease to shop without any language barriers and make them trust you more.
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Enable Safer Payments Options
eCommerce shoppers in Indonesia prefer online payments via debit card, credit card or wallet payments along with the oldest COD method. You need to ensure your business supports all of these payment methods along with the assurance of complete safety.
It is important to strengthen your checkout experience which comprises most of the payment options where your consumers save their card details and provide relevant information at the time of payments.
If you want to build that trust and make your customers come back to you for all their needs, work on strengthening your payment experience as the increasing number of shoppers online and wallet payments touching an all-time high post the Coronavirus outbreak in Indonesia, it has become even more crucial to ensure better handling of payment information of your consumers.
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Ensure Better Privacy of Customer Data
One thing which is the most important to each and every customer is the safety of their personal details and it is your legal responsibility to ensure the same, whenever someone makes a purchase from you.
The Indonesian government is still working around the best data safety policies as the industry reports a fair share of data breaches, wrong or unfulfilled delivery of products even after full payments and at times hacks on payment gateway accounts.
Johnny G. Plate, Communication and Information Minister of Indonesia urged eCommerce service providers in an online event last year, to improve their cybersecurity and data information systems to protect not only the customers but also the businesses.
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Implement Best Shipping & Delivery Strategies
To effectively handle the shipping and delivery of your products across all locations in Indonesia, it is essential to onboard the top and highly reputed logistics providers in the region.
Linc Group, DHL, Yamato, FedEx, DTDC, Prima Cargo, Dunex, etc., are some of the most sought after logistics providers in the region to help you with fast and precise delivery even to the last mile.
The Indonesian terrain requires highly accurate delivery and shipping services as the country is collectively made of over 17,000 islands and so the streets and addresses can be difficult to find due to lack of infrastructure planning and management.
To handle the issue in the most efficient way, it is better to rely on bigger service providers that have well established local shipping offices even in the farthest of pin codes.
Apart from the route you also need to be aware of what products are eligible for shipping and movement within the country and what products need extra care during transit. Perishable goods, alcoholic beverages, luxury items all require extra care and permits to be shipped across the region.
Render the Right Solutions to Scale Up Your eCommerce Business Operations
In order to begin selling online or to make the move from offline to online, to be able to handle all 5 of the above-mentioned processes and to run successful eCommerce operations, you require highly advanced and technologically robust supply chain solutions.
Right from managing inventory, updating fresh stocks, processing orders, maintaining warehouse performance, order fulfilment rates, on-time deliveries etc., eCommerce businesses need the best support to perform each of these tasks with ease and accuracy.
With Unicommerce’s fully automated and technologically superior solutions, allow your business to become a prominent eCommerce name, achieve effective and faster serviceability, reduce operational costs and increase profitability to become a top seller or brand in Indonesia.
| Take a look at one of our Case Studies that talks about how a 3PL Provider in South East Asia was searching for a technology provider that could help them integrate with the biggest marketplaces, web stores, ERP/POS, logistics providers, etc., helping them achieve higher performance and accuracy in the business and how Unicommerce helped them achieve all that.
Learn how Unicommerce’s highly scalable Multichannel & Warehouse Solutions helped the 3PL provider achieve 5X Growth in Sales: https://unicommerce.com/cases/3pl-provider-in-south-east-asia/ |
Unicommerce is a leading supply chain solutions provider that offers streamlined eCommerce operations across all online and offline sales channels and has been simplifying eCommerce selling for thousands of sellers, retailers, brands and businesses in the Indonesian eCommerce market.
Using the Unicommerce solutions, allow your business to achieve exponential growth along with:
Allow your business to acheive exponential growth for your Online business
- 30-35% Increased Sales Growth
- 35-40% Reduced Logistics Costing supported
- 25-35% Lower Manpower Cost
- 15-20% Reduced Order Returns
and much more!!
Experience seamless integrations to top marketplaces, logistics providers, ERP & POS systems in Indonesia by choosing Unicommerce as your technology partner.