Online Business

The time of corona changed the business landscape and some friends in our little chat group were badly affected, too. It was tough enough to do what they did prior to this, but now some businesses weren't doable at all. This led to a conversation of doing online business, namely Shopee. We talked about exploring it.

I was intrigued by it. At that time, I'd been trying out Carousell, but I approached it like doing a garage sale, haha. The interface was rather straightforward, so I thought Shopee should be more or less the same, too. Then I set up an account and tried it out with Parno and Susan. This is the story of the experience we went through.

From left: the seller, the buyer, the coordinator.

First of all, you got quite a fair bit of things to fill up. Home address, shop address and even bank account were required. Shop address was critical because it would determine from where the shipping would be delivered. You could enter many addresses, but only one can be used at one time for all products. When you changed the address, it'd affect the location of all products.

This turned out to be a problem for us. I had this idea in mind when I tested this out: what if all friends from other cities joined in to offer their products? If we did this, we'd have a massive collection of products to sell. We'd have our online supermarket. Everyone would have access to the same login so that each of us could respond to the queries and take care of the orders. But due to the shipping address issue that was mentioned earlier, this was not possible. Those who were from the same city still could do this, but that was pretty much it.

Problems with brand (Merek) and Shipping Address (Dikirim Dari).

Anyway, we only found out about this much later on, right after we simulated the transaction. For us to begin, I uploaded few products. Each had a lengthy form to be filled up, from the brand, the weight, the quantity and so forth. Noticed that I always ran into errors for products with brands not listed on Shopee, for example Aming Coffee, so I eventually removed the brand.

The enquiry from a difficult customer.

Once the products were ready, we did a test together, from enquiry to transaction. Enquiry was originally neat, but it soon became cluttered with unwanted messages. I had no idea how I ended up with a lot of messages telling me that other people had showered my plants. To think that I didn't even play any games on Shopee! The app should have not spammed me like this! This made it difficult for me to notice the genuine enquiries and as a user, I could have missed out the business opportunities! Yes, there were notification settings, but it wasn't exactly clear what needed to be set to turn this gaming messages off.

Unwanted notifications.

Anyway, through this messaging service, Susan did the enquiry and the purchase. As Parno didn't download the app, I contacted him to do the shipping via J&T Express. I didn't know that the app actually provided a specific shipping code and the shipping cost was covered by Shopee. I discovered this only after Parno mailed the order, so he went back to J&T Express to correct my mistake. Once this is done, I could see the status updated on the app.

The shipping code provided by Shopee.

Susan purchased using ShopeePay, which meant the money would only be released to the seller once the goods were received and confirmed by the buyer (note that buyers had an option to return the orders to sender). Having said that, the seller needed to contact the buyers if they never confirmed even though the delivery tracking showed that the order had been delivered. Once confirmed, the payment would be credited to the seller's account and the money could then be transferred into the seller's bank account.

The money transfer.

Our little experiment ended when the money was received. It didn't exactly work out as I first envisioned it, but it was still a working system that wasn't so difficult to use. If you ever thought of starting this but not sure how to begin, I hope the story above would give you the clues. One could start this as side income. Definitely worth trying, especially in the time of corona!

Bisnis Online

Musim COVID-19 berdampak buruk pada dunia usaha dan beberapa teman SMA di grup WhatsApp juga terganggu bisnisnya. Sebelumnya pun sudah terdengar tantangan dalam berbinis, tapi korona yang melanda dunia lebih dashyat lagi dampaknya sehingga beberapa bidang usaha sama sekali lumpuh dan tidak bisa ditekuni lagi. Hal ini lantas membuat kita berdiskusi tentang bisnis online lewat Shopee. 

Saya sendiri jadi tergerak untuk mencobanya supaya tahu seperti apa prosesnya. Baru-baru ini saya juga iseng mencoba Carousell, walau saya lebih cenderung menggunakannya sebagai sarana cuci gudang, haha. Langkah-langkah untuk berjualan di Carousell tergolong praktis, jadi saya mengira bahwa Shopee juga seharusnya kurang-lebih sama. Saya lantas membuat akun dan melakukan uji coba bersama Parno dan Susan. Berikut ini adalah pengalaman kita.

Dari kiri: penjual, pembeli dan koordinator.

Pertama-tama, ada banyak formulir online yang perlu diisi. Alamat rumah, alamat toko dan bahkan rekening bank dibutuhkan untuk membuka toko. Alamat toko sangat penting karena menentukan dari mana produk akan dikirim. Pengguna bisa memasukkan beberapa alamat, namun hanya satu yang bisa dipakai sebagai alamat pengirim. Ketika kita mengganti alamat toko, semua produk akan berubah pula alamatnya.

Hal ini menjadi masalah buat saya. Tadinya saya berpikir bahwa seandainya teman-teman dari berbagai kota ikut menjual produk mereka, maka kita bisa membangun semacam supermarket online. Di benak saya, setiap orang memiliki akses ke aplikasi sehingga bisa menanggapi pertanyaan pelanggan dan menerima pesanan. Akan tetapi karena kendala yang disebutkan di atas, ide ini jadi tidak bisa dilaksanakan dengan sempurna. Hanya teman-teman dari satu kota yang masih bisa bekerja sama.

Masalah dengan Merek dan alamat pengirim (Dikirim Dari).

Masalah ini baru kita sadari setelah kita menyelesaikan simulasi transaksi. Dalam rangka uji coba, saya mengunggah beberapa produk. Setiap produk disertai formulir panjang yang perlu diisi, mulai dari merek, berat, kuantitas dan lain-lain. Saya perhatikan kalau mereknya tidak tertera di sistem, misalnya Aming Coffee, nanti akan muncul tampilan bahwa telah terjadi kesalahan pendataan. Akhirnya saya kosongkan merek produknya.

Pelanggan sulit.

Setelah beberapa produk diunggah, kita pun mulai mencoba prosesnya, mulai dari pertanyaan pembeli sampai pemesanan produk. Notifikasi untuk komunikasi antara penjual dan pembeli ini awalnya bagus, tapi entah kenapa lantas bermunculan pesan-pesan yang tidak penting. Saya tidak mengerti kenapa banyak orang yang mengabarkan bahwa mereka sudah menyirami tanaman saya, padahal saya sama sekali tidak main game di Shopee. Aplikasi ini seharusnya tidak membanjiri saya dengan notifikasi seperti ini karena pertanyaan dari penjual bisa terlewatkan oleh saya. Ya, saya lihat ada pengaturan notifikasi, tapi tidak jelas apa yang harus diatur untuk menghilangkan notifikasi tentang game.

Notifikasi tidak penting.

Melalui fitur percakapan ini, Susan mencoba berkomunikasi dan akhirnya melakukan transaksi. Karena Parno tidak mengunduh aplikasi Shopee, saya pun menghubungi Parno supaya dia melakukan pengiriman lewat J&T Express. Saya tidak tahu bahwa Shopee menyediakan kode pengiriman dan juga menanggung biaya pengiriman. Hal ini baru saya sadari setelah Parno mengirimkan produk, jadi dia kembali ke J&T Express untuk membereskan masalah ini. Setelah selesai, saya bisa melihat status pengiriman di aplikasi.

Kode pengiriman otomatis dari Shopee.

Susan melakukan pembelian dengan metode ShopeePay. Ini berarti uangnya baru akan ditransfer oleh Shopee ke saya setelah konfirmasi pelanggan (dan sebagai pelanggan, Susan memiliki pilihan untuk pengembalian produk bila tidak sesuai dengan pesanan). Karena mekanisme ini, penjual harus menghubungi pembeli jika tidak menerima konfirmasi setelah status order sudah terkirim. Setelah konfirmasi, barulah uang diterima di akun penjual dan bisa ditransfer ke rekening bank.

Transfer uang dari akun Shopee ke bank.

Eksperimen kita ini pun berakhir sesudah uang diterima. Shopee tidak berfungsi seperti apa yang saya bayangkan, tapi sistem jual-belinya tidaklah terlalu sulit untuk dipelajari. Jika anda ingin mencoba tapi tidak ada gambaran seperti apa caranya, semoga pengalaman kita ini bisa menjadi acuan. Bagi yang berminat, ini jelas bisa menjadi usaha sampingan. Layak dicoba, apalagi di musim korona!