How to start an online store in Malaysia, step by step
Most sellers stop before they start. Setting up looks like a project. A domain, a design, a payment gateway, proper photographs, and someone to build it all.
It is not that. The work is smaller than it looks, and most of it is decisions you already know the answer to. Here is the whole thing in order. What to do at each step, and what to leave alone for now.
1. Pick one thing to sell, and weigh it
Not a catalogue. One product you can send this week.
Then weigh it packed, in the box, with the filler. A kitchen scale is enough. Couriers price by weight, so a product without a weight cannot show a buyer a real delivery cost at checkout, and a delivery cost you guess is a cost you absorb.
If you are still deciding whether a shop of your own is the right move at all, that is a fair question and it has its own answer: marketplace or your own store, which one actually fits you.
2. Open the store
This is the part people budget weeks for. It takes an afternoon.
You need an email address, a password, a name for the shop and a web address for it. That is the form. A new Berkedai store opens on a berkedai.com address straight away, carrying your name and your branding, and the design is already done when you arrive.
Nothing here needs a developer, a designer or a theme to fight with.
3. Put the first product up properly
Three or four photos of the one product. The whole item, a close look at the material, something beside it for scale, and what actually arrives in the box. Daylight near a window and a plain surface will do.
A buyer is asking two questions. Is this real, and is it what it looks like. Your photos answer those or they do not.
Write the description as the answer to what a buyer would ask you in a message. Size, material, what is included, how long delivery takes. Then set the weight.
4. Price it so there is something left
Do the arithmetic once, on one product, before you list thirty. Cost of the item, packaging, the postage you carry, the charges on the sale. What is left is yours.
If what is left is thin, it is better to know now than after fifty orders. The long version is here: how to price your product when you have no idea where to start.
5. Settle the shipping question
Your side of this is two facts, the product's weight and the address your parcels leave from. Checkout works out the real delivery cost from those and shows the buyer a number, so you are not quoting rates by hand or guessing them in a message.
What is left is the packing, which is where new sellers lose money quietly. A parcel that arrives crushed costs you the item, the postage and the customer. See how to pack an order so it arrives in one piece.
6. Know when the money actually reaches you
A Berkedai store takes card, FPX and GrabPay on domestic orders, with nothing to apply for.
Taking the payment and receiving the payment are two different days. The money is held under Berkedai Protected until the order is delivered, then settled to you. It is not same day, and planning your cash around that from the beginning saves a surprise in week three. The detail is in when do you actually get paid after a sale.
7. Publish it, and put your own name on the address
Your store works from day one on its berkedai.com address. You can sell on that address indefinitely and plenty of shops do.
Once the storefront is verified you can point a domain of your own at it instead. Whether you need one yet is a real question, not a given: your own domain, what it does and whether you need one.
8. Get the first orders, and expect them to be instructive
The shop being open is not the same as people finding it. Send the link to the people who already buy from you, put it where you already post, and treat the first ten orders as information rather than income.
They will show you things you could not have planned. You are slow at packing. The delivery cost makes people hesitate. The photo that sells is not the one you expected. The first ten orders, and what usually goes wrong covers the common ones, and what to do when a buyer wants to return something covers the one nobody prepares for.
What it costs to run
There is no subscription and nothing to pay to open a store. Charges come out of sales.
Every new shop starts at the Starter level, which is a platform fee of 8 percent, plus 3 percent payment processing. A completed month of RM 10,000 in revenue earns the Growth level at 6 percent, and a completed month of RM 40,000 earns Enterprise at 4 percent. On a physical order there is also a shipping handling fee of RM 1.20 plus 4 percent of what the buyer paid for delivery.
A level you have earned stays earned. A quiet month afterwards does not move you back up.
What you can leave alone for now
- A logo. Your name set cleanly is fine for the first month.
- Your own domain. Later. The store already has a working address.
- A full catalogue. Five products you can actually supply beat thirty you cannot.
- Perfect photographs. Clear and honest today beats beautiful in three weeks.
- A launch. Open the shop, then let people find it.
Registering the business is a separate matter and worth sorting out early, but it does not block you from setting the shop up. Do you need to register with SSM to sell online answers when it actually applies.
How long the whole thing takes
An afternoon to open the store and list the first product. A day or two more to weigh things, write the descriptions and check your prices. After that you are waiting on buyers, not on setup.
The order matters more than the speed. One product listed properly, priced properly and shippable is a working shop. Thirty half finished ones are not.
Start your store at berkedai.com