Top E-commerce Seller Programmes in South Africa

E-commerce is now the go-to way of buying for many consumers. The technology within e-commerce presents a convenient and safe way for many consumers. It has also allowed businesses to access a much larger client base. For business owners who want to get into e-commerce, you need to look for the top e-commerce seller programmes in South Africa.

An e-commerce seller or e-commerce business is a company that sells its products or services online. If you start selling on an existing e-commerce platform you become part of the platform’s seller programme.

If you’re looking to tap into e-commerce, there are various seller programmes you can join. With days like ‘Black Friday’ coming up, joining a seller programme can introduce a new avenue of revenue.

In this article, we look at some of the top e-commerce seller programmes currently available in South Africa.

E-commerce Seller Programme: Takealot

Takealot is the most popular e-commerce platform in South Africa. The e-commerce company has over 10 000 active sellers and provides a range of tools and features for its sellers such as stock management, logistics support and online payment support.

To become a seller on Takealot, you will need to register a profile. The platform will ask you for the following:

• Your first and last name.
• E-mail address and mobile number.
• The name of your business.
• Which shopping category do your products fall under.
• Link to your product catalogue (if you have a website).
• Your VAT registration status.
• The monthly revenue of your business.
• The details of the business owner.
• A detailed description of your business and your products.

Once you have filled in all the relevant details on the application form, the Takealot team will review it and get back to you within 10 business days.

Takealot also has fees that it charges the sellers on the programme. You will be charged a R 400 monthly fee, success fees to cover transactional costs, fulfilment fees for delivery and storage fees if you store your products at a Takealot storage facility.

Note: Fulfilment fees are calculated by the size and weight of the product. Storage fees are calculated depending on how long your stock will be kept and how much.

Takealot’s seller tools cover most aspects of the seller process. The company has partnered with Ozow and PayFast for online payments and also has an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that can help you communicate with your customers easily.

For more information on joining the Takealot seller programme, visit their we.

E-commerce Seller Amazon South Africa

Amazon is the biggest e-commerce platform in the world and this year it came to South Africa. Amazon South Africa provides an even bigger customer base to small businesses because people from all over the world can order on the platform.

To become a seller on Amazon South Africa, you need to pick one of the company’s seller plans. The plans are as follows:

Individual plan: For businesses selling less than 40 units a month in any category.
Professional plan: For businesses that sell more than 40 units a month. Also comes with access to APIs, programmes, tools and specific selling categories.

Once you have decided on which plan works best for your business, you will need to sign up on the Amazon Seller Central website. If you have an Amazon account, you can log in with those details, if not, you will need to create an Amazon account.

The next thing to do is to begin the registration process for selling partners. There are five tasks you will need to complete including business information, selling partner information, billing, store and verification.

After the verification process, you will be prompted for a video call (instantly or scheduled). If all goes well on the video call, you will receive an email for further documentation. Verification typically takes up to two days.

Once everything is verified, you will need to sign into your Seller Central account and activate your two-step verification. Once that is done, you will gain access to the Seller University resources and tools for product listing and fulfilment.

E-commerce Seller Programme: Makro Marketplace

Makro also has an online marketplace for its sellers. To sell on Makro you will need to create a profile on the Makro seller portal. You will be asked to provide information on your business, provide your address, ID and bank details.

Once you have registered a profile, you will need to list your products under the right categories. For sellers, Makro has resources you can use to help you list your products. The company has also partnered with local courier companies to help sellers with order fulfilment.

These are the best e-commerce seller programmes in South Africa currently. To take advantage of the upcoming ‘Black Friday’ shopping spree, register your products on one of these platforms and help your business grow its reach.