How to improve conversion rate as a new Shopee seller

Say your shop got 300 visitors last week and 3 of them ordered. That is 1 percent. Is 1 percent bad? I don’t know, and neither does anyone who hasn’t seen your category, your price and your photos. Anyone quoting a “good” conversion rate without those is guessing, so I won’t.

A new seller on r/ShopeePH asked how to gain more orders, and the first answer new sellers reach for is a lower price. Sometimes that is right. It is usually the last lever I would pull. A price cut is permanent, it comes out of a margin that Shopee’s fees already dent, and it does nothing about a blurry first photo or a chat window nobody answers.

This is for sellers with a live shop, some visitors and too few orders. I’m writing from Singapore, so the Seller Centre menus in my head are the Singapore ones. Other markets differ in places, so match by function, not by label. By the end you will have a funnel log, a fixed listing and a habit of changing one thing at a time. I can’t promise what that does to your sales.

What you need

A live Shopee shop with listings and about two weeks of visitor data. No traffic means no funnel to read. If you are not set up yet, start with how to become a Shopee seller in the Philippines.
Seller Centre access, web or app. The Philippine web version is at seller.shopee.ph, and the Seller Education Hub inside it has Shopee’s own walkthroughs.
A spreadsheet. Google Sheets or Excel, either works.
Landed cost and margin for each item, so vouchers don’t quietly turn into losses. Fees change, so check current commission and service fees on Shopee’s Help Centre as of September 2026, not from memory. I lined up the three platforms in Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop seller fees compared.
A phone camera and a plain wall or a sheet of white card.
Python 3, only if you want the script in step 1. A spreadsheet does the same job.

Nothing here has a mandatory cost. Vouchers and free shipping cost margin, and Shopee Ads are optional and come last.

Step by step

Step 1: read your funnel before you change anything

Open Seller Centre, find the business insights section and pull product performance for the last 14 days. For each listing note visitors, add to cart and orders. Labels vary by market and shift with app updates, as of September 2026, so match by meaning.

Log one row per listing per week in funnel_log.csv:

week,listing,visitors,add_to_cart,orders,change_made

Then run this to get the rates:

import csv

for r in csv.DictReader(open("funnel_log.csv")):
    v, c, o = int(r["visitors"]), int(r["add_to_cart"]), int(r["orders"])
    if v:
        print(r["week"], r["listing"], "visit>cart", round(c / v, 3),
              "visit>order", round(o / v, 3),
              "cart>order", round(o / c, 3) if c else "n/a")

Low visit-to-cart means the page isn’t persuading: photo, title, price as shown in search. Carts but few orders means friction near checkout: shipping fee, delivery estimate, no voucher, a question nobody answered.

Expected output: one line per listing per week, and a clear answer on which half of the funnel is weaker.

If it breaks: blank cells crash the script, so fill them with 0. If a listing gets only a few visitors a week the rates swing wildly, so pool similar listings or wait another week.

Step 2: fix the first image and the title

The first image and the title are your whole pitch in search results. Retake the first image square, with the product filling most of the frame, a plain background and no text collage. Put the noun a buyer would actually type at the front of the title, then the variant, then size or material. Padding a title with unrelated keywords looks spammy and can break Shopee’s listing rules.

Start with your three highest-visitor listings, since a small gain matters most there.

Expected output: three listings with new first images and titles, each logged in the change_made column.

If it breaks: a photo that looks fine on your laptop can turn muddy on a phone. Check it in the Shopee app at real size, since a phone is what buyers are holding.

Step 3: rewrite the description around buyer questions

Open your chat history and list the last ten questions buyers asked. Answer each one in the listing: size in cm, what is in the box, material, compatibility, usual delivery time. Add a size chart image where it applies and a short video if the category supports it. Name variations plainly, “navy / M” and not “style 2”. Say what the product is not, too, since that saves you a refund request later.

Claims like “original” or “authentic” have to be true. If you sell in the Philippines, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) handles consumer complaints about online sellers, and misleading listings are the kind of thing that lands there. This is not legal advice.

Expected output: a description that answers the common questions before they are asked, and fewer repeat questions in chat within a week or two.

If it breaks: no chat history yet? Ask a friend to read the page cold and tell you what is unclear. Public reviews on comparable products also show what buyers wonder about.

Step 4: answer chat fast

Chat is where undecided buyers make up their minds. Turn on auto-reply, save quick replies for stock, sizing, shipping and returns, and check chat several times a day. I go deeper in how to improve chat response rate across stores.

One opinion you can argue with: read the question before you paste a quick reply. A canned answer to the wrong question looks worse than a slightly slower right one.

Expected output: your chat response rate improves and nothing sits unanswered at the end of the day.

If it breaks: if you cannot watch chat during work hours, set the auto-reply to state your real reply hours. Do not switch it off.

Step 5: sort out shipping cost and delivery promise

If step 1 showed carts but few orders, shipping is the usual suspect. Look at Shopee’s free shipping programme (the name and fee differ by market, so check the programme page in Seller Centre), set an honest handling time and ship inside it. Late shipping counts against you, which I cover in how Shopee penalty points work.

Do the arithmetic before you join: item price, minus commission and service fees, minus the programme fee, minus what the item cost you. If what is left is thin, you can’t afford the programme on that item.

Expected output: a lower or zero shipping fee shown to buyers on eligible items, and a margin figure per item that you calculated rather than guessed.

If it breaks: if the programme is not open to your shop yet, or the margin does not survive it, skip it. Nudge the price up a little and use a minimum-spend voucher (step 6) instead.

Step 6: use vouchers and bundles instead of a flat price cut

In the marketing tools, set up a shop voucher with a minimum spend, then look at add-on deals and bundle deals for items that go together. Some markets also have a follow-prize tool that rewards new followers. I would take a minimum-spend voucher over a flat price cut every time. You can switch it off, it raises basket size, and it leaves your listed price alone.

Expected output: voucher tags on your listings and shop page, and a dated row in your log so you can see whether the rate moved.

If it breaks: if the voucher eats your margin, raise the minimum spend before you shrink the discount.

Step 7: build proof without faking it

A new shop has few ratings, and buyers notice. What sits inside the rules: ship on time, pack well, put a card in the parcel asking for an honest review and a photo if they are happy, and reply to bad reviews politely and in public. Show your own photos of the product in real use. Keep your account clean too, see account health on Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop compared.

Do not offer rewards for five stars, buy reviews or ask friends to rate you. Those break platform rules and I am not covering them.

Expected output: real ratings, arriving slowly. I won’t pretend it is fast.

If it breaks: for a bad rating, read it, reply plainly and fix the cause. Do not pressure the buyer to remove it.

Step 8: change one thing, wait, read the log

Pick one listing, make one change, note it in change_made and leave it for 14 days or until you have a fair number of visitors. Re-run the script, then keep the change or revert it. Shopee’s double-date sales such as 9.9, 10.10 and 11.11 swing traffic and buyer intent, so never compare a campaign week with a normal one.

Once the rates are steady, put a small amount into Shopee Ads. Before that you are paying to send visitors to a page that does not convert. The organic side is in how to get Shopee sales without paid marketing.

Expected output: a log of dated changes with before and after rates for each.

If it breaks: if two things changed at once, say a voucher and a campaign, mark the row as muddied and do not draw conclusions from it.

Common pitfalls

Cutting the price first. It is fast, and it also cuts margin for good. Fix photos and chat first, then see whether you still have a price problem.
Changing five things in one weekend. You get a better or worse week and no idea why.
Buying ads for a listing that does not convert. The visitors you pay for behave like the ones you already get.
Copying a competitor’s photos and text. Rights holders can report the listing, and their photo cannot show what your stock really looks like.
Claims you cannot back, like “100% original” or “guaranteed”. Buyers hold you to them and so can regulators. This is not legal advice, but check your wording.

Scaling this

Ten times. If you are at a few orders a week today, ten times is a handful a day. The spreadsheet still works. Standardise your photo setup and description layout so each new listing starts from the same template.

A hundred times. Chat becomes the bottleneck. Give staff Shopee sub-accounts instead of sharing your login, so access can be removed when someone leaves. Stock drift starts to show up as cancellations, and cancellations hurt account health. Multichannel tools help, and I compared a few in best multichannel order management tools for SEA sellers. If your team will share phones for chat coverage, see running seller apps across multiple phones.

A thousand times. Someone owns conversion every week, listing by listing. Registration and tax obligations change with volume, and for the Philippines a starting point is BIR registration requirements for Philippine Shopee sellers. This is not legal or tax advice, so confirm with the BIR or an accountant. If you also sell on Lazada or TikTok Shop, funnel numbers are not comparable across platforms, so keep one log per platform. Beyond this size the advice depends heavily on your category, so treat it as rough direction.

Where to go next

How to improve chat response rate across stores, if chat is your weak point after step 4.
How to get Shopee sales without paid marketing, for the traffic side of the funnel.
How Shopee penalty points work, worth reading before you promise faster shipping.

The full list is on the blog index.

Written by Xavier Fok

disclosure: this article may contain affiliate links. if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. verdicts are independent of payouts. last reviewed by Xavier Fok on 2026-09-22.