E-commerce platform

Hi Forumosans,
i would like to ask what are the best e-commerce platforms available in Taiwan.
Products are to be sold in Taiwan.
Some of the products are one time purchase while others will have the option on monthly payments for a certain period ( 3 months - 6 months).
The common plateforms are Shopify, wix (now), shopline, waca etc…
What are the one some of you use and are happy with ( which offer the monthly payment to their customers)?
thanks

I don’t use them, but here is a review in Chinese.

thanks

I’ve seen some Taiwanese businesses use Shopify. By monthly payment, did you mean something like a payment plan? A quick Google search shows a couple of Shopify plug-ins that could sort out that problem for you.

yes i saw that shopify has all kind of plugin which can do the ‘monthly subscription’ payment type.
But having a product for Taiwanese, we are looking into payment type that locals will not struggle with ( credit card, linepay etc…).
Shopify is the best but not adapted for the local market.
using shopify to sell abroad is not a problem but to sell to taiwan is more complicated

Why dont you just use Shopline then

well it is the most interesting platform.
My issue is that they customize the plan for your demand ( i have asked for the monthly payment but need to go through all the registration blablablabla to get a quote – not a plugin i can add or something like that).
The other thing is that they are on the market since 2013 and have very few videos online ( youtube) — talking about tutorial videos or just reviews.
I mean you can compare shopify, wix and woocommerce and have hundreds of different videos offering the pros and cons. Then be able to choose what suit you best.
with Shopline–> it is pretty silent.
and that is scary to me :no_mouth:

Just got the pricing for the plan which will allow me for the monthly payment subscription style…
and definitely will not go for this plateform
120K/year

1 Like

For that money you can get a custom webpage programmed.
Your running cost will be the server + domain + what your payment processor of choice charges.

not planning on spending that sort of money.
will keep checking other platforms
:face_vomiting:

Any reason why you’re not keen on using Woocommerce then? Unlike Shopline, at least it has a lot more documentation available.

Iam just not qualified to do it on woocommerce. I believe it requieres some coding etc… and that is something that i have absolutely no understanding.
I had long time ago various shopify account but was selling to the usa.
I have currently a wix account for my website.
so i believe it will be between wix and shopify but all is very unclear to me.
was just hoping for someone to share his experience with the e store of wix, or any other platform.
For wix and shopify it is more of a ‘follow the instruction on youtube’

Now doesn’t seem like a good time to pursue a career in Iraq…

1 Like

I have been told that Shopline is very popular among Taiwan e-shops - for those who set up their own shopping carts instead of pushing customers to product pages on the large marketplaces

Does anyone have any experiences with Shopline to share? Is a good enough alternative to Shopify (is Shopify not Taiwan-friendly in terms of its interaction with payment processors?)

Speaking of Taiwan marketplaces, one of my partners shared this Top 10 list with me today.

image

I am surprised to see Shopee at the top. Isn’t it the newest of the bunch? My partners and I are discussing how we would start up our own e-commerce website and we are leaning towards not having our own shopping cart and instead pushing customers who use our product website to go to a marketplace to place their orders.

Wouldn’t it make sense to have as many possible ways to buy? Some of these marketplace websites have their own particular audiences - a MoMo user may not be the same as a PCHome user.

1 Like

image

1 Like

I definitely need to investigate these platforms and the pros and cons for them with local (Taiwan) vs International sales. It may be worth it to just pay some money and set up a decent website in the end if doing both International and local sales. Anyone with experience here?

For context, we have a small crafting business on Etsy currently based in Canada, with primarily North American sales (under $40K per year). We would be moving in 2024 (on the Gold card - so work visa is not an issue) and would be based in Taiwan, but with (likely) mostly international sales.

You want to be wherever your audience is going to be. So, for example, if you recognize that a significant portion of your Etsy visitors or customers are from Taiwan or use Traditional Chinese language settings, then you can justify setting up stores on Pinkoi.com (which has tried to position itself as an East Asian / Southeast Asian Etsy) and the top 2 or 3 in the chart above.

If your insight is that North America will continue to be the dominant customer base, then you will need to ensure your payment systems and logistics are designed to be effortless for them.

For me, the Top 10 chart is encouraging since Shopee has an English interface (it is headquartered in Singapore and many/most of its Southeast Asia sellers operate in English). I expected it to be #3 in traffic for Taiwan at most.

At Shopify.tw, the annual fee is US$ 3,600 (approx NT$ 103,000) for the Advanced Plan. Is there also a fee for each successful transaction?

Presumably, this would be comparable to the fully-loaded SHOPLINE plan (9 additional modules), which costs NT$ 115,000 (approx US$ 4,000) + 1%.

But neither of these include the transaction costs from the payment processors and the fulfilment services (Tcat, 7-11, ATMs, Paypal). How comparable are these fees if one were to subscribe to them directly instead of through Shopify or SHOPLINE?

didn’t follow up with shopline.
sorry.
best would be to have a website ( wix for example) and to go directly with a payment provider directly here in taiwan.
They generally charge 2.8% fee for every sold item and NO additional fee.
No extra charge.
credit card, atm, bank transfer, 7/11 and all other available payment method for the customers.

I will look at ECPay and EZPay. Are there any other online payment providers I should look at?