What is bulk upload? It is a tool to assist sellers in uploading their products in bulk, especially useful for sellers with huge amount of products. But for different marketplaces such as Lazada and Shopee, they have different method and process. So which one is better and more useful to sellers?
Before I move on, I wish to clarify that this is solely an opinion and we do not intend to biases either marketplace, Lazada nor Shopee. And in Red Dino, we are hired to manage sellers’ account which include uploading products. This has given us much experience in uploading different categories of products in both platforms. If you wish to know more about us, click here: https://reddinoventures.com
Without further ado, let’s begin on the process for both marketplaces.
Lazada:
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Head over to Lazada seller centre > Manage Products > click on Import > select your product category to download the bulk upload template.
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Start filling up the templates with you product details
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Bulk upload only allow html link for images, so you will need to post your image somewhere and copy the image address
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Head back to Lazada seller centre where you download the template, and select upload new products and drag your edited template into it
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Lazada will access and validate your template, if everything is fine, you will receive a green tick and if not, you will receive an error report.
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In the case where you receive an error report, edit the affected products and re-upload the file.
Shopee:
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Head over to Shopee seller centre > My products > click on Batch Action Add New Products > After redirected, click on Download Template
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Start filling up the templates with your product details
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To search for category ID, you can click on the ‘Category List’ in your download template page. Or here https://seller.shopee.com.my/portal/categories
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Bulk upload only allow html link for images, so you will need to post your image somewhere and copy the image address. Or you can leave it blank and upload them in the 5th
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Once you’re done, click on the Validate button. You will not be allow to continue if there’s an error. Errors are usually highlighted in red, after you have edited the errors, click on validate again.
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After validation, click on export and there will be a separate file generated. This is important because you will be uploading the other file and not the one which you initially download.
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Go back to the Download Template page and go ahead and pull the exported file into the prepared column.
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Once that’s done, you will need to continue editing your products in Shopee seller centre.
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If you have all your images filled in during step 2, you only have to wait for Shopee to complete download. If not, you can proceed in uploading images for your listings.
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Brand and additional attribution to be selected in the stage.
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Shipping information to be selected during this stage
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Finally, once you have done all the necessary changes, click on save all and publish. Do remember that Shopee will not allow you to bulk upload anything if you have unpublished products.
What do we think of Lazada bulk upload feature?
Pros:
- It’s literally a one step process where after you finish filling up the template and upload, you are done (Given that you have no error).
- Different categories has different templates, which makes it clear for sellers on what is required to fill up for their products.
- Lazada’s bulk upload templates comes with basic guide. This is useful because we can always refer back on the guide without searching them online.
- Error report is very helpful in pointing out the cause of error, which make it simpler to tackle the problem.
Cons:
- Having to upload images into other web server and copy images web address is a hassle and could waste a lot of time.
- Compared to Shopee, Lazada’s bulk upload template is much more tedious. There are much more information to fill up.
- You would not know if you had any error up until you upload your file. Which could be frustrating sometime as we just want to get it over with after finish filling up the form.
What do we think of Shopee bulk upload feature?
Pros:
- Filling up the bulk upload template is much simpler compare to Lazada.
- Validate feature is simply brilliant, it allow us to find out any errors we made before uploading it to Shopee.
- Shopee made it a choice for sellers to either upload photos directly from their platform or through images web address.
Cons:
- Shopee require much more steps to complete the upload process. Unlike Lazada, once we upload the template, there are still much editing to be done.
- Validation in the template though brilliant, could be inconvenient sometime. We would have to figure out what’s wrong and try till we get it right.
- A need to export file from the template is an extra steps which we wish we could skip.
Conclusion is, both have their pros and cons and they are good in their own way. But when you are familiar with the process, we would prefer Lazada bulk upload method cbecause we could upload more products in a shorter time period. The trick is, learn from the error and never repeat the mistake. As for Shopee, it is a friendlier method for beginners.
Anyway, good job to both Lazada and Shopee! Cheers and happy selling!