Listing your first products on Takealot

by | Feb 18, 2023 | Ecommerce, Takealot, Takealot Integration

You’ve decided you’re going to take the plunge and trade on Takealot.

Well done you’ve taken the first step.

Once your seller application has been approved by Takealot and you’ve completed the Takealot Onboarding lessons (which are awesome , Thanks Takealot team) you’ll need to load up products onto Takealot.

Whether you have an online store like Woocommerce or Shopify or are just listing on Takealot directly, you will need to list your products onto Takealot. There are several options here for you:

Step 1

Chat to a Takealot expert and request them to onboard your catalogue for you. You’ll be trading on Takealot before you know it and the Expert Fee will be covered in no time. I highly recommend this option if you are new to Takealot.

Step 2

Search Takealot Catalogue on the New Offers menu allows you to search the entire Takealot catalogue for products that you carry and simply add your own offer to an existing Takealot listing. Warning you do need need to be aware of the Buybox and how to optimize it when doing this.

Step 3

Add New Products on the new Offers menu allows you to add products to Takealot either manually one by one using the Add a Product route or in bulk using the “Upload Sheet” option.

  • The Add New Product button steps you through a series of screens to easily load your product information. It can be fairly time consuming but straight forward and easy to follow. Here you will need to assign each product to a Takealot category so make sure you have identified the correct categories for your product catalogue.
  • The Upload sheet are great to upload hundreds of products at quickly, though can be confusing to a lot of new resellers on Takealot. Uploading the same sheet several times to figure out what is wrong can be challenging at times.
  • Once you have submitted a product, Takealot needs to be approve each product to ensure it complies with listing rules and image policy. This can require a number of resubmissions and head scratching as to why your loadsheet has not been approved so some perseverance is required here.

Step 4

Ensure you are familiar with the Takealot listing guidelines found here:

https://www.takealot.com/sell

Takealot have rules about what products can be listed on the marketplace, eg adult products and fireworks are prohibited, and the product weight and sizes restrictions.

Step 5

Take care to crunch the numbers and only list products that you are going to make an acceptable GP% on – don’t go to all the trouble of listing products for R100 at 15% Gross margin and the category success fee is 10% – You’re going to lose money on that listing!!!

Step 6

Once the products are loaded you can edit the prices and leadtime location stock on hand on the my offers page like this:

Notes:

  • Stock on hand can never be less than 0 and RRP is either 0 (for no compare at pricing) or a price greater than the selling price, which is inclusive of VAT.
  • Prices are inclusive of VAT so make sure you take this into account.
  • The selling price, RRP and My SOH fields can be updated by a 3rd party integration such as Shopglu to keep your Takealot KPI’s looking great.
  • To maximise GP margins, prices and RRP’s can be managed by buy box apps or price modifiers such as Shopglu which keep you on top of the buy box and manage Takealot prices according to your specific business model.
  • You cannot edit the stock on hand fields for Stock At Takealot as these are controlled by Takealot system.
  • Note the recent introduction of JHB1 is simply a warehouse receiving location for Takealot and is not a different stock location on the seller portal as you can see above.
  • Customer pick up or drop off points are not listed as a stock location at Takealot.

Tips when loading the products:

  1. Look at other existing listings on Takealot first to ensure you know what information is required
  2. Takealot do not allow resellers to upload HTML so its text only
  3. Get your images ready well in advance – this is a constant challenge for some resellers. Make sure you have the correct background and sizing when getting product images taken as this can be a costly mistake later down the line
  4. You don’t need a barcode or sku if you don’t use them – Takealot will assign you a barcode. If you are intending to integrate your Takealot store at a later date then getting your sku’s and barcodes in order before loading onto Takealot is highly recommended
  5. Check how you want to list the products – you can list as a standard item or as a variant (eg a bag available in blue, brown or white)
  6. Check competitor pricing on similar products – then ensure you can still make a profit at that price point. Many resellers simply lower prices to win sales and end up making on loss.
  7. If your product has other resellers on the listing, check the buybox and ensure you have stock at Takealot and a competitive price or you won’t see too many orders you way.