Wish.com is one of the biggest online marketplaces on the planet, and so it’s only natural that it’s of great interest to eCommerce entrepreneurs looking for a truly global reach. According to Similarweb, in June 2020 Wish.com attracted almost 70 million unique visitors globally in a single month.
Wish has gained popularity as a place where, apart from a relatively small list of banned items, you can buy or sell anything. But if you’re new to the platform it can be hard to know where to start and how to gain market traction when there are so many competitors already operating.
In this blog, we’ll walk you through how to set up your store, list your products, and start selling on Wish.
Here’s the topics we’ll be tackling:
What you should know before using Wish
Account setup and becoming a Wish seller
Understanding and taking advantage of product feeds
9 best practices to maximize sales
Wish originally started out as a place where people could create ‘wishlists’ of products they wanted to buy. It gained some traction, and in order to make money, it turned into an eCommerce marketplace. Now it’s a site people visit to find good deals on products that match their interests.
Before you start selling on Wish, it’s important to know some general information to make your store successful.
There aren’t any requirements to setting up your account and store except having a valid email address and phone number. But if you want to validate your store, you’ll need to state what kind of merchant you are and verify your identity. There are two options you can choose from:
Individual: Choose this type if you are unincorporated and just selling on your own. You’ll need to go through an identification process where your government-issued ID is checked against the information you provided earlier in the set up process (full name and country).
Business: Choose this type if you have a registered company. To do so, you’ll need to provide the contact information of the official owner and be able to prove the following information:
After filling out and submitting your store validation request you should have a response within 2 business days. If your request goes through successfully, you’ll see your status change to “Validated”.
If it was unsuccessful your status will be changed to ‘Rejected’. You’ll be given a list of reasons why it didn’t go through. Make the changes and try submitting your validation request once again.
Wish.com is like Amazon in that you can really find anything there. But there are some product categories that sell better than others. When shoppers visit the website, there are 10 main categories that they can choose from.
If you’re selling items related to these categories then chances are you have a chance at being successful.
While you will be able to sell most anything, these are some of the products that won’t be approved:
You can check out the full list to make sure all of your products comply with the guidelines.
Wish.com has gained popularity around the world. But according to Forbes, at least a third of all products are sold in the United States. So in order to have a greater chance of success, you should at least be selling there.
Global
When setting up your shop you can decide where you want to ship to. It’s possible to ship to 138 countries and 17 regions worldwide. You can check the complete list (and officiant abbreviations) where shipping is available here.
Wish Local
If you have your products in-house (rather than shipping from a warehouse), you can sell on Wish Local. This gives shoppers the opportunity to pick up the items in person.
As you establish your store and start selling products, there are a number of factors and financial conditions to take into account.
Tip: if you're worried about your profit margin being reduced when selling on Wish, take a look at how you canautomatically reprice your products per each eCommerce channel you're selling on.
If you decide you want to have your sales fulfilled by Wish, then your products can be stored in one of their warehouses. You can choose this option if your items are being sent to “major customer markets” either within the US or Europe.
Choosing this option will qualify you for Wish Express automatically, which could potentially raise your impressions by up to 10 times.
Fees for storing your items in Wish warehouses and FBW depend on which region your products are being held in. Once you have an account, you’ll be able to check the fees specifically by warehouse.
United States
For the US, Wish’s FAQ page provides a table of shipping costs by weight (oz). To see the information about warehouse fees you’ll need to navigate to FBW > General Fee and Payment Information in the Wish Merchant Dashboard.
Europe
For the EU, Wish’s FAQ page provides cost tables for:
Accepted payment methods
In most countries, Wish accepts popular forms of payment like:
Cash, paying on delivery, and bank transfers can’t be used.
As this handy graphic demonstrates, getting up and running with Wish and reaching large numbers of potential customers is very easy:
Ready to create your account and start selling? Follow these steps for smooth sailing.
Follow this link to add your store name (needs to be unique), email, and create your password.
Enter in your contact information and verify your phone number with an SMS code and then verify your email address. That’s it! Your account has been created and you’re ready to move to the next steps.
It can take up to 3 business days for the Wish team to approve your store. You’ll get an email letting you know as soon as it’s been approved.
You can either choose to only ship in the US, or select other countries.
You can either add products individually with the Wish wizard or in bulk with your data feed.
ManuallyYou can add products one by one. Wish provides a shop wizard that makes this process pretty simple. It’s a good option if you don’t already have a product feed or too many products.
With a product feedYou may have a document that lists all of your products along with all the data and information about them. You can use this to upload your products to Wish, but it will need to be in CSV form. We’ll dive into more about how to do this in the next section.
As you get more experienced with the Wish marketplace, you’ll come to realise how useful product feeds can be in adding your products to the platform. Wish is a friendly platform for sellers using product feeds, to the point that sellers can upload their entire product catalog in a single file, as long as it’s properly formatted and populated.
These are the nine main attributes required for each product that you want to list on Wish:
In a CSV file, these attributes can be filled in for each product, along with information for a range of additional attributes if appropriate, such as:
Once the file is completed, it can then be uploaded through the Wish Merchant Dashboard. Confirmation of a successful upload should be given immediately, but the full importation of the products can take up to 24 hours.
As a seller on Wish you have two main options for filling orders after making a sale.
Fulfilled by Shop
FBS (or, fulfilled by shop) means that you handle getting the items to your customers yourself.
Fulfilled by Wish.com
FBW (or, fulfilled by Wish) means that your items are stored in warehouses and when your customer places an order, it is sent to them automatically by Wish.
You can check your account to see which products you have in the warehouse at any time.
There are some best practices that Wish says can improve your sales by 20-50%.
1. Have competitive prices
Shoppers come to Wish hoping to find extremely good deals. If your products are more expensive than your competitors, they’re not likely to choose you over another merchant.
They’ll also get better exposure on the site itself and may have a higher chance of showing on the Popular front page. You can then take advantage of the impulse buy since shoppers won’t want to miss out on a good deal.
In order to really lift your sales, it’s recommended to upload at least 5 images per product. The more visuals you offer, the better. That way you can really give shoppers a good idea of the item they’ll be getting and they’ll have more confidence in their purchase.
The more information you can add about your products, the better. Shoppers are interested in knowing things like size and color, especially when your products come in different variations.
Shoppers have a personalized experience on Wish and you can use this to your advantage. The site is not primarily search based since shoppers are shown products they’re most likely to buy. By providing high-quality listings you increase your chances of being shown to potential customers, and may even have a chance of your products becoming searchable.
Having to deal with returns and refunds is not an enjoyable experience for either party. So make sure your listings are accurate. Otherwise, it will have a negative impact on your store’s exposure. On the other hand, providing accurate listings will lead to great reviews, loyal customers, and therefore more sales.
Wish’s objective is to give shoppers the best experience possible so that they come back to the site again and again. If you do your part in making this happen then you’ll benefit as well. Things like shipping your orders as fast as possible, offering quality products and strictly following the sizing guidelines will make a difference.
The more countries you’re able to ship to, the more impressions your products will get. If possible, update your shipping so that your products are available worldwide.
From time to time you may notice a notification rewards section of your account. Make sure to pay attention to these.
Products that you’re able to offer express shipping for will become eligible for Wish Express. This means that you’re able to deliver the item within the “max delivery days per product per country”. These products will be given a special badge that lets shoppers know they can expect their purchase to arrive in a certain time frame.
If your products meet these qualifications then they’ll automatically be enrolled:
But be careful, because if you’re not able to fulfill the orders in the time stated then the penalties can be hefty.
Another badge that can be added to your product is called ‘Verified by Wish’. This lets shoppers know that your products have gotten a lot of positive reviews and can lead to more sales.
While getting these product feed CSV files set up and uploaded is relatively straightforward, there is so much more you can do to maximize the potential of your listings.
For starters, it’s always worth considering how creative and eye-catching you can be with your listings:
This is good practice on any eCommerce platform, but in the Wish marketplace where there are so many products to choose from, it’s absolutely essential to take the time to fine-tune your listings.
At a more technical level, you can also deploy tools like DataFeedWatch that can help you optimize your product feeds much more quickly and easily.
For example you could add 10% or 15% to your regular price when sending products over to Wish.
To do that, you can create a simple rule in DataFeedWatch that allows you to automatically recalculate your prices.
So let’s say you'd like to add 15% on top of your regular store prices, here's what it would look like:
Then your prices will look like this:
This tactic is especially useful when you're running a multi-channel strategy and want to take a tailored apporach to each channel. For some channels like Google Shopping, you need to have the same price in your shop's website as what’s being advertised. But you may want to adjust your pirices for other channels - such as Wish or Amazon marketplace.
You can keep all of your feeds in one place and just make adjustments to your product information by channel by using rules.
If you’re looking for an eCommerce marketplace that allows you to reach customers across the globe, Wish could be a great option for you. There’s a lot of potential if you’re able provide quality listings and products for a low cost.
About 3 million products sell on Wish each day and in the US, it was the fourth largest online marketplace by volume in 2020. It’s possible to create a profitable Wish strategy, whether you want to sell locally or ship internationally.
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