An e-commerce agency in Malaysia should run five things for an online brand: the store itself, the paid ads that bring buyers in, your Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop listings, the emails and messages that bring buyers back, and a monthly report on the profit all of it leaves behind. If an agency only does one of those, it is a specialist. That can be the right hire. You just need to know which four jobs are still sitting with you.
Most founders find this out the expensive way. They hire an ads team, sales go up, and three months later the bank balance has not moved, because nobody was watching the checkout, the repeat rate or the fees. This guide walks through each of the five jobs, what good looks like in each and what a Malaysian brand should expect to pay.
What does an e-commerce agency in Malaysia do?
It runs the commercial side of an online store, end to end. The Department of Statistics Malaysia put e-commerce income at RM338 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 2.9% on a year earlier. That money moves through a chain: someone sees an ad, opens a page, adds to cart, pays, receives a parcel and, if things go well, buys again. An e-commerce agency owns as much of that chain as you hand it.
Here is how the work usually splits.
Not every brand needs all five from one team. A brand doing RM40,000 a month, mostly on Shopee, needs marketplace help and a simple store far more than it needs a full retention programme. A brand doing RM400,000 a month across its own site and three marketplaces needs all five, and it needs them talking to each other.
What should the agency do with your online store?
Make it convert the traffic you are already paying for. Baymard Institute's running average across 50 studies puts cart abandonment at 70.22%, which means roughly seven of every ten people who add something to a cart leave without paying. Some of that is window shopping and cannot be fixed. Much of it can. In the same research, 40% of US shoppers who abandoned for a reason other than browsing said extra costs such as shipping and fees were too high, and 18% left because the site asked them to create an account.
Baymard's checkout testing on large US and European stores found that better checkout design alone can lift conversion by 35.26% on average. Read that number carefully: those were big, mature sites. A Malaysian store on a default theme with a forced sign-up, no FPX option on the first screen and shipping revealed at the last step usually has more room than that.
So the store work an agency should be running looks like this:
| Store task | What good looks like | How you check it |
|---|---|---|
| Checkout | Guest checkout, FPX, cards and e-wallets on one screen, shipping cost shown before the cart | Count the steps from cart to paid |
| Product pages | Real photos, size or usage guidance, delivery date, reviews near the price | Watch five session recordings a week |
| Speed | Pages load fast on a mid-range Android phone over 4G | Test on a real phone, not a laptop |
| Tracking | Purchases, revenue and refunds reported to Meta, Google and GA4 correctly | Match one week of platform sales against your store's orders |
| Search | Category and product pages built to rank | See our e-commerce SEO guide |
If an agency pitches you ads before it has looked at this table, ask why. Every ringgit of ad spend ends up on these pages.
Which paid ads should an e-commerce agency run?
Usually Meta first, Google second and TikTok when the product photographs well in motion. Meta is still the cheapest way to reach Malaysian shoppers at scale: we break down the real CPMs and click costs in our guide to Meta ads costs in Malaysia. Google catches people already searching for the product or the category, which makes it the better channel for things people look up by name. TikTok rewards brands that can produce a steady flow of short, honest videos.
The channel matters less than the target. An agency that tells you it hit a 3x ROAS has told you very little until you know your break-even point. Here is a worked example for a single product:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Selling price | RM120 |
| Cost of the product | RM40 |
| Shipping, packaging and payment fees | RM15 |
| Left over before advertising | RM65 |
| Break-even ROAS (RM120 ÷ RM65) | 1.85x |
At 1.85x this brand covers its costs and earns nothing. At 3x it makes about RM25 on each order. At 1.5x it loses money on every sale, however good the dashboard looks. Run your own numbers through our break-even ROAS calculator before you agree any targets with an agency, and put that number in the contract.
Creative is the other half of the ads job. Meta and TikTok now do most of the audience targeting themselves, which leaves the ad itself as the main thing you control. A good e-commerce agency makes new ads every week, retires the tired ones and can tell you which product angle is winning. If yours sends the same four images for two months, the account is coasting.
Should the agency also run Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop?
If those channels carry real sales, yes, because the economics there are different and they shift often. Shopee drew about 43.8 million monthly visits in Malaysia in July 2025 against Lazada's 11.4 million, according to Statista, so for many brands the marketplace is the busiest shop they own.
It is also the one with the least control over margin. Lazada changed its Malaysian commission rates for Marketplace and LazMall sellers again from 14 August 2026, with rates set by product category and 8% SST charged on top of the commission. Shopee revised its own commission structure more than once in 2026 as well. Those fees come out of the same RM65 in the example above. A two-point rise in commission on a thin-margin product can wipe out the profit from a campaign day.
An agency that runs your marketplaces should be doing four things every month. It should keep listings, prices and stock in line with your own store so you are not undercutting yourself. It should plan campaign days such as 11.11 and 12.12 with a margin floor, so a voucher never sells below cost. It should run the platforms' own ads with the same break-even discipline as Meta. And it should move marketplace buyers towards your own channels where the rules allow, since a customer you can email again costs nothing to reach the second time.
If you only sell on marketplaces today, that last job matters most. Your brand site is the one place where the customer list belongs to you.
How should an agency bring customers back?
With a small number of automated emails and messages that run every day without anyone pressing send. The basic set for a Malaysian store is short:
- A welcome series for new subscribers, three or four emails over ten days.
- An abandoned cart reminder within a few hours, then one more the next day.
- A thank-you and how-to-use message after delivery.
- A replenishment reminder timed to when the product runs out, for anything consumable.
- A win-back message for buyers who have not ordered in 90 to 120 days.
WhatsApp works well in Malaysia for order updates and for the cart reminder, as long as the customer opted in and the messages are useful. Blasting promotions to a WhatsApp list is the quickest way to get the number reported and blocked.
This is the cheapest revenue an online brand has, because you already paid to acquire the buyer. It is also the job agencies skip most often. Ads produce a monthly number that looks good in a report. Retention produces a slower number that shows up as a lower blended cost per order over six months. Ask any agency you are talking to which flows it would build first for your store, and how it would measure them.
What should an e-commerce agency report every month?
Profit, then the numbers that explain it. Platform ROAS is useful inside an ad account and misleading outside it, because Meta, Google and TikTok each claim credit for the same sale. We explain the alternatives in how to measure marketing ROI beyond ROAS.
A monthly e-commerce report worth reading fits on one page and answers these questions in this order:
| Question | Metric |
|---|---|
| Did we make money? | Contribution margin: revenue minus product cost, fees, shipping and ad spend |
| Did marketing pay for itself overall? | Total revenue ÷ total ad spend across every channel, known as MER |
| What did a new customer cost? | Total ad spend ÷ first-time buyers |
| Are customers coming back? | Share of orders from returning buyers, by month |
| Where did the sales come from? | Own store vs Shopee vs Lazada vs TikTok Shop, with margin per channel |
| What changes next month? | Three decisions, each tied to a number above |
That last row is the test. A report that ends with a list of metrics and no decisions is a record. One that ends with "shift RM5,000 from the weakest Meta campaign into the replenishment flow and raise the free-shipping threshold to RM99" is someone running your business with you.
How much does an e-commerce agency cost in Malaysia?
It depends on how many of the five jobs you hand over. The bands below line up with the wider ranges in our guide to marketing agency costs in Malaysia.
| What you hire | Typical monthly fee | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Ads only, one or two platforms | RM5,000 to RM12,000, or 10% to 20% of ad spend | Brands with a store that already converts well |
| Marketplace management only | RM3,000 to RM10,000, sometimes plus a share of sales | Brands where Shopee or Lazada carry most revenue |
| Ads, store optimisation and retention together | RM10,000 to RM25,000 | Brands past roughly RM100,000 a month in sales |
| All five jobs from one team | RM20,000 to RM40,000 and up | Brands selling across their own site and several marketplaces |
A new store build or redesign is usually priced separately as a project, from RM8,000 to well past RM60,000 for a custom website design. Ad spend and marketplace fees sit on top of all of these.
Be careful with pure commission deals. A fee that is a percentage of revenue pays the agency for every sale, including the ones that lose you money. If you go that route, tie the fee to contribution margin, or at least to revenue above an agreed break-even ROAS.
How do you choose an e-commerce agency in Malaysia?
Ask it to show you how it thinks about your margins before it talks about growth. Five questions sort most agencies quickly:
- What is our break-even ROAS, and how did you work it out?
- Which two changes would you make to our checkout this month?
- How would you stop our marketplace prices from undercutting our own store?
- Which automated emails would you build first, and how will we know they work?
- Can we see a monthly report you send to a current e-commerce client, with the names removed?
Strong agencies answer the first three from a quick look at your store and a few questions about your costs. Weak ones change the subject to creative or to a case study. For the wider checklist on agency selection, see how to choose a digital marketing agency in KL.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an e-commerce agency and a digital marketing agency?
A digital marketing agency can work for any business, from a clinic to a property developer. An e-commerce agency works on the full path of an online sale: store, checkout, ads, marketplaces and repeat orders. Some agencies do both. Check whether the team has run a store with stock, fees and returns before.
Do I need my own website if I already sell on Shopee?
You can grow on Shopee alone for a while. Your own store gives you the customer list, your own pricing and margins that the platform cannot change for you. Most brands that last end up running both, with the marketplace for reach and the brand site for repeat buyers.
How long before an e-commerce agency shows results?
Ads and checkout fixes can move sales within four to six weeks. Retention flows take two to three months to show in the numbers. SEO on your own store takes six months or more. Agree which result you expect at each point before you start.
Should I pay an e-commerce agency a percentage of sales?
Only if the fee is tied to profit or to sales above your break-even point. A straight share of revenue rewards the agency for discounting and for unprofitable ad spend, which is the opposite of what you want.
Can one agency handle Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop together?
Yes, and it is usually better that way, because prices, stock and campaign days need to match across all three. Ask how the agency syncs pricing and stock, and who on the team owns each platform day to day.
Talk to us about your store
If you want one team running your store, ads, marketplaces and retention against a single margin number, start with our performance marketing team. Bring your last three months of orders and ad spend, and talk to us. We will tell you where the margin is leaking before we quote you anything.