A SMALL Thai retailer who expands into online sales can boost takings by an average of 51 per cent a year, according to a new report released by an e-commerce platform provider.

The shift into "e-tail" has also grown retailers' customer bases be-yond their home markets, especially for lower-income regional sellers based outside the capital region of Bangkok.

South-east Asian online services company Sea Group polled close to 7,000 vendors in Thailand that use its Shopee e-commerce portal. Of these, just under one-third had a pre-existing offline business, while the rest sold their wares online from the outset.