Research revealed there are two ways to make an e-store stand out. First the seller should use key words that potential buyers would frequently use in searches. In fact, traffic and sales on the e-market are largely determined by appropriate key words and advertisements with search engines such as Google.

    As a start up their online store only earned a few hundred yuan per month, which helped pay family expenses but left no extra funds for advertising. Just getting by in the beginning, they then discovered competition became fiercer; the store slid into a very rough patch.

    To cope with the situation, they resorted to fiddling with appearances; to make their products look different, they changed the common name of “almond powder” into “beauty-care almond powder.” Soon after, the new name attracted the interest of many potential buyers. Cleverly, they sometimes intentionally used the wrong characters or illogical phrases in product names, based on common mistakes made by netizens while typing.

    To round out those tactics, convincing customers that their products are different is also important. “Many shoppers still feel the instinct to stage a hard and bitter bargaining session before placing an order, and many have enquired about the price repeatedly before buying from my store. Our profits are already thin, so we have to make the customers see that our products are different or superior, even if they are not. For example, we can ensure customers that the quality of our goods is guaranteed because they are bought from designated factories. To put it simply, we have to explain the selling point of our products in a simple and clear way,” explains Hongbo.

    A Store of One's Own

    Running an e-store has become an easy retail market entry point for many college graduates to start their own businesses. Low costs recommend it, but it still involves many risks.

    “Some of my friends opened e-stores years ago, but they all failed. I think it is not a matter of timing; it depends on how devoted you are to it, and how long you persist,” says Hongbo.

    He recalls that initially, he was almost chained to the computer for over ten hours a day – answering questions from potential customers, taking photos of the products and thinking carefully about the layout of the web pages to make it attractive and convenient. “It took so much of my time I concluded running an e-store amounts to having another lifestyle,” says Hongbo, “and you have to be tough enough to ride it out,” he adds. “I remember the first time I went to stock pyjamas; I walked the isles of almost every wholesale market in Beijing in order to find the lowest prices. I was so focused on cost savings I even begrudged RMB 10 for a simple lunch, and took buses to bring tens-of-kilograms of goods back home. But it felt incomparably sweet to sell out of all those pyjamas.”

    In China, Taobao is one of the most successful e-shopping platforms. With more and more e-stores opening in that cyberspace, Taobao has become very crowded with the same products on the same page layouts. With sellers also using the same confusing marketing tricks and similar channels to replenish stock, the risk of getting lost in the shuffle is high for both online buyers and sellers. On top of that, competition among the e-commerce platforms is more serious: eBay, a pioneer of e-commerce, Tecent, one of China’s largest Internet service portals, and the nation’s largest search engine Baidu have all ratcheted up efforts in this field.

    Hongbo and Chenchen still prefer the Taobao virtual mall. Taobao meets the needs and fits the habits of Chinese consumers. Besides, it has its own chat tool, through which buyers and sellers can communicate online anytime. Its services form a complete range, and the design of its web pages is clean and simple. Taobao’s basic services are totally free, another big attraction to online shoppers.

 LI RUIJIE is a journalist at China Ethnic News.