Tutorial: How To Buy From Taobao?

Alright, today I shall attempt to do a tutorial on how to buy from Taobao.

Part 1 will be the basics, and part 2 will be on how do minimise the chances of buying a poor quality item or item that differs from the pictures.

I will also include shopping tips :)

If there's anything missing or if you have any questions you can ask me on formspring or email me.

Please do not ask me to help you search for items though.

I apologise for the small pictures due to alignment problem so
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

So let's start :)

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PART 1

This is assuming that you already know Chinese or have an understanding of basic Chinese. 

If you do not understand Chinese, you can translate using google translator. The more you use Taobao, the more you will understand what the Chinese phrases mean.

You don't have to know Chinese to shop on Taobao!

Most of the things are very basic, knowing Chinese helps, but it's not necessary :)

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This is the main page of Taobao - http://www.taobao.com/index_global.php

1. Click 搜索 to search for items.

2. This goes to tmall, it's just a different category on taobao where all items are sold by registered sellers so it's sort of like a proper shop. Not much difference except the pages are red in colour and layout is slightly different.

3. Categories. Click on them to browse through different categories of items.

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This is how the search page looks like.

1. Search for items.

2. This displays how many items the search engine has found.

3. This allows you to filter items. 

For example, if you are buying a shirt, you can choose the collar style, length of sleeve, material, colour, style etc. You can click on the link directly to filter all other items away or if there is an option of  +多选, you can tick on those properties that you want and filter off the rest in that category. 

4. Are you looking for more specific items? The search will suggest items you may be looking for.

5. Filter by whether you want to see all the items (default), popular items, tmall only, or second hand.

6. Sorting of items. This is the one I find most useful. You can sort by:

销量：Sales. This is the most useful. Usually those that have high sales are either very good or very cheap :)

信用： Credibility. I don't really know how this works, but it's not very useful some sellers are credible but their items aren't exactly good. Or else the items are good but expensive.

价格： Price without shipping. It's useful if you have completely narrowed down your search. If not, very cheap items aren't often very good, you know?

总价： Total price with shipping. Basically adds in the domestic shipping. 

You can also choose the location of the goods. Usually if the location is near the domestic shipping will be cheaper and faster.

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This is a typical product page on Taobao that lists the standard information. For item description and photos you will have to scroll down.

1. Search function again :D

2. Navigation bar. Basically using the navigations, you can read about the shop or click on 全部分类 to see the other items in the shop. You can sort them, filter them as well. 

Shopping Tip: You only need to pay domestic once per merchant, hence buying multiple items from the same merchant helps to save on domestic shipping. Many merchants also waiver domestic shipping if you hit a certain amount of spending or a certain amount of items.

3. Name of item

Shopping Tip: Copy and paste the name of the item (choose the essential or main point and delete the rest) into the search bar. Since many shops on Taobao sells the same or identical items, this way you can do comparative shopping, you can choose the cheapest or one with more reviews for you to look at!

Please look at part 2 (below) on how to go about doing this!

4. Seller's ratings. More on that later.

A. Price. Sometimes there will be a range. It usually happens when there are different designs on the same page or different colours/sizes/length/material are of different price. You will get to choose the type under size or colour.

B. Promotion or VIP Price. There will be a pink box with descriptions such as:

VIP价格/店铺VIP:  VIP of that shop get discounts. Since you don't have a taobao account, you don't get the discount. Most agents won't offer it to you anyway :(

冲冠特惠价: The shop is trying to get a crown (repuatation category) hence they are offering a discount to improve sales. Yes you get the discount! (Depends on your agent)

限时7折 : 30% off within a time limit. Usually there will be a clock beside with the remaining time. Some sellers will constantly refresh the clock and the discount is never ending.

低价促销: Promotion! Sale!

Note: Many items don't have this option. 

C. Domestic Shopping. You choose the city you want to send the item too. I think most agents use Shanghai 上海 or 广州 Guangzhou. Shanghai is under the category 直辖市 in case you can't find it. After you choose the location, the price may chance, for lower or for higher... Usually bigger cities near Shanghai will be cheaper shipping fees.

D. Shows how many of this item has been sold past 30 days.

E. Rating of item (how many stars) / How many ratings/reviews have been given. This is on that individual item. You can read the review below.

F. Usually displays the condition of the item (and usually brand new) and how many times it has been viewed.

G. Sizes available. 均码 means free size and that's what you will see most often. Sometimes the price will change depending on the different size.

H. Colour. Some sellers place different designs on the same page and different designs may cost different prices. Sometimes different colour cost differently as well!

I: 库存xx件 displays the quantity of stocks available. 

Note: Some shops don't update their inventory or place bogus numbers so don't be surprised to receive a notice that item is out of stock even though there is supposed to be 184 items in stock or something.

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This shows how a product page on tmall looks like. Not much difference except the seller information has been shifted to the left.

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Details on Seller's Rating!

Here we have 3 ratings of 3 different sellers. Let's go through them.

A. Displays what contracts they have signed that will benefit consumers. Honestly it doesn't make that much of a difference if you are buying from overseas. But basically some sellers allow for refunds/exchanges. Some allow refunds with no reason asked.

B. Name of seller

C. Reputation based on sales. This depends on how many items the shop has sold.

    The reputation level from low to high are: red heart, blue diamond, golden diamond, blue crown and golden crown. If I'm not wrong, you need 5 red heart for a blue diamond and so on. You can click on the icon to view full details - but I think that will be too much information for a shopper! Hence from the above, you can see the one on the right has made the most sales.

But really, making the most sales doesn't mean it's the most "reputable" shop.

D. Rating on item description.

E. Rating on customer service.

F. Rating on speed of delivery.

The closer it is to 5, the better it is. This is based on all the sales the shop has made. 

There is a percentage beside it.

高于: XX% higher than other shops in the same category.

持平: Same/average as the other shops in the same category.

低于: XX% lower than other shops in the same category.

You aim for 高于, which is in red! This time green means bad! The higher the percentage in 高于 is, the better it is!

However, now the shop on the left obviously has the best ratings. But it only has 2 blue diamonds, while the shop on the right has so many 低于 but it has 2 golden crowns.

H.  好评率: indicates how many percentage of the people who bought from the shop gave good ratings. The higher the better. Some shops give incentives for people to give good votes so you have to take note, but it should not make a great deal of difference. 

I. 宝贝数: Indiates no of designs the shop is selling.

J. 创店时间: When was the shop created. Older shops would have made more sales, have more crowns, more ratings (good or bad...) and if the shop has maintained itself well... :)

As you can see, the reputation of the shop depends on so many factors, you have to weight everything before making decisions!

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This is a page with the rating of an item. I apologise for the mess :S

1. Some shops give promotions or waiver shipping with different sets of conditions. Not all shops will display the information clearly there, sometimes it's hidden in the item descriptions, sometimes on their profile...

2A. Item descriptions. Pictures, measurements, descriptions... Read carefully. Scrutinise the pictures. SCRUTINISE!! I'll write in detail later.

2B. Reviews/ratings of item.

2C. Transaction history, for past 30 days. Hence do not be alarmed if the sales is less than the reviews. Also note that not all will write reviews.

3A. Overall rating for how closely the all items in the shop that have been rated matches their description. This is NOT for the individual item!
3B. Total number of ratings the shop has received.

3C. Breakdown of ratings.

4. Filter ratings.

5A. Username of person giving rating. Yes, even buyer have their little diamonds and crowns depending on number of deals they made.

5B. Their review. 

5C. Details of their purchase, date, colour, size etc.

Shopping Tip: Reviews will differ from person to person and some may say item is good, others think it's bad. The quality really depends. Items from different batch of goods may be different. Items from the same batch of good may also be different. Items of different colours may be different. If the shop does good inspection then this will be minimised! It's up to your own judgment!

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PART 2

Here I will discuss on what to look out for when buying an item. How to scrutinise the pictures etc.

You need to SCRUTINISE and not miss out any details.

But sometimes even if you do, it may still end up disappointing. Let's hope we have more hits than misses :)

I did a search for a pullover with a crochet trimming and here are the results I got. 

You might do such searches when you are trying to look for the same time at a lower price or looking for alternatives in case it's OOS.

You would have realised many shops sell the same item and they use the same set of pictures, but in reality:

The item may be different

The price is different

The quality is different

Now we will move on to some things you have to take notice (even when you are looking at the "same" pictures) 

So let's click on some of the shops and discover!

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Notice the pixels? This shop may have taken this picture from elsewhere and tried to pixelate away the shop's name. For this one, all of  the shops are using the same set of pictures anyway. But here is one thing, you know the actual product may not look like this. You should always search for actual photos taken by the shop. This... is hard actually. Not many shops do that.

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This shows a shop that use the usual set of photos but also took their own picture of the actual product. Notice the crochet details... DIFFERENT. Many shops don't take the picture of the actual product so what you receive might be disappointing! 

This is still not so bad, some of the pullovers have ugly lace trimmings. 

Yes, similar items, but different details, different quality.

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Another shop that watermarked all their pictures with their shop name, but this one is really dubious now. The left and right both shows pictures of the actual products, but notice how the crochet of the red/cream differs from the green piece. So what am I to expect?

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This shop used various photos . But the pullovers are completely different. Notice the left side of the picture, there are around 3 tiers of the diamond shapes patterns, whereas in the middle pictures and the right pictures there are at least 5 tiers of diamond shape patterns. And the diamonds are much smaller. The knit is thinner too if you scrutinise.

The left one starts immediately with the row of "holes" from the neckline, where the middle and right one starts with "diamonds" and the "holes" are 2 rows down.

Yes, similar items, but different details, different quality.

That's why you have to look at pictures carefully.

Overall, shopping on Taobao can take up quite a bit of time to find the perfect items. 

You have to prepare for disappointments every now and then.

Item quality is not consistent across the same shop, even if it's the same item, the quality across different batches may differ. 

You should read reviews they are helpful, but not always useful. Usually, not always.

All the best :)

Hope my tutorial helped!

Any questions, feel free to ask me on my formspring!

http://www.formspring.me/greenteaflakes