A Guide to Shopping on Taobao

Just recently I took advantage of Taobao Single's Day (aka 11 Nov or 1111) sale to buy some stuff. It is a day when most Taobao minishop will offer discounts and the volume of transaction can get really big. I don't use any buying agent for my purchases. Taobao SEA has it's own forwarding agent to help deliver whatever I buy to me (currently it only applies to certain destinations like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia etc.).

This guide here is meant to teach you how to shop like a pro on Taobao and what are the things to look out for. Whether you are using a buying/forwarding agent or not, most importantly it is to navigate to the product you like and have that bit of assurance that it is not a scam shop.

#1 Taobao vs Tmall
At the Taobao main page, you will see a link to Tmall (天猫) just below the Taobao logo. Tmall is part of Taobao and most buying agent can help you purchase from both.While Taobao minishops can be set up by individual, selling/re-selling anything, Tmall shops can only be set up by companies. You will definitely get more consistent quality/service over at Tmall than at Taobao because Tmall has stricter guidelines to follow e.g. 7 days refund policy, delivery time no later than x days. Tmall shops are usually of the company's own brand, hence the authenticity of the product. Major international brands like Reebok, Nike, Prada are listed on Tmall together with domestic brands like Li Ning and 361degrees.

#2 Seller Reputation
Taobao has a seller reputation rating as denoted by the number of hearts/diamonds/crowns, with the crowns indicating more reputable. The seller reputation is usually indicated just below the name of the minishop. For each transaction, the buyer is allowed to give a rating of Good, Average or Poor to the seller. A 'Good' rating will earn the buyer 1 reputation point, a 'Average' rating earns no points, and a 'Poor' rating will cause a deduction of 1 point. Clicking on the rating will bring you to a page whereby they give you more in-depth statistics on the seller's performance, even comparing the seller to other sellers selling similar products. Personally I don't recommend looking into such in-depth statistics because it might confuse you more, and unless you can read Chinese, it will take up some time.

 

#3 Product Review Quickview

If you can't understand Chinese, one quick way to get a sense of what others say about a product, is to look at the 'People's Opinion' (大家印象). It is located in the 2nd tab when you scroll down to see the product description. It is a system-generated cloud of words that are frequently said by reviewers of the product. An orange box is a positive comment, while a grey box is a negative one. You can use google translate to help you with these key words, rather than translating the reviews which can be colloquial at times. Using the screenshot below as an example, the orange boxes are 'overall good', 'thick material', 'pretty design', 'looks beautiful wearing it', 'true to size', 'very comfortable', 'good attitude', 'nice packaging', 'decent delivery'. The grey one says 'weird smell'. 

Note: Only products with a significant number of reviews will have this 'People's Opinion' function.

#4 Taobao Gold Coins

This is only applicable for those who can add items to cart and check out the purchases. For those who uses a buying agent, you will not be able to make use of this benefit.

It is basically a loyalty system whereby you login each day to collect your daily gold coins, with more gold coins given if you login on consecutive days (http://taojinbi.taobao.com). The gold coins can then be used to offset the cost of certain purchases when you check out your items. 100 gold coins = ¥1. 

Tip: You can earn double gold coins daily by downloading the Taobao mobile app and clocking in your attendance there. There are also other ways to earn more gold coins (doing mission, lucky draw etc.) which I don't recommend you wasting your time to do so.

#5 Check for Discount Voucher

Always check for any discount voucher that the minishop might provide before making payment. At the cart view, if there are any discount vouchers, it will be indicated as 优惠券 right next to the shop name. Click on it and you can then collect a voucher by clicking on '领取'. At this point, you have only downloaded the voucher but have not applied it to the product you are going to buy. Proceed to make the payment. At the payment page, the system would have automatically included the discount under '店铺优惠'. In the event that you have several vouchers, you can click on the drop down to select the most beneficial to you.

Note: Some vouchers will have a minimum amount spent requirement hence you might be able to download the voucher but not able to use it.