Alibaba has been around for quite some time and their presence in the eCommerce market is growing by the day. The company was founded back in 1999 with a focus on selling Chinese products to expats all over the world. They expanded to other countries, including the United States, Europe, and Australia. Today, Alibaba is one of the leading eCommerce platforms in China and throughout Asia. Alibaba has been releasing new features consistently and this article is meant to take you through all things you need to know about these new features. If you haven’t heard about them yet, don’t worry – we’ll explain everything you need to know below.

Sell with Alibaba

Alibaba is arguably the largest online marketplace in China. The platform works by connecting sellers with customers through the use of a third-party service known as Alimama. Using Alimama, sellers can upload items and specify their purchasing, shipping, and return policies. They can also add various features to their listings to better serve their customers. The platform’s most prominent feature is the ability to connect with a third-party service known as Alibaba’s Cainiao logistics service. This allows sellers to manage their inventory, shipments, and returns all in one place. Sellers can also create a user account and generate an invoice to send to their customers.

B2C Marketplace

Alibaba is similar to Amazon when it comes to selling products. The marketplace is mainly focused on selling products from China. That’s where the vast majority of their products come from. However, the marketplace does have a number of features that allow it to act as a global marketplace. When sellers list products, they’re able to specify the country where the product can be shipped. This is useful when listing products in a number of countries. When buyers search for products to buy, they’re able to view different listings with different countries listed. They can also sort the results by price, shipping duration, and popularity.

Shopping Contest Platform

One of the most notable new features from Alibaba is the shopping contest platform. The company has invested a lot of time into improving this feature and it could very well be one of the most popular features on the entire Alibaba platform. Sellers are able to create contests around products, such as a drawing for a new iPhone. Contestants can either buy a product and win the contest to win it, or enter the contest for free. Either way, the rules rule set by the seller determines the winner of the contest.

B2B Marketplace

Another notable feature is the B2B marketplace. This one allows businesses to sell to other businesses. That means sellers don’t have to deal with consumers directly, which means they don’t have to deal with any customer service issues.

Marketing Assistance Services

Another noteworthy new feature is the marketing assistance services. These services are meant to help sellers better understand marketing techniques and how to leverage them. Marketers can choose one of three services, each of which offers a different marketing consultation service tailored to their company’s needs.

Summary

Alibaba has been growing at an astounding rate and the company has recently announced some new features. These features allow sellers to create contests around products, manage their inventory, create coupons, manage invoices and sales taxes, and engage in marketing campaigns. These new features have been designed to help sellers reach new customers and generate sales from an even wider audience. The marketplace is mostly focused on Chinese products, but has a number of features that allow it to be a global marketplace. The shopping contest platform allows sellers to create contests that assign prizes according to a set of rules, and the marketing assistance services can help sellers ramp up their marketing campaigns.

Source: 

• FashionChinaagency
• http://tmall.com/
• Alibaba is the leader of the web explained the CBC
• Taobao