Product quality has been a recurring concern for online shoppers when buying from China. Renowned for its innovation and relatively low production costs, Chinese products are often cheaper.
However, due to lengthy international shipping times (for standard shipping options to distant locations), returns and refunds can take forever. For this reason, it is important to verify supplier integrity and product quality when buying from China.
One of the easiest ways to determine this is by carrying out certain due diligence checks.
For instance, the product shown below has sold 6, 759 units as of the time of writing. It also has 2, 783 reviews, 4.8 stars, as well as 96.5% positive feedback.
Source: AliExpress
Checking these parameters (in addition to reading actual reviews) can help you to buy quality products, avoid fakes, and lengthy returns when shopping online from China.
In this post, I’ll highlight five other things to keep in mind when shopping from China.
Table of Contents
1. Popular International Shopping Sites
Even with a 4.0% year-over-year shrinkage, China’s retail market is set to cross $5.072 trillion in sales this year, overtaking the US to become the world’s largest retail market.
This is in addition to its undisputed title as the world’s largest e-commerce and m-commerce market, with consumers expected to spend over $2, 090 trillion on retail ecommerce this year alone.
This growth is being fueled by a thriving ecosystem of (local and international) buyers and sellers facilitated by popular retail and wholesale e-commerce websites and marketplaces like AliExpress.
Other popular Chinese ecommerce websites and marketplaces include (in no particular order):
- AliBaba.Com
- AliExpress.Com
- Taobao.Com
- JD.Com
- Banggood.Cn
- DHGate.Com
- TMall.Com
- ChinaBrands.Com
- GearBest.Com
- DealeXtreme (DX.Com)
- Quwan.Com
- Hktdc.Com Sourcing
From multi-product to niche product websites, this detailed article lists other popular online shopping sites in China. However, you’ll still want to exercise some precautions when shopping from China (or online for that matter).
2. Ways to Pay
When it comes to online shopping, payment should be a breeze. Oftentimes, this is not the case, resulting in avoidable shopping cart abandonments. Several factors lead to this.
For instance, Baymard Institute reports that 19% of online shoppers abandoned carts because they couldn’t trust the sites with their credit card information.
Source: Baymard Institute
Another 8% cited limited ways to pay as the major reason why they aborted a purchase, and 4% said that their credit cards were declined. These and similar payment pain points can affect your online sales.
To fix this and build trust, many online stores in China are SSL secured and display trust badges on their sites. In addition, some provide multiple payment methods, and support multiple currencies. AliExpress allows you to view prices in your local currency, saving you the trouble of doing currency conversions yourself.
3. Shipping Options
After shopping, shipping is the next big thing when it comes to online shopping. In fact, shipping cost is a leading purchase factor. From the chart above, we see that as much as 60% of shoppers abandon carts due to high shipping fees, taxes, and other hidden fees.
When shopping from China, you should also take these into consideration.
In the example above, the product ships from China, but the shipping and customs fee is 168.5% higher than the cost price and will take up to 30 days to arrive, both huge deal-breakers for many online shoppers.
For local shoppers (or those from contiguous areas), shipping with China Post may make more sense as it will be cheaper and faster, two factors critical to online shoppers. Most online stores offer free shipping via post, but wait times can be staggering.
4. Delivery Times
Speaking of wait time, who wants to wait 30-100 days to receive their order? Well, that’s exactly what it would take to ship some products from China to Azerbaijan, depending on the selected shipping method, as shown below.
If you live this far away and want to shop online from China, you should plan and place your orders months in advance so you can have them delivered when you need them.
5. Return Policy
Sometimes when shopping online, what you order isn’t what you get.
Below is a typical case of what-you-ordered-vs-what-you-got!
Source: Practical Parenting
This can breed dissatisfaction, which can easily result in customer complaints, avoidable returns, refunds, chargebacks and even churn.
For international buyers shopping from China, orders and returns can take 60+ days, depending on distance. In some cases, shoppers find out too late that they would neither get a return nor a refund for their bad purchase.
According to the Baymard Institute, 11% of buyers abandon cart because of unsatisfactory return policy. International shoppers need to pay extra attention to store return policy when shopping from China.
Conclusion
Buying from China like online shopping in general has it’s pros and cons. Judging by recent events, including COVID-19, ecommerce will continue it’s bullish run as more and more people resort to buying online.
These tips can help online shoppers to avoid rip-offs, poor products, and a bad shopping experience when buying from China or shopping online in general.
Just remember to check:
- Popular international shopping sites
- Ways to pay
- Shipping options
- Delivery times
- Return policy
