Alibaba’s mobile Taobao announced an enhanced version of its mobile merchant tool called “Micro Store,” to adhere to the rapid growth of mcommerce in China, according to a press release.
Micro Store will offer several user-friendly features, enabling Taobao merchants to upload product listings, ship products, track and analyze business data and manage other aspects of the online storefronts on the go.
With the Micro Store, merchants can manage their online businesses using mobile devices instead of PCs. Merchants are able to leverage Alibaba Group’s massive authentic product barcode database to easily post new products by scanning barcodes using their mobile phones.
Merchants can also post new items for sales simply by taking photos of products with their phones. In order to complete product dispatch procedures, merchants can simply scan barcodes on shipping bills to enter package tracking numbers, without the need to manually input them.
“The growing adoption of smartphones and mobile shopping in China means that online merchants should shift their focus from PC to mobile,” said Zhang Kuo, director of Alibaba Group’s mobile business division in the press release. “With the debut of Micro Store, we hope to streamline our mobile store management procedures and encourage more entrepreneurs to participate in mobile commerce.”
Micro Store features a function that allows merchants to each generate a unique storefront access code and a QR code-based business card for promoting their businesses across different social media platforms, such as Weitao, Taobao Marketplace’s mobile social media platform, and Weibo, China’s largest micro-blogging website.
Consumers can have quick access to a merchant’s Taobao storefront on their mobile devices simply by entering a unique storefront access code or scanning a QR code-based business card using Mobile Taobao.
Going forward, Micro Store will offer location-based services so that buyers can search for merchants nearby and merchants can provide more personalized services to buyers in the same region.
The mobile TaoBao tam will strengthen its ties between its partners and merchants and between merchants and consumers to enable merchants to seamlessly complete different storefront registration and management operations on the mobile front.