Taobao educational platform Taobao Tongxue, which literally means Taobao Classmates, was launched in August 2013. It combined offline education with online alive educational videos, including K12 entrance exam,  vocational training and other mainstream educational aspects.

Also, Taobao Tonxue allows users to set up their own courses, as long as their uploaded courses meet Taobao’s requirements, and their courses could be showed and sold on Taobao Tongxue; however, the profit details are not clear yet.

Taobao’s entering into the online educational field means that the online educational industry has become a big and potential blue ocean market. What’s more, Taobao Tongxue will cause ripples in the online educational system. Some core competitive online educational institutions will become the leaders in the reshuffle, and the small platforms that lack of the core advantages will be eliminated in the process. And the offline educational institutions will face more severe challenges.

A photo plays a great role in an online shop. And a good one can make a positive impact on promotion. Here are 9 tips on how to create wonderful photos help promote your online shop.

1. Create corporate culture, let photos be memorable
   On Taobao.com, many big retailers have established their own unique culture. By setting the style of photos, they embody all aspects of the product and brand story in the photos, and make the photos memorable.
2. Be differentiated
   If the style has no market differentiation, there will be no unique corporate culture. Once competitors start a price war, it will be in an embarrassing situation. With the differentiated features, the clothing photos will stand out in the market, and have their own marketing advantages.
3. Meet the aesthetic needs of consumers
   The high-price products’ corresponding customer is “high spending groups.” Usually, most of the “high spending groups” can accept phones with relatively big difference from real life scenes. For example, some dreamy, romantic, concept, fashion and avant-garde style. The “groups with low spending power” can only accept photos that are close to the daily life, for example, the street shooting, life, travel, affinity, or just simply with a smile.
4. Pictures with continuity
   Pictures need to be continuous, every new image should be created upon the former one. Then the picture style will be kept in customers’ mind, forming the store’s own unique culture. However, the corporation culture should not be changed casually, otherwise you will lose a large number of customers.
5. The association with other pictures
   Pay more attention to the correlation with other pictures. Besides, increase product categories to meet more consumer groups’ demands to increase revenue.
6. Show off your pictures
   Get a professional photographer to prepare the perfect light and scene, and select a good model with performance talents (it can be your own employees). Let your models take a good picture of themselves. The models’ face could be obscured, which will give consumers a great imagination, making it easy for them to think of themselves.
7. Pictures with feature introduction
   Once product features are introduced, pictures will become more persuasive. For example, a sportswear, the introduction should show the breath ability, sweat resistance and wear resistance etc.
8. Production flow chart
   The material and production processes should be embodied in the picture. Product image should focus on the complexity of the production, especially the handmade part, when they are vividly displayed, the product value will be shown totally.
9. Picture combined with text
   Simply using text in the pictures to indicate the product’s features, you can make customers impressed. Remember, content pages cannot only include a few boring pictures, it will look like amateurs, and consumers will reject transactions with non-professional sellers subconsciously.

According to 52b2b.cn research,  the top 10 B2B platforms ranked by brand influence in Q2 2013 were: Alibaba B2B, HC, Global Sources, DHgate, Focus Technology (Made in China), 315.com, Shengyibaoku, Shanghai steel Union (My steel net), the global market, B2B.com and IBI.

Data showed that Alibaba B2B brand influence in Q2 was still the strongest. Alibaba’s revenue and site traffic ensured its prominent advantages lead; Other market players include HC, Global Resources DHGate and Focus Technology. Their influence index increased slightly compared with Q1 2013, partly due to their financial growth in Q2. 315.com, Shengyibaoku, My steel net, Global Market, B2B.com and IBI were small market players.

For five successive days since Wednesday, Xinwen Lianbo, a flagship news program on China Central Television, has aired educational clips aimed at promoting polite tourist behavior.

The unusual move by Xinwen Lianbo, usually dedicated to political news and major events, is one of many indications of the country’s efforts to reverse unfavorable stereotypes of Chinese tourists and improve the tarnished national image.

During a meeting in May to discuss a new tourism law, Vice Premier Wang Yang called for more efforts to elevate the image of Chinese tourists as the country’s tourist industry is in its “golden phase of development with vast potential.”

Guidelines mandating good manners will soon be included into tourist contracts with travel agents and unruly holidaymakers will risk inflicting penalties, according to the National Tourism Agency.

Starting from Oct. 1, China’s first tourism law will be fully implemented, making it legally binding for tourists to behave well and respect local customs and traditions.

China ranks the third biggest outbound tourist market and is the largest source of international tourism spending. Chinese travellers spent a record 102 billion U.S.dollars overseas in 2012, according to a report by the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

However, the growing number of outbound visitors from the world’s second largest economy has so far been a mixed blessing for the world. While countries welcome their penchant for generous spending, they have also been unnerved by their obnoxious behavior.

Spitting in the street, talking noisily in restaurants and fighting for space to take pictures, such uncivilized manners have damaged China’s age-old image as a “country of etiquette.”

In May, a boy from Nanjing in east China’s Jiangsu Province carved graffiti on an Egyptian temple, causing anger in China.

Despite earning the nickname “walking wallets,” even the purchasing power of Chinese tourists cannot help with the problem.

For Huang Chenwei, a veteran tour guide with Shanghai-based Jinjiang Travel, to carefully study, understand and respect local customs and traditions proves effective in avoiding any faux pas while visiting a foreign country.

For example, Huang reminds tourists in her team to pay attention to the way people in New Zealand enjoy themselves picnicking at the seaside without littering. By following suit, she believed that Chinese tourists can win the respect of the island’s locals.

In fact, respect from the international community is greatly valued by the country’s general public.

Recent photographs showing some Chinese foot bathers in a pool in front of the Louvre soon created a storm online in China and courted harsh criticism, though pictures subsequently posted revealed that foreigners also bathed their feet in the pool.

“We are all informal diplomats when we visit foreign countries,” said Yang Jinhui, a tour guide with Beijing Caissa International Travel Service Co., Ltd.

“I believe Chinese tourists are all willing to make an effort to show the best of our culture and what they need is just a little guidance,” Yang added.

Source: Xinhuanet

A latest data released by China  E-commerce Research Center showed that, in the first half of 2013, online shopping turnover totalled 754.2 billion yuan (USD 123.2 billion), with a YoY growth of 47.3%. It represented 6.8% of total consumer goods retail sales.

The online shopping market is estimated to reach 1.74 trillion yuan (USD 278.4 billion) this year. And, m-commerce  turnover is about to reach 130 billion yuan (USD 20.8 billion) this year.

Last week Tencent announced that its own comprehensive online shopping site Yixun.com started fully support of Wechat payment on desktop client, Android and iOS mobile devices.

Meanwhile, someone inside Yixun disclosed that Yixun would soon launch product ordering in Wechat under a single payment. By then, Wechat 5.0 users can simply click on any one of the item links in chat window to complete the order and payment easily and quickly.

Last week, Yixun quietly launched a Weichat online payment function on the PC web and mobile devices. In the PC and mobile devices ordering process, Wechat online payment was added into the payment options.

For example, consumers in Yixun complete an order and select “Wechat payment” after confirming the order, the page will generate a payment dimensional code, and consumers scan the QR code via Wechat, then they can complete the payment with Wechat 5.0 Payment function by binding the bank card.

In Yixun mobile app, consumers can buy the goods, and they could confirm the order by selecting the Wechat payment. After entering their payment password, they can complete the payment easily via Wechat.

After following Yixun’s public account, consumers can open a Yixun product page or commodities recommended links directly to complete orders. Or click on the shared Yixun product links in their circle of friends, you can complete the shopping. That means consumers can click on any links of Yixun in Wechat, the links will be directly opened and the orders and payment can be completed in the Wechat interface, no longer jumping to the web browser.

Yahoo! decided to close its mail service in China in early April. It sent notification to users that they had enough time, until Aug 19, to save their emails and contacts and switch to another provider. And now Yahoo! Chinese mail is coming into its last few days.

NetEase, Chinese leading e-mail provider, suggested Yahoo! mail users move to NetEase mail. Users could use email migration tool to move mails, contacts and other files to NetEase simply by one click. NetEase promised that they would provide  free high quality mail service permanently, and users could have the permanent NetEase Internet identity with constantly improving user experience.

According to iReasearch, iQiyi and PPS together have more video viewing time than youku, tudou and funshion for the first time.

After the merger of Baidu’s iQiyi and PPS, the combined users reached 269,817,000 hours of the total viewing time, becoming the first in the industry with Youku & Tudou second and funshion third. However, on the other side, Funshion continued as a hefty lead by per capita online video viewing time in the industry.

For per capita online video viewing time, Funshion ranked first and its viewing time had reached 11, 044. 9 seconds per user, followed by iQiyi & PPS and PPLive.

Compared with the online ticket and online hotel booking, online travel market is the niche field with the lowest rate of penetration but the fastest growth rate. The online vacation booking maintains steady growth every year.

Domestic travel market presents a downward trend, while outbound travel and around travel market are keeping a good development momentum.

On outbound tourism, Ctrip.com has 33.7% market share, followed by Tuniu.com and Aoyou.com.

17U.com is leading the way of the short getaway trip, accounting for 21.8% of the market share, followed by Ctrip.com and Lvmama.com.

Ctrip.com is the most popular website for domestic travel with 28.5% market share, far ahead of any other players.

Market Size: Stable Growth Overall; Diversified Sources of Income

Advertisement is still the main income source of online video industry. Meanwhile the industry is also seeking for diversification in the business model, supplying several premium services including E-commerce, video show and video-on-demand, etc. Video industry is in pursuit of content differentiation.

Advertising Market Scale: Consolidation Continued,  Advertising Revenue Integration Becoming More Obvious

The advertisers’ income falls after rise in the first quarter quarterly, and the advertising market scale has reached 1.74 billion yuan, up 47.9% by year-on-year growth. With intensified integration in video industry, the convergence of video platform becomes more obvious in both user size and revenue. On the other side, the value of video media receives acceptance and acknowledgment continuously.

PC Structure: The Use Duration of Website Share Is Increasing

After the fourth quarter of 2012, online video playing on the website experienced longer time than the client side, and this gap is widening further in the first quarter.
The video industry consolidation continues. Some video companies cannot make quick adjustment due to capital market factor or other, which leads to slowed traffic growth.

Mobile Video: Advertiser Market Needs To Be Universal

Types of advertisers are  slightly different in PC and mobile. Brand advertisers have realized the great value of mobile video, and the number of advertisers in food and beverage, traffic and IT product also rank a lot higher.

In the first quarter of 2013, competition in China online video industry became more intense. Maintaining and pursuing the market share, online video platforms expanding in multi-device support such as on mobile and television, are becoming one main direction in current video industry.

According to iResearch, the trend of merger and acquisition in video industry will continue. After Youku and Tudou, several video media have the opportunity to compete for the second in the industry. Merger is the fastest way to take the second position.

Suning.com, being operated by Suning Appliance Company Limited and one of the largest privately owned electrical appliance retailers in China, came on top with its annual turnover in 2012 reaching 18.8 billion yuan (USD 3 billion). And Yintai.com led the way of the department store with 560 million yuan (USD 91 million) annual turnover.

These data has the extremely high reference value from e-commerce sites Alipay supported excluding Taobao in 2012.

The population characteristics of online shopping customers

1. For the age, young people were the key group

Online shopping customers under 30 years old were more than 60%, the customers who were over 40 years old were about 10% in the e-commerce sites excluding Taobao, which indicates that the online shopping users are younger.

2. From the customers’ regional distribution, the online shopping was popular to third and fourth tier cities.

The customers of e-commerce sites excluding Taobao mainly distributed in first or second tier cities, ratio to 67.9%. And the annual statement from alipay showed online payment customers of fourth tier cities increased to 64% and online payment amount increased to 68% in 2012, of which all overtook the first and second tier cities. The online shopping was popularizing from developed regions to the less developed regions step by step. The development speed of small cities should not be ignored.

The Guangdong province had most customers of e-commerce sites excluding Taobao, followed by Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Beijing. Based on the data from CNNIC, the absolute value of Shanghai netizen population ranted 13 in the whole country in 2012. Balance of the alipay data, the permeability of online shopping in Shanghai was very high. The online shopping customers of the first five provinces were more than 50%, the customers of the first ten provinces were about 70%, which showed the regional concentration was pretty high.

The behaviors of online shopping customers

1. The online shopping age distribution: 40% customers’ online shopping age was under 2 years. The new online customers whose online shopping age was under 1 year reached 23.4%.

2. Shopping frequency: most online customers shop online just one time every month

70% customers of e-commerce sites excluding Taobao were shopping online just one time every month. The customers who were shopping more than three times every month were less than 15%. It’s very important for e-commerces to increase online shopping activities.

3. The time distribution in online shopping: the customers’ enthusiasm was higher on working day in online shopping

The customers’ enthusiasm was higher on working day in online shopping, while the online shopping customers significantly reduced on weekend. The customers could arrange their time freely and went shopping in mall on weekends or holidays. However, on working days, the customers did not have much time to go shopping outside, so they preferred to choosing convenient online shopping.

The time of customer in online shopping is consistant with the work and rest time. The period of online shopping mainly focused on working hours and rest time at home. The customers prefer shopping online when working than at home time. The customers’ passion was a little low during rush hour and mealtimes. The sellers could adjust the strategies to content the customers’ shopping requirements according to the time distribution in online shopping.

4. The unit price distribution of customers: the unit price of over 70% customers in online shopping was under 200 RMB.

The customers who spent more than 1000 RMB one time in e-commerce sites excluding Taobao were about 9%, while 70% customers spent under 200 RMB. So the major customers preferred cheep goods in online shopping at present.

5. Shopping preferences: costumes and jewelry category are the all people’s favorite

What the customers loved to buy were costumes and jewelry. The household products were the third category which females loved to buy, the fifth category which males loved to buy. It showed females loved buying household more than males. 3C digital products were the third category females loved to buy, the fourth category males loved to buy. It showed males loved digital products compare with females.

The top two shopping preferences at all ages were costumes and jewelry, while the top five shopping preferences showed some difference with customers’ age increase. For example, the household products were the fifth favor of the customers under 24 years old, while from 25 years old  the household products were up to the third; the maternal and child supplies became one of the top five favor of the customers aged 30 to 39. The data showed the major online shopping people chose late marriage and late childbearing. The customers who were over 60 years old prefer to buying foods online. The shopping preferences of foods were the top five. Buying foods online is convenient for the elderly people who did not move.

The  netizens in Tier 1, 2 , 3 and 4 cities have different behavior because of different economic development and living environment.

According to CNRS, the netizens in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities pay more attention to the practical applications related to life living, while netizens in the Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities place greater emphasis on the entertainment.

According to Experian Hitwise,  tmall.com was the most popular B2C website in China with 432,456,034 visits in March 2013, followed by jd.com and 51buy.com. There were also conerns that the visits growth rate of Tmall was up to 53%,  far exceeding that of jd.com.

According to iResearch, Search was the most popular Internet service in China in January with 454 million users coverage, followed by online video and online community.

According to Enfodesk, the two main online third-party travel agencies, Ctrip and eLong together accounted for approximately 61.6% of the market share in 2012, up from 55.4% in 2011.

According to Experian Hitwise, Baidu refer 27% of the search traffic to its own web properties, among which the top three are Baidu Knows (or Baidu Zhidao, a Q&A style site), Baidu Encyclopedia (Wiki style site), and Baidu Post Bar (a UGC website similar to a forum).

We found something interesting when we took a look at a copy of New Weekly that was published about 8 years ago. “TOP 10 Chinese Desires” listed Chinese people’s top 10 dreams.

About 72.68% of them wanted to have more money; 65.12% longed to travel around the world; and 54.09% wished China became No.1 in the word. Vehicles, villas, even books and friends were all on the list. At that time, it seems Chinese people’s personal dreams have higher priority over national dreams.

According to a data released by Nielsen recently, from January 28 to February 24 2013, during the Chinese New Year, the sites where people spent the longest time are search engine, directories, e-commerce and others. E-commerce, other websites and e-mail experienced the most obvious changes during CNY period. The change of the visit time on e-commerce sites from Jan 28 to the Spring Festival reached 46.50%, and after the Chinese New Year it got an sharp increase of 71.03%.

According to Enfodesk, Alibaba led the B2B market with the 47.9% market share, followed by Global Sources and HC360 ,with market share of 10.6% and 4.0% respectively.

Eofodesk held a view that China’s B2B market is now in times of change, and every enterprise is going through the transformation according to their advantages and features.