All you need to know about First Time Shipping to China

With the growing economy rate, e-commerce and trade businesses in China have been on a rise too. Over the past decade, sales in the Chinese e-commerce market have already reached 1.132 trillion US$, surpassing their trade rivals the USA.

While you wonder the reason of these unbelievable figures, it is important to know that China offers the largest consumer market for overseas brands, which they can easily ship within and out of the region. Because of the high local demands, Chinese consumers also happen to be a wide audience of many international retail stores. Their online purchasing power has increased to one-eighth of the world’s retail goods that ordered online.

If you’re a foreign company looking to cater to orders for the Chinese consumer market, there are few things to keep in mind regarding your first time shipping to China. Although shipping has become very easier now courtesy to many Chinese and foreign shipping companies, there still are a few challenges that you can go through.

How to choose a Chinese Shipping Company?

Since China is a huge country, you cannot hire an international shipping company to fulfil your door-to-door delivery orders. You will need to take services from a online b2b marketplace to help you track and deliver parcels in towns and remote places. Before deciding, keep the following in mind:

-          Shipping Costs

Don’t just send the parcel right away. Calculate an estimated cost of shipping. It shouldn’t cost more than the value of the order parcel. Also, make sure to send items in bulk so you can save extra shipping charges.

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  Tracking Orders

Go for companies that offer an online tracking system. Since you will be out of China, you will need to have regular updates and status of your shipment so you can coordinate with the customers and prevent any chances of losses.

Finding the Cheapest Way to Ship to China

If you’re looking to save extra shipping costs through cheap shipping, then the timeframe to deliver your parcels will increase. Just as airfreight takes the least of times for delivery, it is the most expensive ways of shipping. On the other hand, sea freight, which is economical, but takes a significant amount of time to deliver parcels. 

One more way you can save costs is through delivering parcels at the customs clearance. You can ask customers to collect it themselves. This way, you can save most of the door-to-door delivery charges and hassle. However, this method is only suitable for large cities as small towns, rural areas do not have these clearance centres, and it will be too much of travelling for the people living there to come and collect their orders.

What Items are prohibited to Ship to China?

• -          Animals
• -          Diary
• -          Fresh foods
• -          Seeds
• -          Tobacco
• -          Plants
• -          Any type of money or currency
• -          Perfumes
• -          Ivory
• -          Fur

Always remember to have a complete set of documents before shipping so you don’t get into any trouble.

Cybersecurity Laws Businesses in China Need to Care About

Cybersecurity law is a regulation that allow companies to follow certain measures for protecting information systems and personal or sensitive data that is stored on it. The purpose of protecting this information is to minimalize or eradicate any security breach or vulnerability.

China’s Cybersecurity Law was passed initially in 2016 dictating how businesses and other companies should approach and protect user security and privacy within organizations. The law involves strict controls with all online activities, websites that collect personal information and network assets. It also keeps a strong check at online companies, notifying them about any potential security breaches and implementing incident response plans in case of any emergency.

China’s New Cybersecurity Law

Recently, with the new Cybersecurity Law, the Chinese government took over full access and rights of all data and IP held by foreign business companies. While this law could bring more control of the B2B Marketplace to the local government, it could be a threat to many foreign companies and their personal data. Experts call this regulation as ‘No Place To Hide’ because after its implementation none of the encryption mechanisms will provide foreign investors with a way out to protect their data.

How will the Cybersecurity Law Affect Foreign Businesses in China?

With the growing China B2B marketplace, there has been a massive increase in foreign investors and overseas companies investing and carrying out businesses in China. The data takeover, however, will affect many businesses and their security policies. Find out two ways how the cybersecurity law can harm overseas businesses and what they should do to protect themselves:

1.    The U.S Export Law Conflict

The law firstly can be a major threat to US companies working in China. With the U.S export control laws, no business or organization is allowed to disclose certain high-tech info to any person/company outside of the United States or to any individual without an export license. These laws will now directly have a conflict with the new Cybersecurity law, which requires complete government access to all information. Foreign companies failing to provide any information can face serious jail time in China whereas disclosing their high-tech data will violate the U.S export control laws. This can lead to severe troubles with many foreign businesses working in China.

2.    Violating Trade Secrets

The other way China’s new Cybersecurity law can be dreadful for many foreign companies is through violating their trade secret. To keep up a trade secret claim, you must be able to provide complete information about the secret, its holder and whether it was wrongfully used. In situations, when you work in China, you will have to give away full access to your business and trade secrets violating business agreements that you complied to in the first place.

Just like B2B trade leads sites attract foreign businesses; these new laws can pose a serious threat to investors and overseas companies. They will not only breach credible data but also reduce the company’s ability to protest against the government’s demand for data access and control.

Top 5 B2B Sourcing Sites in China

For most entrepreneurs in the 21st century looking for products, their sourcing journey begins online from B2B platforms and marketplaces. As digital technology advances every now and then, B2B buyers from various parts of the world hunt new sourcing sites in China to be able to find their desired suppliers.

With this shift from physical stores to sourcing platforms, there has also been a massive increase in wholesale marketplaces to cater to the rising demand. Let’s take a look at the top five sourcing sites contributing to the China and Hong Kong B2B Marketplace.

1.    Alibaba.com

Not just China, Alibaba.com tops the world’s leading B2B sourcing sites with the largest wholesale e-commerce platforms. Manufacturers from around the world register and trade products of any kind, which can be both bought by individuals or wholesale B2B buyers. The best part about sourcing from here is that the more you buy, the more the prices go down. Alibaba now has turned into China’s largest tech company with a number of subsidiaries working globally.

2.    Chinabrands

Especially for Asian buyers, Chinabrands is also an online Chinese B2B wholesale and sourcing website that offers a variety of discounted purchases. The site competes with the top Hong Kong B2B platforms facilitating buyers with access to products from around the world and an easy to use platform with quick deliveries. It is great for small businesses to get noticed among their audience and competitors.

3.    ExportHub

Aligning top-class digital services along with a B2B marketplace that excels in uniting suppliers and manufacturers with their targeted B2B buyers, ExportHub is everything a business should look forward to. Unlike other platforms, ExportHub makes sure to ease the business operations with innovative tools and skills embedded in their websites. When you register as a supplier, the site provides you with exclusive services as per your business and pricing plans. It also connects you with potential buyers and suggests you for anyone looking for your services.

4.    GlobalSources

Despite having its headquarters in Hong Kong, GlobalSources remains one of the famous wholesale and sourcing sites across China. Within just a short time, this Chinese and Hong Kong B2B trade leads site became the top platforms to find suppliers, B2B buyers, wholesalers and distributors globally. The website caters to the increasing consumer demands by connecting buyers to wholesalers in the Chinese market. Its media services makes it easier for customers to connect to, register, demonstrate their products and import/export to trading partners around the world.

5.    DHgate

DHgate, like its competitors, is also an online wholesale and sourcing marketplace located in Beijing, China. The best part about this platform is that it lets buyers find quality made Chinese products at the best affordable prices. The wholesale rates differ if you purchase more and in bulk quantities. DHgate facilitates its users with an efficient payment system that only clear payments to the seller when the B2B buyer receives the goods and its receipt.

Tips to quickly find a Wholesale Distributor for Your Product

After going through the exhausting procedure of manufacturing and designing, you finally get your product ready to be delivered to the customers. For that, you’ve set up an online store and are already selling it on all leading marketplaces. The next move is to get the product into retail stores and delivered physically to customers.

To help you do this, you will need a distributor.

Distributors are wholesalers that purchase products in a large quantity and sell them to retailers. They act as intermediaries and provide a range of products to retailers, making their job easier so they don’t have to deal with different manufacturers for each product. On the other hand, to make things less hassle-free for manufacturers, distributors provide access to a number of retailers. Instead of visiting retail stores for keeping your products, you can simply connect to a single distributor to get your job done. They not only help put your products on various store racks but also do the job of storing, shipping and packaging!

The right distributor will contribute to your business growth and help in long-term success. Find out ways on how you can find a wholesale distributor for your product:

1.    Attend Trade Shows

A trade show brings together hundreds of distributors and manufacturers from the same industry. It is a great platform that can help you find distributing partners belonging to your industry. Besides, you can get an idea about the famous distributors, their distribution criteria and terms with different retail stores. While you’re at the trade show, try to interact with other businesses, find out about their top distributors and trade relationships with them.

2.    Trade Associations

Many industries in a global B2B marketplace form their local trade associations, which brings manufacturers, retailers and distributors together. Once you join those, you can easily the list of distributors operating in your region and industry.

3.    Google Search

Google is the best places if no other networking options work. Search for keywords that match your criteria to find the relevant distributors. Select the ones at the top of Google rankings, get in touch with them, ask their requirements, inquire about their previous dealings and get started!

4.    Social Media

Social media platforms can be of great help. Find distributors on Facebook groups, LinkedIn or platforms covering your industry. Communicate with other businesses socially to find out who distributes their products and sells them to retailers. Ask about their work relationship and results before selecting one.

5.    Talk to Retailers

Is there any specific retailer you are really excited about working with? Then how about asking them. Find out if any distributors are on good terms with them and they always prefer working with. If you get lucky, you will not only find a good distributor but also get on to the shelves of your favourite retailers.

While you’re on your quest of finding the right distributor, keep selling products through an online store so your business isn’t affected.

5 Benefits of Having Your Business Listed In a B2B Marketplace

A business-to-business (B2B) marketplace is a combining platform for sellers, buyers businesses to help deliver the best product and services and carry on business operations smoothly. It eases product delivery for buyers yet enabling access for sellers to a larger market, lowering operation costs for everyone involved.

Features of a B2B marketplace can be customized to serve unique business requirements. Some of the best b2b marketplace platforms like Alibaba.com and Made-in-China have elevated their business development to a large extent. Buyers and sellers of all sizes throughout different industries can establish business partnerships and generate fine ROI every year.

1. Enhanced Visibility for New and Current Businesses

Sales and revenue are the crucial aspects and objective of a business and to boost brand awareness, a B2B marketplace offers instant visibility to its huge user base. B2b marketplaces enable businesses to reach users in different regions of the world and tend to their needs, helping them boost sales, diversify customer base by reducing seasonality and set their business as a worldwide brand.

2. Reach Quality Leads

B2B marketplaces are a world of opportunities for businesses. These platforms allow businesses to gain access to larger audience but also enable them to classify, target and reach their particular audience, thus providing access to serious and qualified buyers.

3. Cost-Effective Online Presence and Marketing

B2B marketplaces are great, cost-effective platforms for setting up your web presence for your services, products and solutions, as it can be a staggering and expensive task to develop and maintain a website and manage its online marketing and branding activities. Having your business listed on one of the best B2B marketplace platforms can help your business easily market and connect to different buyers in a reasonably short time.

Some of these platforms offer their own marketing benefits to help businesses reach out to customers effectively. Therefore, choosing a popular trade portal for increasing business can help you take benefit from its existing online traffic as they have done strong optimization for search engines to rank better.

4. Better Networking

A significant perk of using B2B marketplaces is their community aspect. These platforms often host seminars, trade shows, and corporate events in educating customers as well as branding and promoting your business to aid in lead generation. The vast the trade community, the higher your chances are for generating more leads.

5. Platform’s Customer Services and Policies

Last but not the least, B2B marketplaces set quite a high benchmark for customer services so businesses can compete with polished competitors in the industry, otherwise, it would take a lot of time, effort, and capital to do so. Moreover, the marketplaces or trade portals typically perform their own due diligence to verify sellers and buyers.

The B2B business world is extremely vibrant and offers a cut-throat competition. Nowadays, businesses cannot leave an opportunity that can get them closer to their customers, and B2B platforms are mainly getting populated for this very factor.

SEO Techniques to Boost Your B2B Brand’s Ranking

Do you want your online B2B marketplace to get flooded with traffic and ranked higher on Google? If yes, then you have to focus on initiating the perfect SEO marketing campaign.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a technique used to make your content Google friendly as well as recognizable online. Today, I’ll share a few SEO techniques every B2B marketer should use to increase their keyword ranking.

1.     High DA Backlinks

If you start getting backlinks for websites that are low on authority or high on spam score, you’ll only end up getting your rank decreased. In addition, with Moz’s new update every website has experienced a drop or rise in their DA. So if you have already gotten backlinks in the past, it’s better to go through them and try to remove those that either has a low DA or has a higher spam score now.

2.     Increase Your Site’s Speed

There are many online tools available for free that can test your site’s speed. If the score is low, it is about time that you do something about it. Google dislikes sites that show a low-speed score on both desktop and mobile. To boost your speed, you can optimize your images, use cache and improve your JavaScript and CSS.

To increase mobile speed and experience, you can use AMP technology. Last year, Google also introduced the mobile-first index algorithm, which states that mobile-friendly websites have a greater chance of getting ranked higher.

3.     Avoid Black Hat Techniques

Where there is good, there’s always bad as well. Though SEO is considered to be a fair strategy, there are many ways you can spam online. Such moves are called black-hat. You may experience a rise in your rank pretty quickly sometimes with such techniques, but once Google recognizes it as spam your doomed. Not only do your keywords start falling, but your site also gets penalized and de-indexed from Google. That means you’ll be out of the picture in no time.

4.     Use Conversational and Long-Tail Keywords

We all know that more and more people are using voice search to find things online. Well, it’s much more comfortable than typing. However, voice search queries are conversational and longer. That means if you want your webpage to appear on a specific question, answer or merely a more extended voice search query, you’ll have to use long-tail and conversational keywords. If you go a few years back, more people were typing around 2-3 words to look for something. However, now users even type in full questions. Therefore, add all those long-tail keywords so that your site can have higher traffic and ranking.

Wrap Up

SEO is no walk in the park. It requires patient and research. So begin looking for the best short-tail and long-tail keywords relevant to the content on your site. After that, make your site mobile friendly and optimize it to enhance its speed. Once that happens, you’ll eventually experience a rise in both your ranking and t

How AI will Impact the B2B Industry in 2019

Are you using Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant on a daily basis? If you are, I’m pretty sure by now you have grown familiar with AI (artificial intelligence) technology. And if you haven’t used any of these AI solutions, you’re missing out on a great experience.

With the help of AI operated chatbots, many online B2B marketplaces have improved the quality of their customer support. AI operated chatbots are available round the clock, which means as a business you can serve customers 24/7.

AI technology is rapidly growing, and before you know it, every international B2B marketplace will be using it. Wondering how? Take a look at three ways every worldwide B2B marketplace can use AI technology.

1.     Enhanced Customer Experience

A crucial aspect that all B2B buyers consider in this competitive environment is customer experience and support. Imagine how you could target a client by knowing their interests and preferences. Well, with the help of AI technology that’s possible. You can track every click they make, every page they read and even the products they add in their cart but leave without checking out. With all this information you can easily target a potential client and serve them according to their needs.

In addition, with an AI operated chatbot, you can serve your clients without actually being online. This aspect is significant for making your users happy.

2.     Data Management

An AI solution has the potential to manage all your site’s data. No need to keep an eye on the analytics as you can integrate AI plugins that send you daily reports with performance. That way, you’ll know about daily conversions, traffic, and even source of the traffic. As a B2B marketer, you can use this data and create better digital marketing campaigns to grow your business.

3.     Voice Search and Suggestions

The world is evolving, and it’s about time you upgrade your search feature. Instead of the traditional method in which users simply typed keywords, you can allow voice searches as well. Though you’ll have to introduce long-tail queries as tags for this to work, the benefits are remarkable.

Apart from that, you can integrate search suggestions to encourage people to click-through. That means, as soon as someone begins to type a few letters of what they wish to search, your suggestions should show up. It’s a great way to signify to your audience what’s available on your site.

Wrap Up

By 2025, the AI industry is expected to climb up to $60 billion, and you can’t ignore integrating this technology in your online B2B marketplace. In addition, to make sure that your users have the best experience on your online platform, you have to invest in AI solutions. Therefore, consider the necessary steps for the market trends that will impact the B2B industry and plan your next move with the help of AI technology.