Online stores' designers in great demand

Online store owners that dream of making it big on Taobao have found that an attractive and functional site makes all the difference, Xu Junqian discovers in Shanghai.

Seeking inspiration from his 200-gigabyte hard disk filled with design materials and finished templates, Liu Zhen-xing is designing a store that will have no painted wall, well-chosen furniture or bad paint smell. It is not a concrete store, but an online establishment on Taobao, a popular online-shopping website in China.

(From left) Website designers Liu Zhenxing, Shi Yonglei and Liang Jiao believe a good design is vital for the survival of an online store. [Photo / China Daily]

 

The 29-year-old man from Northwest China's Shaanxi province, who has made a career of designing such online enterprises, started this special job in 2010.

"A friend working for Taobao encouraged me to have a try, and I then found a commercial opportunity in this business since my design work sells well," Liu said.

As online shopping gets increasingly popular, designers of online stores are now in great demand. According to statistics from Taobao, its virtual decoration market - where store owners can buy templates for their webpages - has already attracted 1.7 million users.

"We have more than 4,100 registered designers, and the number has nearly doubled compared with last year," said an operator of the decoration market.

With 6.6 million sellers now joining Taobao, competition has become more cut-throat than ever. Catching the potential customers with their first glance at the store webpage is very important to online sellers. Since most online shoppers are young, the visual effect of the site is almost as important as the quality of goods.

"A well-designed webpage does draw more customers than an ordinary one does," said Chen Qiuji, 18, who has just spent 2,000 yuan on decorating her women's clothing store. "What I value most from a template, however, is convenience for my customers to choose and buy."

"With similar stores everywhere on Taobao, who will give up shopping at a cool and trendy store to spend money for a same dress in a plain setting without beautiful design?" said Clare Xu, a frequent online shopper in Shanghai.

Liu Zhenxing's Shanghai-based design studio, with annual earnings of 1.5 million yuan ($236,450), is one of the most successful among all the registered designers on Taobao's decoration market.

During the past three years, Liu's design team - two designers and nine service representatives - has already produced more than 50 decorative and functional templates for various kinds of online shops, 20 of which are still available on the market.

The most popular template they made, selling more than 2,300 units, has earned 1 million yuan including 0.3 million in commissions for Taobao.

However, the money does not always come easily.

All of Liu's team members are required to use the iMac, an all-in-one computer produced by Apple, while designing. "Although that's expensive," he said, "iMac can present the colors accurately."

To design a template usually requires 10 days, including market research, material preparations, and follow-up service. It is very common for them to work for more than 10 hours a day, and sometimes they even work overnight.

Due to the tight schedule, Liang Jiao, the programmer on the team, has not much chance to talk with his wife as he often gets back home at midnight when his wife is asleep, said Liu.

"We have to teach our customers who are used to working late at night to make full use of our templates, as some of them are just beginners in online business," Liu added. "This requires lots of time and great patience."