Bysoft China's Blog > Your e-commerce partner

The market of e-commerce website is booming in China. For a good e-commerce website in China, you have to install a good Chinese payment module. In fact, an e-commerce payment system facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for online transactions. E-commerce payment systems have become increasingly popular due to the widespread use of the internet-based shopping and banking.

“48.3% of Chinese Internet users bought online because they thought it can save time by buying online, and “Easy to Operate for Fun and Curiosity (31.5%)” and “Reduce Costs (38.8%)” are the reasons next to “Saving Time”. Interesting is the following reason of “For Fun and Curiosity (31.5%)”, which was ranked the 4th purpose for users to purchase online. “ Source Payment Barriers in China’s B2C Business

Let’s see together what the principal Chinese Payment Modules are.

-          Alipay

Alipay, an affiliate of Alibaba Group, is the most popular third-party online payment platform in China. Besides Taobao and Alibaba.com, Alipay provides payment solutions in China for more than 550,000 external merchants for online retail, virtual gaming, digital communications, commercial services, air ticketing and utilities fee payment transactions.

Alipay provides a payment service called escrow, in which consumers can verify whether they are happy with goods they have bought before releasing money to the seller.

Alipay has about 65 financial partners (national banks in China, MasterCard, Visa, BEA). This module facilitates offline value-added services through strategic partnerships with China Post, which has coverage of rural areas and university campuses, and 24-hour convenience stores.

-          Tenpay

Tenpay is the direct competitor of Alipay. This popular module has been developed by Tencent, which hold QQ.com (about 300 millions of users).

Tenpay allow businesses and individuals to securely send and receive payments online.The users can also charge their mobile with this module. It is compatible with the e-banking service of major domestic bank. Tenpay’s market share has grown from 10% in 2006 to 20.5% in 2009. In short 3 years, Tenpay’s market share has increased 10.5%, compared with 21.2% market share increase by Alipay in past 3 years.

Also, in 2009, Tenpay’s market share has increased 1.3% while its main competitor Alipay has only increased 0.3%.

-          Chinapay

ChinaPay, a branch of China UnionPay (government-backed inter-bank transfer network), is also an online payment module. It was created in 2000, one of third-party online payment platform in China.

Due to the financial and promoting support of China UnionPay, Chinapay is used for online bill payments, online brokerage services, banking and of course online payments.

Chinapay’s market share has decreased slightly in the past 3 years.

Below other Chinese Payment Modules:

-           99Bill

-           ChinaPnR

-          YeePay

-           IPS

-          ChinaBank

-           PayEase

This graphic explains the reality of the Chinese Payment Modules market:

For e-commerce, a website has to establish an agreement with many different banks in order to accept all online payment dealing from the users.

These third-party online payment platform exposed above are very useful for retailers. In fact, as an e-commerce seller you have to primary consider the need of their customers thus set up an effective payment module.

You won’t be able to have an e-commerce website without a third-party online payment platform.

Another important thing to retain is that the online transactions by credit card are limited with each bank. An electronic account could be funded with an electronic debit from a bank account or by a credit card at the payer’s choice. But now bank begin to require a verified bank account after the account holder exceeded a predetermined spending limit.

Now choose your best Chinese payment module!

Synchronization is a typical problem for e-commerce web sites. The online store has to be synchronized with a number of other applications that are more suited to handle different tasks: CRM, ERP, inventory, accounting, call center, warehouse, catalog, you name it.

Synchronization is a difficult problem, and though it sounds easy for anyone who coined the term, it is in fact a ongoing challenge for developer, when you take into consideration performance and consistence.

Consistence

Consistence is the fact that the remote system and the e-commerce site are always at the same level of information. What is in the CRM is in the web site, and what is in the web site is also in the CRM.

Or not. Sometimes, willfully, the synchronization is one-way: information come down from one of the server, and is used by the second one. The second system must use the information as ready only : not modification is possible by the second system, as the first one is de facto, master. This is typical of two kinds of situations: when the e-commerce web site is evolving as a side project to a larger internal system. This happens a lot when retailers are moving to the Web. They already have an existing system. Thus, the e-commerce takes all its information in the original system, and displays them out to the web. The other situation is when the internal system is seen as strategic, and company doesn’t want to run it, for performance/security/organization reasons. So as to decouple the two, synchronization is set up.

This schema is the most simple, and once it has been readied, the two way synchronization raises its ugly head. Obviously, there will sooner or later, information from the web site that will need to be made available to the other system : CRM will need to see the updated information of any contact profile, just like the web site will need to have the contact information updated. Or, the web site will produce new data, like view count for each production, that the ERP will want to use in order to plan the next buying process.

One way and two way synchronization are the two main approaches. Hybrid solutions includes : double one way synchronization (each server is master for a distinct set of data), synchronization with moderation (one of the server will be master, and collect data for conflict resolution, before pushing it back to the second server), and other variations.

One rule: keep this simple, as the second aspect of synchronization is going to be difficult.

Synchronous or asynchronous

The above approach must take into account the how fast the information has to be taken into account. The transfer is synchronous when both servers update their information at the same time. This is typically the case for wire transfer: both s will validate the wire transfer, or they will not validate it at all. There can be no “inconsistent” time, during which one bank has send the money, and the other hasn’t acknowledged it.

Asynchronous introduce a simple concept: delay. One of the server will have the information, and it will relay it later to the other. And, there will be a time difference between those two operations.

The main advance of such approach is to avoid transferring the load of the traffic to the remote resource. Basically, when the two servers are synchronous, any hit on one of them translates into another hit on the second server. So, traffic on the first server will be transferred to the second. And, when it comes to web application, this is not a good idea.

Besides, synchronous transfer usually means doing it unit by unit. Everytime a customer updates its contact information, the information is sent to the CRM. On the other hand, asynchronous systems will accept batch working. Instead of sending them one by one, the original server will stack several requests in a batch: it will run less often, and probably faster.

Delays on my app!

Usually, when asynchronous transfer is presented to project owners, there is a bit of misunderstanding. The concept is usually met with furious denial : I need this data right away! However, business timing most often allow for such delay. In fact, it usually accept it most of the time. Let us review some examples.

Updating catalog description is usually a daily routine. It is rather infrequent that it has to be updated several times a day. Benign errors, such as spelling mistake may be fixed manually, while batch updating, with several update can wait the next business day. As such, it is best done at night, with low traffic, so as to reset all caches without pressure. Solution : asynchronous, once a day.

Contact information is indeed something that cannot wait a day. Once the information has been modified, it is often important to have this transferred promptly to CRM. Most of the time, a 5 minute to 1 hour difference is still OK. For one, this allows the online user to change his mind, and change again the contact, and avoid a double send. Secondly, it is unusual to need up to the second information in the CRM. Even if the CRM is on the verge of a major mailing, 5 minutes delay will not have a major impact. And if the contact are processed manually in the CRM, 1 hour is even normal delay for processing : no need to rush. Solution : asynchronous, 5 to 60 minuts.

Invoices and shipping order are more tricky. Shipping the same day will need the information in time, and this will prevent us from using a long delay. Although, a 5 mins delay will be OK, allowing both batching, and not dropping any last minute order. May be, adapting the schedule to be more frequent by the deadline, and less frequent when away is a good idea : frequency may be a variable function. Solution : asynchronous, variable frequency.

Inventory checks are probably one of the only situations that will need synchronous transfer. You don’t want to book a product that will be out of stock. Not only its availability has to be checked, but its booking also needs to be confirmed. Warehouse will handle the situation on its own, sending buying order automatically below certain levels of stock, preventing the sell a few items before outsold, etc.

Capacity planning

Capacity planning is easier for asynchronous than for synchronous. Basically, since traffic is decoupled from synchronization, you can dimension the size of the processing. Ideally, the processing will deal with all the waiting objects, and make use of any batch command available on the remote system. Think about LOAD DATA INTO TABLE rather than INSERT INTO TABLE approach. Whenever the load is too much for the remote system, you can make it smaller, or, strangely enough, make it parallel (several smaller updates at the same time).

As for synchronous system, there is only one hope: make the remote system fast enough. For this, one has to estimate the amount of traffic the web will actually generate to them. One suggestion is to have an equation such as this one :

Traffic * conversion * average_hits * security

Traffic is anything you want: average traffic, peak traffic, etc. Ideally, you will provide both, but this is often luxury.

Conversion is the part of your traffic that will end up making a remote call. For example, your e-shop may have 1000 users a day, but will make 10 sales a day. Your conversion here is 1/100.

Average_hits is the number of hit each session will do on the remote servers. For example, each sales will usually hold 2 products. It will need then 2 checks on the remote servers. 2 is actually a good evaluation here.

Security is the often overlooked factor that will cover any unforeseen problem. Here, we may expect sudden sales. That will make 10 times more orders. We can use 10 as security.

Finally, for our simple example, a 1000 visitors a day traffic will require 1000 * 1/100 * 2 * 10 = 200 hits a day. If our peak expected traffic was 1000 a seconds, we would need 200 hits a second on the remote server.

Once you have the target traffic for the remote system, you will require the remote system to answer as fast as need. This is an extremely important point, as usually, there are no check done whatsoever. With the target traffic, you can run a performance tests, and make sure the distant server is apt for your traffic, and the delays are not too long. Performance of the remote system will actually reflect directly on your e-commerce web site.

Conclusion

As conclusion, do not underestimate synchronization. As usual with informatics, such systems are prone to feature creep: it is obvious at the beginning that a one way replication is sufficient, then a hybrid is set up, then a full blown two ways is expected, and finally, performance is taken into account. Each phase has its own challenges.

Damien Seguy

Automated deployment has an important effect on your code: it leads to making your code ready to deploy. At any moment of your dev cycle, the deployment script may be called to send it to production or release: in simple terms, to be released.

Release early, release often

This is akin to ‘release early, release often’ strategy: deploying often shows that the project is making progress. Such progress is not always in the right direction: sometimes, we publish bugs. But during development time, this is normal situation, and soon, a new release will fix this. And since the bug was caught early in the process, then it will be easier to fix, and, more important, easier to forgive.

Not always finished

How can one provide code that can be always releasable? Well, first of all, between version and our current code, there is a nice piece of engineering that is called SCM : Git, svn, mercurial, fossil, CVS… call it the way you want, but this is will be the main source for the version. As long as you’re not committing to SCM, your code may not be releasable: it may not compile, be ugly, or not functional. As long as it is not committed, code doesn’t exist.

Once it is committed, it must now be part of the application. And to be releasable, it has no to break the application. First check will be compilation: if code doesn’t compile, then, it will not be releasable.

Champagne development

Coding all until it works is also called champagne development: you don’t know how sound it will pop until you actually open the bottle of champagne. At that point, you will need all your friends around, because if it pops, then you plan to fill a couple of glasses and cheers. On the other hand, if it fails, all your friends will be here to cheer you up anyway or make fun of you (yes, friends also do this).

This allegory may be applied to development: when code is awaited for too long, expectations builds up, and start going wild. As you concentrate on code, and leave your users in the dark, they will find their information with their only available tool: imagination. That’s how you end up with a nice project, well below expectation.

Breadth first

The other approach is to make the code ready as soon as possible, even if it doesn’t do much. Compile is the first level of releasable. Fully working is only the third level. In between, you have the ‘incomplete’ level : it only works. Just not fully.

Let’s take an example: how to work on a Drupal adressbook module and still have this functional during the whole process? If such a module is several days of work, then it will probably not fully work in the initial days. At this point, it is not important to have it fully working : we just need it working.

Imagine the early stage of such drupal module : the module itself is created, based on its name, with a lot of empty hooks. This will compile but do nothing. However, this is releasable: it can be sent on a new version and it will only add… nothing to the final app.

Then, from this base, you can start adding new parts. Imagine you are working on the eternal addressbook. You have then different avenues to start working: you may start from the database structure and update the hook_install; then add a few values in the database, and work in the hook_view, so that you can provide a view on existing data; then the same hook_view for a data requesting form;
You may also start from hook_menu to display the menu and an access to your new module; then the hook_view to display it. And hook_install to add a new CSS to the templating system. You may also start by the admin panel, the templates, etc.

Each of those approaches will provide you with something functional: yourself, and your user, will be able to run this application, and see a part of the job done. Not all of it, of course: development is not yet done. But part of it. Anytime.

This is the main difference with depth first. Depth first will solve all the problems as it identify them : drupal hooks, database structure, template, tests, deployment. At any point, this is development work, and nothing is releasable.

In the end there are two different approaches for always releasable.

l  Growing code organically: start by laying around all needed code to make it run. Then, add new feature on top of such code. I also call this ‘adding meat around the bone’, based on the skeleton cliché. You will probably end up with a lot of empty or constant functions, which will be placeholder for more complex and future code. Counting such placeholders is a good indicator for your progress.

l  Keep it visible: this approach is more user centric (customer, if you prefer). Only work on something that is visible. This 120 fields form will start with only 2 forms. Then, it will show 3, then 4, then 12, then 30, etc. Each time, it will add some new functionality. And if this is a 12 step payment tunnel, then it should start with a 1 step payment, then 2, then…. Keep in mind that your user will track your progress on what they see (aka template), not on the amount of work or code you provide.

If you plan to keep your code releasable, you’ll have to be able to answer this simple question: can I simply deploy my code now? This will make you ready for any situation when any even happens, out of the planning: security issue, rush publication for show off, sudden change in the customer planning, or even, a change in developer. The next guy will always benefit from starting with a working code, albeit wholly, rather that untangle a web of partially done tasks.

Damien Seguy

Weibo is a Chinsese social network that allows microblogging, created at August, 14, 2009 by SINACorporation. This is the direct competitor of Twitter, which allows users to broadcast short messages for free on the Internet.

Its functionality are very similar to Twitter:

- The broadcast messages are limited to 140 characters

- The user has the option of sending private messages

- The user can follow as many people as he wants

- Users can post comments on existing posts

About 25 million messages are sent per day on Weibo. This social network had 50 million users in October 2010 and provides 200 million by the end of 2011.

According to a survey conducted by the Youth Daily of China, 73% of Internet users consider blogging as an important source of information and 56.5% were generally confident in this media. The Chinese follow mostly celebrities and businessmen.

Many Chinese and now international celebrities (Tom Cruise, Bill Gates, Christine Lagarde Director of the IMF for example) are present on Sina Weibo. Their accounts can be identified by the letter V which means that it is a VIP account.

Sina Weibo network is the most popular in major Chinese cities. Indeed, more and more brands are part of this network in order to have visibility of choice as Maybelline, Dior, Lancôme, Chanel …

But censorship is still very present on this network which suspects a word filter. The purpose of Weibo is to allow foreign companies to enter the Chinese market. Chinese users are three times more connected to the brands than French such as can be seen on this graph.

Source :

http://synthesio.com/corporate/wp-content/uploads/case_studies/DZN-SYNTHESISocial_Media_and_Censorship_In_China-FR-whp.pdf

The Chinese are becoming more adept to new technologies and do not hesitate to buy their products online. The issue of a brand to be present on social networks and more particularly on Weibo is to significantly increase its reputation and visibility.

L’Oréal, for example, issued a series of mini films (soap opera format)  starring a young student that who uses cosmetics brand and make it to progressively more toned and pretty.

This immersion of brands in the community on the Internet is a new form of communication that allows brands to learn about new consumer habits and thereby get closer to them. This technique assures the consumer and leads him to be loyal to the brand because it has become part of everyday life.

Social media is becoming a priority for the future of the Web in China. Chinese Internet users require brands to meet their needs by being present on the Web. Therefore, they must continually develop new digital marketing strategies that directly affect consumers.

The marks must also have a deep understanding of Chinese social networks as part of a given network according to their socio-professional or personal.

The future of brands is on the Web and we can look forward to future digital campaigns of the most delusional! Wait and see!

China is the digital country in the world. China counted 420 million Net surfers at June 30, 2010, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), of which 73 million use Internet on their cell phone. With such a use of Internet, it is normal that the E-commerce retailers wish to be established on this market. So the question that everyone is asking himself: Which are at the present time the most influential E-commerce websites in China?

Here is a description of e-commerce sites, their functionality and their particularity.

Each of us probably knows the legendary e-commerce site www.alibaba.com .

Alibaba was founded as a platform in order to connect Chinese companies with foreign buyers, a single market B2B.

Subsequently, Alibaba has opened its market to B2C through www.taobao.com , created in 2003, Taobao means “find a treasure.”



Taobao Marketplace, originally called Taobao, is the largest online shopping platform in China with over 370 million registered users in 2010.

The particularity of this e-commerce site is the ability to buy all kinds of products at the lowest price. In order to generate more traffic and remain the leader, a new online platform has been created solely reserved for brands (P & G, L’Oreal, Uniqlo, Lenovo, Dell, Samsung and Adidas). This position, according to market growth, traffic generation is a must for Taobao for already more than 30,000 brands are represented. Let us not forget that with its 40 million of turnover, an introduction of TAOBAO on Stock Exchange is planned for this year.

http://www.dangdang.com/

The e-commerce site Dangdang was created by Peggy Yu and Li Guoqing in 1999. Cosmetic products, digital appliances, books, audio, and many clothing (adults and children) are the main products sold on this e-commerce platform.

There are more than 10 million new registered users per year on Dangdang, and its IPO in November 2010 was estimated at about $ 1 billion.

Its customers are spread among 50 countries and over 40% of Chinese people have ever bought a product on Dandang.

Dangdang direct competitors are Amazon, more commonly known www.joyo.com and www.360buy.com .

www.360buy.com

360buy is a B2C site, positioned in second place in this sector, has expanded its sales of electronic books by creating a new website specialized in selling luxury cosmetics, clothing, male / female as well as luxury leather goods .

Chinese consumers are increasingly attracted to luxury brands like Chanel, Hermes, and Miu Miu, which now offers 360Top site. It also has a monthly magazine online.

The Chinese are increasingly interested in the luxury market and are willing to buy brand products like Hermes, Chanel or Dior….

The reason for this new position is to compete directly with the giant Alibaba / Taobao. The monthly magazine which appears on the site 360Top already marks a major difference compared to TMall of Taobao. This kind of detail can retain the consumer directly. According to Liu Qiang-dong (CEO and founder of 360buy) platform 360buy exceed that of Alibaba in five years. Ambitious project for 360buy which just positioned itself in the luxury market. See you in five years to see the winner!

http://www.amazon.cn/

Joyo was acquired $ 74 million by Amazon in August 2004. In the beginning www.joyo.com was an information service and IT downloads.

Joyo was founded by Kingsoft in August 1998. Kingsoft has decided to make an online bookstore Joyo.com and stopped its download services.

On June 5, 2007, “joyo.com” was renamed “amazon.cn” and its Chinese name was changed from “卓越网” (Joyo Network) to  ”卓越 亚马逊” (Joyo Amazon).

On October 27, 2011, the Chinese name Amazon in China was changed from 卓越 亚马逊 (Joyo Amazon) for 亚马逊 中国 (Amazon China).

Amazon has established seven logistics platforms in several Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Suzhou and the eighth will be located in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

Amazon has brilliantly managed to establish itself in China. The strength of this e-commerce site in China is that it is specialized in the sale of books and makes it more credible and reassuring to the consumer. It is a mark of confidence and quality.

Key figures for 2011:

Market share of the B2C sector:

-TMall: 48.5%

- 360Buy: 18.1%

- Amazon: 2.4%

- Dangdang: 2.2%

Visit other e-commerce sites much less influential, but certainly interesting for their positioning:

www.easybuy.com.cn : Specializing in selling e-book and electronic products

www.enet.com.cn : Specializing in IT products

www.51buy.com : Specializing in the sale of products and electronics

www.letao.com : Specializing in the sale of sports shoes

www.mbaobao.com : leather goods, specializing in the sale of bags

On mid-October 2011, the X.commerce Innovate Developer Conference was organized by the eBay Ltd. in the Moscone Center, San Francisco. This year’s conference is all about the launch of the new E-Commerce platform: X.commerce, which brings together a whole set of commerce products and technologies from eBay, PayPal and Magento. Read more »

Newsletter Generator

During a Magento project of one of our clients, we were asked to set up a newsletter generator. This module allows us to select products from the catalogs directly from the Magento Back Office, and automatically add them into a predefined newsletter template.

1.1.1. Template of the newsletter

Zoning of the newsletter template

A specific template was integrated (the above image is only a draft). The header and the footer respect the graphical design of the site and several links allow the user to be redirected to the pages defined by the client.

The part “Our selection” highlights several products, while other products are sorted by different categories.

Each product displayed is clickable and redirects the user to the corresponding product page on the website. He can therefore see the product and add it to the cart with a single click. Read more »

We are proud to announce that BysoftChina has become an Oracle Partner!

Oracle is a leading company that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products, including database, operation system, office suite and others. It is particularly well known by its database products. Following the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, the original MySQL database system now becomes an Oracle product.

MySQL is a powerful open source database management system. Its high performance, low cost and strong reliability has made it the most popular open source database management system, now used in millions of Internet websites, big or small size. The letter “M” in the acronym LAMP (a solution stack of free, open source software for building web servers) stands for the MySQL system.

As a first-rank website building service provider, BysoftChina has now accumulated rich experience in MySQL. Until today, we have developed over 200 web solutions based on MySQL system, and the number is still climbing. Now, with the establishment of the partnership with Oracle, BysoftChina can now benefit from the fast and powerful technical support from Oracle, so as to improve our expertise in MySQL and in other Oracle products, and to provide better service to our customers.

PHP is a scripting language run on website servers, originally designed to produce dynamic web pages. Like ASP and Java, PHP is used in a variety of domains and can run on most of the operation systems such as Windows and Linux. Now, it is usually used alongside with the Open Source web service application Apache and database system MySQL under the operation system Linux (LAMP platform). Its most prominent feature is its ease of use and strong flexibility build complex applications. In the domain of web application development, PHP is the most adopted technology by the developers around the world.

Currently among the over 50 million websites, nearly 60% of them use PHP language. In China, over 80% of the dynamic websites are developed using PHP. By the rise of a variety of web applications (including Web 2.0 applications, email services, intranet applications etc.), the need of the PHP development is rising as well. A great number of the Open Source website building systems are using PHP as the development language for managing dynamic web pages: Joomla!, Drupal and eZ Publish for content management systems; WordPress for blogs, Magento, osCommerce, PrestaShop and Zen Cart for e-commerce systems; Chinese famous bulletin system Discuz! and e-commerce system ECShop etc…

These pre-defined, ready-to-use systems may not perfectly answer to what is needed by the customers for their specific website, for example an internal human resource management system managing leaves and salaries for the employees, or a company that has a specific business process and wishes to change it to information management system… Using PHP + MySQL database solution can perfectly satisfy this kind of customers, by providing them with a totally customized development according to their specific needs. Using PHP can also assure that after the development of the first version, it will be very easy to maintain and upgrade.

For this reason, we witness a growing need of the PHP developers by the companies who plan to build websites or web applications. This results to the fact that PHP developers are now more difficult to hire in China. In order to answer this kind of needs, many technical solution companies start to offer services such as PHP project outsourcing, PHP onsite development… This provides for the companies, needing PHP resource, a convenient and practical option.

In order to satisfy the business needs and to meet the company growth, our Shanghai office has moved to a new address located at Huamin Hanzun International building Unit 6H, No.728 Yenan West road, Changning district, Shanghai City (上海市长宁区延安西路728号华敏翰尊国际大厦6H室). Our new office not only offers to our coworkers a cozier working environment, but also provides more space to welcome our new colleagues, to prepare for BysoftChina’s further development in the Great China area.

In the past few years, with the support of local and international customers and business partners, BysoftChina has met a significant growth in China: we have grown from a group of 5 people in Guangzhou in 2003 to now over 100 engineers located in 3 different cities in China.

With the hard work of each co-worker, BysoftChina has successively established partnership with multiple professional solution providers: we are now Magento Silver Solution Partner, Acquia Drupal Partner, eZ Publish Silver Partner and Zend Solution Partner. This is no doubt the proof of the solid experience and expertise of BysoftChina in the web developing technologies area.