Taobao to help smaller vendors expand on shopping site

Taobao, China's largest consumer-oriented shopping site, will help smaller vendors by providing them with individualized tools as the platform bids to lure more online shoppers.

The vendors will be offered free data analyzing tools by Taobao which will also hand out gift vouchers to consumers according to their shopping behavior and habits, Taobao said yesterday.

Taobao now hosts about 7 million vendors, and offering them individualized marketing tools is a key step for the shopping site to build up 1 million small vendors with annual sales of 1 million yuan (US$164,000) by the end of 2014.

The offer is part of its plan to support smaller sellers who have distinct characteristics.

"Our target is to allow more small but high quality vendors to grow on our platform," said Zhang Yu, president of Taobao.com.