How to order from taobao- part #1

Hello cuties ♥

On egl somebody asked me to explain how to order from taobao ~
I will split this in two posts. This time I will tell you some basic things and how to order from an*tai*na.
In the next part I will talk about shopping services.

For those of you who never heard of taobao before: taobao.com is a shopping site offering various products from China. Many Lolitas like buying their dresses there because they are normally cheaper than brand dresses. You can also find replicas on taobao.

I remember that when I first checked out taobao I was totally confused because of all the Chinese^^. However I learned that you still can look around on taobao even if you do not get what the text is saying. Just do not give up ~

How to search things on taobao?
For me there are two ways for searching things on taobao. The first way is using the search function on the site:

If you open the site you will see something like this. In the circled field you can type what you are looking for. Use google translator to find out how the thing you are looking for is called in Chinese.

The orange button is the search button. I think that was obvious

Normaly you will have to look trough the suggestion taobao gives you. I for example searched for "Lolita" and quite many non-loli-able dresses appeared..

This is what I got for searching "Lolita".. If you want to take a closer look at one of the products click on the text under it. You also will see the price of the item in Yuan. You can use a currency calculator to find out how much it would be in your currency.

The easier way to find an item you look for is if you already know the name of the shop. You can write the name of the shop and taobao next to it into google to find the site of the shop.

If you for example look for an*tai*na´s shop search google for "antaina taobao".

The good thing about an*tai*na is that you can order from them without a shopping service. You just send them an e-mail telling them what you want.

Most taobao shops however do not ship outside of China. A shopping service can help you to buy from these shops but you will have to pay an extra fee. I will talk about this in detail in the next part ~

If you open an*tai*na´s site you will find this green text in english explaining you how to order from them.

The blue table on the side leads you to their offer on shoes. They are sorted by heel height and style (they offer Lolita, cosplay and punk shoes I think). For this you can use google translator again.

If you view one of their products you can see in which sizes and colours they offer it. If you scroll down a bit you will see extra pictures of the different colours.

On the site you can- like on ebay- see the shops feedback. I´m not 100% sure how the system works but I think 5 diamonds is the best.

EDIT: On this page taobao´s rating system is described very well. 5 crowns are the best

If you decided which shoes you want to have send them an e-mail saying:

shoes you want to have(copy and paste the "headline" of the item)

size 

colour

quantity

your location so they can tell you how much the shipping will be.

(shipping for shoes normaly is higher because they are havy)

The will responde you telling the total amount of your order. They normaly do not send you an invoice through paypal. You have to send it to them (simply click on send money and write in the e-mail address they give you)

After your payment the shoes will be made and then be shipped. 

Well, that was all I wanted to explain in the first part. I hope I could help some of you and if you have further questions just ask ~ I´m happy if I can help ♥

Until next time,

Yaya ♥