Recently on Reddit, I came across a question posted by a new buyer on Alibaba: Seller added other items to invoice to improve GMV. Is this normal practice?
Regarding this issue, we techTongBo as a seller on Alibaba, we can provide some basic knowledge to everyone.
Why Seller Added Other Items To Invoice In Alibaba?
Due to the rating system on the Alibaba platform, all products from sellers are evaluated. Based on different ratings, these products can receive varying levels of traffic (specifically, different numbers of visitors). The ratings here are not the product rating data that buyers can see, but rather the undisclosed part of the system algorithm.
Because this hidden rating is often tied to transaction data, which means that if the system records that this product has been purchased by someone, it will give a score to this product and it will gain more traffic advantages. So, the seller adds other products to your order in order to create some transaction records for these products and then let Alibaba's rating system give more traffic to these products.
By doing so, it can help sellers create more products that have higher ratings in the system and obtain traffic advantages on the platform.
I know some people may think this is a deceptive tactic, but sellers are also forced to do so. If they don't operate in this way, sellers would have to pay more advertising fees to the platform in order for their products to appear in front of potential customers.
What is meant by the traffic advantage within a platform?
Alibaba has developed a scoring algorithm that evaluates all products based on their listing titles, detailed descriptions, images, prices, number of buyer inquiries, number of buyer purchases, and transaction amounts.
Then, based on these ratings, the products are divided into 4 levels: Basic Product, Potential Product, Top Product and Super Product.
Four different levels of products correspond to different traffic benefits in the platform.
Celia Tang, the Senior Sales Representative of techTongBo, explained:
If the seller's product is Super Product, they will receive more traffic bias, which means lower customer acquisition costs for the seller. In other words, they don't need to spend too much money on purchasing alibaba advertising space.
On the contrary, if your product does not have any transaction records, it is difficult for the platform to identify it as a Top Product. As a result, sellers will have to spend more money to purchase advertising space in order to gain more exposure and increase the chances of being seen by potential buyers. This also means an increase in costs.
So, many sellers, in order to deal with these platform rules, will add the products they want to actively promote in the order invoices to "create" some transaction data and help improve product ratings. This way, they can gain some advantages in later operations.
The buyers in the procurement process will not lose anything, but they may have some questions. So today we are here to fully introduce this issue - - Why Seller added other items to invoice?
For more tips and knowledge on using Alibaba for procurement, you can search "Alibaba" on our website.
techTongBo (also named: Nanjing TongBo / NJTB) is a Chinese company specializing in the manufacture and sales of vacuum cleaner accessories. We offer replacement accessories for the global market that are compatible with mainstream vacuum cleaner brands and have stronger price advantages.