If you ever used Magento as your eCommerce platform, you may more or less realized that the default functionality of Magento cannot fulfill all your wants and needs. What should I do add those unique functions, and grow my eCommerce business in my own way?

Magento Extensions are here to help.

What is Magento extension?

Magento Extensions are essentially additional feature sets that enhances the functionality of core Magento software, improving it to do much more than it’s basic feature sets. With Magento Extensions, you can finally enhance your store’s user experiences, leverage customer friendly feature rich tools to make their online stores to do even more.

Especially if you plan to start your cross border eCommerce in China, the eCommerce landscape could be different from where your started. Hence, utilizing Magento Extensions can really help you satisfy the different the needs in a Chinese eCommerce ecosystem.

Below are 5 must-have extensions for your cross border eCommerce store in specifically for China market.

1. Shipping address localization

Customer need to fill in the address information as a first step for checkout. In fact, the shipping address format can be really different in the Western world and in China.

As shown below, the shipping address format usually starts with street address, following by city/state/zip code. Meanwhile, billing address is essential, since credit card payment is a mainstream payment method in the U.S and european countries. This is also the default setup of Magento shipping address features.

But these are not exactly the case in China. See picture below, the order is: Province – City – District – Street. Plus, no need for billing address in Chinese eCommerce ecosystem.

With our “shipping address localization” extensions, you don’t need to worry about change your address book settings to China-spefic in Magento platform. What we do is: we use “address Templates” section in the back-end to customize the arrangement/placement of the elements that compose an address, to match western addresses and Chinese format addresses.

2. Chinese ID validation

If you’re on your way to do cross border eCommerce in China, you must be aware that starting 2016, every customer in China need to prove valid Chinese ID/foreign passport number before purchasing outside the board online. This is needed for China customs clearance, and anyone who cannot provide ID information will fail to purchase a cross border oder.

This is a must-do for cross border eCommerce site, and our “Chinese ID validation” extension will add this “Chinese ID” column during the checkout. What’s more, the system will also help validate the ID number as well. You don’t need to change the whole system, just adding this extension should be enough. For expats living in China currently, they can also switch to “Passport validation” to complete the purchase.

3. Social (WeChat/Weibo) login

China’s eCommerce customers are probably the most social savvy group on the planet. We also created “social login” extension, which allows user to log in through WeChat and Weibo, two of the most popular social media tools in China.

More exactly, when customer enters the log in page, there will also be “WeChat Login” and “Weibo Login” button. No need for customers to type in their long username and password, through social login, one can scan the QR code and get into their own member dashboard in no time.

By using the social login, you will obviously help your users save their time, and potentially have higher sign-up rates and sign-up/sign-in conversion. Meanwhile, it will help you obtain your user’s social profile and social graph data. Integrating Social authenticated makes it easier to leverage other Social API to share user activities, drive traffic to your site from social network sites, and increase user engagement on your site.

4. China-specific mobile payment Integration

In most parts of the world, especially in the Western region, eCommerce is supported mainly by the usage of credit cards for online payments. However, in China, mobile payments, especially Alipay and WeChat Pay, serve as the two primary tools for consumers to pay.

As the eCommerce industry and mobile payment continues to boom, we are proud to announce that we have integrated Magento platform with WeChat pay and Alipay. More specifically, no matter your customers are browsing your store through desktop or mobile phone, they can freely complete their payments by WeChat Pay or Alipay.

Moreover, another feature we can add is the “placing order now and pay letter” function. Remember the time that you were about to place the order, then you realized that you were short of cash in your payment account? From now on, you don’t need to be worried. since retailers can freely set up “placing order now and pay later” function at the back end. As a business owner, you can put a time limit on this, and cutover’s unpaid order will be held in their shopping cart. Customers can come back and finish the payment in the given period of time.

5. Shipment Tracking info

Waiting for your eCommerce shipment can be bittersweet for customers, since they are expecting the goods delivered but they are worried whether the good can be shipped safe and sound. Especially in cross border eCommerce, things are more uncertain since goods are usually shipped from another country. Thus, we created “shipment tracking info” extension for you.

We will work together with Kuaidi100, the tracking platform who support nearly 500 domestic and foreign logistics. With the help of this extension, customers can freely check their shipment tracking info on your sites. Whether the goods is still in another country, pass China custom, or about to be delivered in your city, you can always find the latest updates through “order status”.

Dear customers, are there any more features you want for your eCommerce?

Contact us and let us know what would your ideal Magento 2 extensions and see how we can help.

More about Magento eCommerce:

Five Awesome Features Magento 2 Can Bring to Your eCommerce Customers

Improve Your WeChat E-commerce in One Easy Step: Magento 2.0

How Realistic is My eCommerce Finishing Developing in Two Months?