The Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) IPO has caused quite a the buzz in North America in recent months. But despite being the largest IPO in the U.S. market to-date, many people in North America are still wondering what it is that the company does so well.

Alibaba has 3 major E-commerce platforms that generate hundreds millions of visits per day. Of the three, Taobao(C2C) and tTmall(B2C)generate the bulk of the revenue for the Chinese E-commerce titan. Taobao, is connected to its B2C counterpart Tmall, as a relevant search query on platform will bring up results comprising of products and stores from both platforms. Customers used the same account to cumulate credibility and rewards across both platforms. In fact, writing meaningful reviews for vendors and brand names stores not only adds to one’s credibility, some vendors even offer rebates in exchange of timely reviews. Customers can also gather reward points through simply logging on everyday to “claim” their daily reward. Alibaba has created a highly-engaged community of vendors and consumers at virtually no extra cost to either party, so much so that countless international brands have opted to sell their products through Tmall, as opposed to developing their own E-commerce platform for the Chinese market. The success of its e-commerce platforms has not only allowed the company to create its own Paypal-like escrow payment system, it has also spilled over to fuel the development of the most efficient shipping network in the world.

While many traditional online vendors struggled with the wide adoption of smartphones, Alibaba embraced the challenged and offered even more to its customers. The Taobao mobile app, which is serves both Taobao and Tmall, offers a brilliantly designed user interfacethat includes every feature that is available on the web version,
including favouite vendors and products, reward redemption, convenient and secure payment, a live chat that allows vendors and customers to communicate in real time, and much more. Every additional feature is nicely tucked away to allow users to focus on the massive catalog, and easily accessible with the swipe of a finger. Mobile Taobao has connected people in remote, rural villages to the rich and glamorous inhabitants of the urban jungle through its convenient marketplace, giving people access to markets that would otherwise be unreachable. Founder Jack Ma has repeatedly stated that the company’s top priority is its customers. This video was released in the weeks leading up to the much anticipated IPO to give the public a glimpse of what Alibaba’s has accomplished: