Taobao Launches Gorgeous iPad E-commerce App [PICS]

Taobao, the largest e-commerce site in China, launched its iPad e-commerce app yesterday to serve iPad Chinese shoppers while they’re on the go.

At first glance the app looks gorgeous, with lots of neat tablet-oriented customizations, nice wood-effect borders (see the picsbelow). It offers a better shopping experience than the iPhone app or the mobile website, mainly thanks to its wider screen size.

Product images are best viewed on the iPad, where users can enlarge the image by simple pinches and swipes, an important feature for careful online shoppers who need to see the product in detail.

Popular product categories like clothes, gadgets, shoes and beauty products are neatly lined up along the sidebar. But something that users of the Taobao iPhone app would dearly miss is its dedicated Apple zone, which seems to be missing on this version 1.0 of the iPad app.

While Taobao’s iPad app might look pretty, it does require some time for the images to load despite running on a decent wifi connection. But it might well speed up if you’re in China (I’m using it from Singapore now). Image loading on the app feels heavy, especially after shopping around for some time, but at least the thumbnails still load okay.

Given a choice, the Taobao main site still offers a faster shopping experience than their iPad app but it is certainly still a pleasant experience surfing around. You can download Taobao’s iPad app here (iTunes link).

A Taobao spokeswomen explains a little more about the app via email:

Keeping in line with our focus on user experience, we have taken into consideration that our users use a multitude of different mobile operating systems and devices, the mobile apps we offer are compatible with Android, Symbian, Windows phone, iPhone/iPad and Java. The new iPad app allows our users to shop online whenever, wherever – they can search for products, complete transactions, check shipping status and communicate with sellers via ‘WangWang’, the instant messenger program.

Here is a series of pictures comparing how Taobao looks, on the web, with the new iPad, and the updated iPhone app, too: