Online store owners that dream of making it big on Taobao have found that an attractive and functional site makes all the difference, Xu Junqian discovers in Shanghai.

Seeking inspiration from his 200-gigabyte hard disk filled with design materials and finished templates, Liu Zhen-xing is designing a store that will have no painted wall, well-chosen furniture or bad paint smell. It is not a concrete store, but an online establishment on Taobao, a popular online-shopping website in China.

The 29-year-old man from Northwest China's Shaanxi province, who has made a career of designing such online enterprises, started this special job in 2010.

"A friend working for Taobao encouraged me to have a try, and I then found a commercial opportunity in this business since my design work sells well," Liu said.

As online shopping gets increasingly popular, designers of online stores are now in great demand. According to statistics from Taobao, its virtual decoration market - where store owners can buy templates for their webpages - has already attracted 1.7 million users.

"We have more than 4,100 registered designers, and the number has nearly doubled compared with last year," said an operator of the decoration market.

With 6.6 million sellers now joining Taobao, competition has become more cut-throat than ever. Catching the potential customers with their first glance at the store webpage is very important to online sellers. Since most online shoppers are young, the visual effect of the site is almost as important as the quality of goods.

"A well-designed webpage does draw more customers than an ordinary one does," said Chen Qiuji, 18, who has just spent 2,000 yuan on decorating her women's clothing store. "What I value most from a template, however, is convenience for my customers to choose and buy."

"With similar stores everywhere on Taobao, who will give up shopping at a cool and trendy store to spend money for a same dress in a plain setting without beautiful design?" said Clare Xu, a frequent online shopper in Shanghai.

Liu Zhenxing's Shanghai-based design studio, with annual earnings of 1.5 million yuan ($236,450), is one of the most successful among all the registered designers on Taobao's decoration market.

During the past three years, Liu's design team - two designers and nine service representatives - has already produced more than 50 decorative and functional templates for various kinds of online shops, 20 of which are still available on the market.

The most popular template they made, selling more than 2,300 units, has earned 1 million yuan including 0.3 million in commissions for Taobao.

However, the money does not always come easily.

All of Liu's team members are required to use the iMac, an all-in-one computer produced by Apple, while designing. "Although that's expensive," he said, "iMac can present the colors accurately."

To design a template usually requires 10 days, including market research, material preparations, and follow-up service. It is very common for them to work for more than 10 hours a day, and sometimes they even work overnight.

Due to the tight schedule, Liang Jiao, the programmer on the team, has not had much time to talk with his wife as he often gets back home at midnight when his wife is asleep, said Liu.

"We have to teach our customers who are used to working late at night to make full use of our templates, as some of them are just beginners in online business," Liu added. "This requires lots of time and great patience."

To avoid paying the commission, some designers choose to open an online-store selling design services instead of registering at the decoration market.

Taobao's decoration market operator argued that the registered designers, provided by Taobao with functional tool bags, great demand and an environment of healthy competition, will benefit more than the unregistered ones do.

The operator also said that users of the decoration market are protected by Taobao's refund system. They may even enjoy a dual guarantee if the designers pay security money of 10,000 yuan, which would be used to compensate for the losses of store owners if disputes should happen.

Some unregistered designers claim that the authentication system does not put them at a disadvantage since Taobao's decoration market can only offer finished designs while some store owners prefer customized ones.

Shi Li, 25, from Changchun, capital of Northeast China's Jilin province, has been working as an online store designer for three years. Unlike Liu, Shi focuses on customized designing, which means his only task is to meet the demands of a certain store owner.

"Customized designing has its own problems," Shi said. "It is quite common to redesign a single webpage over and over again until it can satisfy the customer."

In the daytime, Shi works as a designer for an online store of women's clothing. From this job he gets a fixed wage of 3,000 yuan, which he regards as good money considering the average wage of designers in Northeast China.

"Store owners value us much more than they did several years ago since customers are now less likely to spend money in a roughly designed store," Shi said. "I earned only 1,200 yuan the first month I worked as a full-time designer."

Wang Ruofei from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, a frequent customer of Taobao, says good decoration is critical for an online store. "I usually have no desire for shopping when I stroll into an unsightly one."

"I prefer a light-colored background and elegant design," Wang added.

While earning his bread and butter as a full-time designer, Shi adds a little jam by doing some odd jobs after work. He has long been thinking about having his own design studio.

"I believe this emerging industry will provide me with more opportunities though there are now many competitors," Shi said. "The key to survival lies not only in creativity, but also in patience for gaining customers."

Contact the writer at xujunqian@chinadaily.com.cn.

Ma Yiyun contributed to this story.

(China Daily 10/04/2012 page8)