Ease and transparency aren’t the words typically associated with international shipping. Quite the opposite, actually. Logistics can be a frustrating and ambiguous process from beginning to end. About a third (33%) of the 5,000 US small business owners polled in the Alibaba.com US Small and Medium Business (SMB) Confidence Survey don’t buy from international businesses because of the uncertainty around shipping costs and delivery timing. There’s no simple way to know what you will end up paying, how to track an order, or determine the final delivery time. Until now.

Cross-border shipping has remained a slow, offline process despite the rapid evolution of technology. Coordination can take days of back-and-forth calls and paperwork for businesses. All of this takes important time away from growing a company and serving customers.

Alibaba.com’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. So this naturally covers helping our customers get their product from the factory or distributor to wherever it needs to be. We want international shipping to be a painless operation. That’s why we’re introducing our newest cross-border supply chain solution: Alibaba.com Freight.

The complexity and ambiguity of international shipping will be things of the past with Alibaba.com Freight. We are transforming the logistics process by bringing it to the digital age. Customers using Alibaba.com will have access to unprecedented ease, speed, transparency, and control of their B2B orders.

To use the service, customers place orders through Alibaba.com’s Trade Assurance program, which is Alibaba.com’s free payment and order protection solution. They are then able to:

• View instant freight shipment options
• Compare and choose prices and shipping providers
• Contract with the shipper of their choice
• Manage the shipment from end-to-end across a network of logistics providers
• Track shipments from origin to delivery after the order is finalized

The pain points that make global logistics slow, confusing, and daunting are taken care of with this new solution.

Alibaba.com Freight also offers the option to order large sized items. Previously, Alibaba.com Air Express was our leading cross-border supply chain solution. This met the needs for smaller sized and lower volume products, but most orders placed on Alibaba.com were too large to ship by air. The fact is, ocean freight is the main mode of transportation in international trade. It accounts for about 75% of cross-border shipping, according to the National Bureau of Statistics and internal Alibaba.com data.

Learn more about Alibaba.com Freight to start cutting down on the time and resources you spend on shipping.

Interested in getting started? Speak with a shipping expert.

Do a cost-benefit analysis comparing different vendors and include details like shipping costs and volume pricing.