Interesting times in Indian E-Retailing

These are interesting times for E-Commerce in India.

Companies are getting funded by the dozens, spending money on TVCs and burning investor money, distributing gift coupons as if it were cheaper that water, and what not. In short, e-commerce is catching up!

So, an e-commerce company X, famous for selling books online, recently started offering replacement guarantee for electronic products.

Company Y, another e-commerce player in electronics space, responded with:

In these fascinating times, Taggle.com shut shop, stating competition to be too cut-throat for building a profitable business.

One e-commerce website selling electronics and gadgets since inception, entered into another category - "Toys"!

A milestone day for India’s ecommerce industry was observed recently. While most of the sites are selling mobile, tablets, perfumes etc. Ebay went a step further and sold ‘milk giving black young buffalo 20 liter per day’.

Apart from free shipping offer (national courier), the deal also comes with 7-days exchange offer!

Deal websites are not just about deal anymore. They have entered mainstream e-retailing.

Very recently, Bollywood felt left out. Yes, Bollywood. After all, who would want to miss the e-commerce money making race.

Karishma Kapoor recently invested in an e-commerce startup that operates a retail website for kids.  Ajay Devgan launched an e-ticketing and film entertainment site Ticketplease.com in January this year. Other investors in this venture include Sanjay Dutt, Bollywood producer Nitin Manmohan, Vatsal Seth, Ramakant Tibrewal, Vijay Jain and Amit Sharma of Roha JP Group. Seth has also set up Celebwears.com with actor Sohail Khan. Surely, Indian celebrities are now reaching beyond endorsements and turning into full-fledged angel investors focused on start-ups.

Finally, not all is well. dearflipkart.blogspot.com will tell you why? Interesting name for a blog, isn't it? Read the article titled Dear Flip****, Your Customer Service Has Started Sucking. Shoppers are unhappy to the extent that they have dedicated a blog and websites to voice their frustration. 

And it is just the beginning!

Personalization and E-Commerce

Strong customer relationships are important to the success of an e-commerce business. That's why the e-commerce personalization features are so important.

I went to a neighborhood grocery store, of which I am a regular customer, and asked for a bottle of juice. He gave me a bottle of orange juice with lots of pulp, exactly the one I like.
You are standing in a digital electronics store, wondering which video game to buy for your son - Sony PS3 or XBox 360 or Wii? You are inclined to purchase Sony PS3 but minutes later, a store executive walks up to you and points to XBox 360 console and motivates you to give it a try. Nothing more is said and you walk out of the store with XBox 360 in your hand, passing by the smiling store executive.

These are just two forms of personalization out of many. Personalization is easy to achieve in the physical world. In the virtual world, it is a tad hard. There are no store executives to help, yet you must understand the preferences, needs and intentions of the shopper and help him transact. Sounds easy? I will say may be yes but mostly no.

Let's get to product recommendations, a very interesting form of personalization. The phrases that e-retailers use goes something like this:

• Similar products
• Recommended products
• People who viewed this product also viewed these products
• People who bought this product also bought these products and more

While searching for a dual SIM mobile phone, the following products are recommended for your consideration. If you have guessed by now, recommending relevant products is very important.
What is relevancy? To a shopper, it could mean related products around same price point, similar features and possibly a fast moving item.

Viewed product

Recommended products

This mobile phone costs Rs 2999 and the recommended mobiles are around the same price point. Since the shopper is looking for dual SIM phone, 2 dual SIM phones are recommended. All these 4 products are liked by the users as inferred from reviews and ratings.

Let us take another example where an attempted product recommendations goes bad.

Viewed product

Recommended products

 

Anomalies are easy to spot - Samsung laptop is similar to Sony PS2 and gaming laptop worth Rs 76,099 does not come close to Sony PS2 costing Rs 5690. And most interestingly, people who bought Sony PS2 also bought a geyser. That is very insightful!

Mostly, product recommendations are generated using rules or computer algorithms. If algorithm driven recommendations are not meaningful, consider manually linking related products or use paid service. It is a safer way to tread. Today's shoppers are smart and they can smell bad recommendations from miles away.

Product recommendations are very useful tools for personalization. If done correctly, it can significantly improve customer experience, conversion rate and repeat purchase.

There are many more decision to make before serving good recommendations. I will cover these in my future blog posts.

More blog posts on E-Commerce:
Social Validation and E-Commerce
Social Commerce: Part 3
Gamification