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Brick & Mortar to E-commerce store – Replicating Customer Experience..

guest — Wed, 23 May 2012 07:53:12 +0000

Taking your store online?

Here are 5 learnings from your brick and mortar store that you should take forward.

What store layout is to offline, navigation is to online!

How many times have we seen customers lost in a store trying to figure out the right section for the product they are looking for? Signage, layout planning etc. were introduced to modern retail to solve this problem.

On your e-commerce site, this translates to User Interface design and Navigation. Plan your site structure properly. Ensure that your customer finds links where they are supposed to be. A/B testing helps to a great extent in figuring out this riddle.

Product Experience

In your offline store, shoppers have the advantage to touch and feel the product. They can take trials as well. But in online shopping, customers can only virtually experience the product.

Ensure that this experience is as complete as possible. Detailed product description (size chart, color options, wash care, material used, component specifications etc.), 360 degree & magnified product view etc. should all form an integral part of your content.

Cross selling / Up-selling

It is a well- established fact that retailers try to maximize ‘basket size’ or the ‘average transaction value’ per customer. The onus of this job rests primarily with the sales staff in an offline store. However on a website there is no person to person contact.

So how do you maximize the revenue you can generate per customer? Include ‘Recommendations’, ‘People who bought this also bought’, ‘People who viewed this also viewed’. An important caveat: Do not try to cross sell / upsell on the payment page. This may distract the shopper leading to abandonment of the shopping cart.

After Sales Service

This is an area where the online and the offline somewhat merge. While you can continue with some of your customer relationship management policies like Follow up with your customer regarding the performance of the product, send promotional mailers offering special discounts on birthdays, anniversaries, etc., you have to pamper your online customer a little more.

Benefits like Cash on Delivery, Replacement guarantee, On-time delivery, etc. help in strengthening the bond with the shopper.

Finding You!

This is very crucial. Thousands are competing with you for a share of the consumer’s wallet. Make sure you are able to break through the clutter and get noticed. Research on what your customers are searching for, optimize the metadata to rank for relevant keywords and last but not the least if you are venturing into digital, think digital. SEO, SEM, Social Media, Blogs, Forums…be wherever your customers are. And never ever forget the power of Word-of-mouth !

Your regular shoppers and online shoppers are not disjoint sets- they intersect! Create a holistic experience for them and you will never regret. All the best!

[About the author : Shilpi Choudhury handles Marketing at DiscountPandit. She blog on topics ranging from Startups to E-commerce to the Deal Industry. DiscountPandit is a Bangalore-based search engine for deals and product price comparison.]

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Google launches Business Photos in India

Kaushambi — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:50:20 +0000

Today Google launched Business Photos in India, a concept that puts businesses on the map – virtually and literally. In a pilot run, Google will take 360 degree pictures of businesses and will allow owners to upload them to their location on Google Places.

Google India’s official blog talks about the concept of taking pictures of business interiors to add to a business’ credibility. The concept stems off the idea that a business cannot always be judged by how its office looks on the outside.

After taking permission of the business owners who want their interiors to be photographed, Google’s certified Photographers will work directly with them. The 360 degree pictures of the interiors of businesses will be posted online via Google Places. This feature was originally available only to users in USA, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, France and UK. Countries recently added to its kitty are Ireland, Netherlands and Canada. Now the service has been finally launched in India.

Google Places allows owners to promote their businesses by providing detailed information to prospective customers, finding niche audiences and enhancing brand visibility through increased searchability.

Owners can also promote their ventures by posting photos, videos, coupons and even announcing special deals. On the other hand, customers can benefit by ranking and rating these business, finding the right offers and being armed with better information.

Google’s Business Photos complements Google Places and adds value by showing the customers the interior and the ‘feel’ of the business from inside. Business can now be ready to bare it all – the décor, the buzz, the merchandise, the display, the cleanliness, innovation in design et al.

Google Business Photos are in addition to the pictures owners can upload on Google Places. However Google Business Photos will be more detailed, higher quality and panoramic. Both will appear side by side in a Google search.

Currently Google is going to begin the pilot program in Hyderabad. It is inviting business owners in India to send in applications. Their premises will be photographed by Google appointed photographers, free of cost. From a business owner’s perspective, many scenarios come to mind. What if the owner of a gymnasium could display the interiors of a gym to give customers a great idea of what to expect when they walk in through the doors? What if spa owners could let potential customers get a feel of their services by putting their facilities up on a virtual display? Would it help if the owner of a car showroom could put up a virtual display of the actual showroom?

Many questions from a customer’s perspective come to mind too. What if a customer can simply go online and decide whether Spa A has better ambient lighting than Spa B or whether the tables at Café Z are not as crowded as in Café Y without actually visiting the shop front? How convenient would it be for a customer to simply go online and decide which night club to go to, just by comparing the Business Photos of 2 popular ones?

The answer to all these questions lie in one simple fundamental question – Can Google bring more Indians online? India has the world’s youngest population. This came at the back of reports that the Indian population will soon be amongst the top 3 in the world.

If tech savvy Indians begin previewing the services offered by businesses in India, Google may very well have created a monster platform that benefits both, businesses and customer. Not to mention, yet another possible revenue stream for the internet giant.

Kids Online retail market in India [Infographic]

Arun Prabhudesai — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:40:18 +0000

With the pace of growth of ecommerce in India, there is an explosion of new online stores in India. While many of them are multi-category retail shops, many of them are opening up niche shops, catering to specific audience.

Kids apparel, footwear etc is one of the fastest growing niche – Folks at Discountpandit.com came up with short nifty infographic some time back giving you a quick overview of Kids e-tailing market in India.

Currently, the online market is at a very nascent stage, Online retail has only 2% market share of the total retail market in India. However, internet and mobile commerce is growing at hectic and the online retail is expected to grow multifold in coming years!

Indian Ecommerce Market [Infographic]

Arun Prabhudesai — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:25:10 +0000

Folks over at MySmartPrice.com did a study on various online stores in India and have come up some interesting facts and numbers.

We are big fans of Infographics here at trak.in – hence we decided to put together various findings in a single infographic.

Some of the findings are quite interesting – Like, out of the total 343 stores that were included in the study 130 stores sold Clothes and apparels making it the most popular category amongst ecommerce sites in India. We had expected that Electronics & Gadgets would be the most popular category.

Close to 57% of all retail stores catered to only single category of products like books, media electronics etc.

Flipkart.com retains the top slot amongst all the ecommerce stores in India followed by eBay.in and snapdeal.com. The dark horse in the Indian Ecommerce Market is definitely Jabong.com. It has reason to 4th largest ecommerce store in India in less than a year of its launch!

Hope you enjoy the Infographic – The Great Indian E-Commerce Bazaar

Scilab ported to Android – Coming on Aakash!

Arun Prabhudesai — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:08:00 +0000

Here is an EXCLUSIVE, especially for the Engineers, Mathematicians & scientists out there! Scilab is now available on Android. And what’s more, it completely retains its original open-source flavour.

A team from IIT Bombay, under the aegis of the National Mission on Education through ICT (a flagship initiative of the Ministry of HRD, Govt. of India) has been working on a port of Scilab for Android. The motivation for the Android port was because the low cost tablet device “Aakash” that the Ministry of HRD of GoI is planning on giving to students in India has Android as it’s operating system.

While Prof. Kannan, the leader of the team at IIT Bombay, says this is still a work in progress, they are the first in the world to bring to you a video of Scilab on an Android tablet!

What is Scilab?

Scilab is the state of the art computational package. It can be used in the design and simulation of engineering systems. It can be used by mathematicians and social scientists. It can also be used for simple calculations. It can be used by students in schools to those who do research. It is available absolutely free of cost. It is also an excellent open source alternative to Matlab.

Who uses Scilab?

Students, scientists and engineers. It can also be used for data acquisition and control.

Why is an Android port such a big thing?

Until now, Scilab has not been ported to Android to run in native mode. The team at IIT Bombay had previously ported it on to Debian running as an App under Android. Unfortunately, however, Scilab may run slowly if not installed in native mode.

This is the first time that Scilab has been ported to Android to run in native mode. The speed is excellent, given that the underlying hardware is a simple Arm Cortex A8 processor, with very little accessories, such as RAM. As a matter of fact, the team at IIT Bombay says the graphs getting generated are at speeds comparable to desktops. If Scilab runs fast, one can simulate even complicated models in a reasonable time and too on the go on an Android Tablet.

The best part is – Scilab will come pre-installed on Aakash.

Apple in Numbers [Infographic]

Arun Prabhudesai — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:53:00 +0000

Regular readers would be surprised with this infographic, as it is very similar to one I had published just couple of days back showing how big Apple was – But I could not pass this one by. This infographic, created by friends at sortable, also depicts the humongous size of Apple Inc. and brings about some very interesting numbers.

Did you know that Apple is currently sitting on 110 Billion dollars of cash – That’s enough to buy RIM, Nokia, twitter, Adobe, Netflix & T-Mobile all combined and still have cash remaining. Here are some of the facts that this infographic puts across:

Apple’s revenue over the past 12 months is more than the GDP of New Zealand
Apple has beaten Wall Streets estimates in 16 out of the last 17 quarters
75% of Apple’s revenue comes from iPhone and iPad

Apple By Numbers

Google Apps Vault now in India: Google’s latest app for Businesses

Kaushambi — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:47:21 +0000

Google has announced the launch of Vault for Google Apps in India. Vault is an app that is a one-stop solution for storing critical business data including emails, conversations, chat messages and more. It has enhanced archiving capabilities and Google claims that an app like this can save thousands of dollars in case of litigation that involves electronic discovery (e-discovery).

Unlike most of the other Google services, Vault is not a free service. It is an optional Google app that will cost users $5 per month. No other investment in terms of architecture/e-storage is required on the part of the user as Vault functions on a totally web based architecture.

With Vault, Google aims to make e-governance easier. Business owners and managers of companies who are already functioning in the Google environment can purchase Vault to store, archive and retrieve critical business data.

They will also be able to set specific data retention policies which can be applied to all or few users. Once such policies are in place, Vault will retain email, chat messages and other electronic conversations even if they are deliberately or inadvertently deleted.

As a real life example, "boy that Timberwolf was one shitty deal" were the words that landed Goldman Sachs in one of the biggest soups during the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. Bosses and business owners will be able to use Vault to keep a tab on the archived messages and reprimand employees who indulge into inappropriate conversations. ‘Holds’ can also be placed over users. Holds are types of restrictions that may bar users from deleting their emails or chat messages.

Vault by Google Apps also aims to make e-discovery easier. For the uninitiated, e-discovery is the discovery or retrieval of information held in electronic format. The process is primarily done to aid legal proceedings, investigative procedures and audits. Administrators will have access to a dashboard where they can collect, organize, view and retrieve all relevant documents to a specific case and take a well informed decision after proper assessment.

In case of legal action, Vault allows easy retrieval and export of generic and specific email/conversations in a standard format which can be used for further review.

These exports can be critical in the analyses of a case during litigation or even during audit procedures. "And most of those documents these days are in electronic form" says Kent Walker, Senior VP & General Counsel at Google, while talking about record management practices and the time a company is being sued or faces the possibility of being sued.

But why should a business owner in India buy the Vault app? Is such an articulate record management practice really worth having in India?

The answer is a YES.

India Inc woke up to the digital age long time back and organizations including the government have put into place the use of electronic data in many areas. A record management system like the Vault can allow for the organization and retrieval of conversations that may hold the key to a dispute.

Such communication could very well be used in the court of law or even to resolve petty arguments with the auditors. Reliance on electronic means for day to day functioning of businesses in India is increasing.

Data management/recovery tools like the Vault could very well be the app that saved a business in case of litigation which calls for exhaustive e-discovery.

In which case, the $5/month fee would seem like the best investment ever made.

Airtel launches 4G in Bangalore

Arun Prabhudesai — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:54:38 +0000

Bangalore has become the 2nd city in India to have access to 4G LTE technology. After launch of 4G in Kolkata a few weeks back, Airtel has gone ahead and launched cutting-edge 4G LTE technology in IT hub of India, Bengaluru. 4G services are based on LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology which is capable of offering speeds of upto 40 mbps, three times that of 3G.

Although, Airtel is not a Pan – India BWA spectrum holder, it has taken the lead in implementing 4G services. It has secured spectrum in 3 Indian states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab along with Kolkata Metro.

Tariff for Airtel 4G services

On the face of it, Airtel’s 4G rates are not that cheap. However, as an introductory offer, customers subscribing to 4G services will be given a cashback for the dongle / USB stick bringing device cost to zero. For Rs. 2999/- 4G subscribers will get 30GB data transfer. They also have other plans:

Breakfree: Rs. 999/- for 6GB data
Breakfree Max: Rs. 1399/- for 9GB data
Breakfree Ultra: Rs. 1999/- for 18GB data

Airtel promises download speeds of 40 mbps & upload speeds of 20 mbps on their 4G network. After the data usage is exhausted, the internet speed will come down to 128 kbps.

To attract customers on 4G, Airtel is offering 10 movie titles free of cost during the first month. If customers wish to continue movie subscription after 1st month they can pay a monthly subscription of INR 149 and watch unlimited movies. Currently Airtel has only 35 movie titles, but are expected to add more movies to their catalogue in coming months.

Airtel has already launched 4G enabled Mi-Fi devices to ensure that consumers can benefit from it even though they may not have 4G on their mobile phones.

Although, 4G promises ultra-high speeds, expensive data rates may be a deterrent for the masses. Yes, their will be early adopters, but I presume most of the consumers will wait for the prices to fall before they start riding the 4G wave.

What do you think?

OMG… That’s how big Apple is.. [Infographic]

Arun Prabhudesai — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:19:35 +0000

I am sure you know Apple is big, probably the biggest company in the world. But if you put it side by side with other large global companies, you will understand enormity of giant called Apple.

In recent times, we have been continuously hearing about how Android has taken over Apple, but when it comes to making money no one can come near Apple. They are ahead by miles. This probably is the biggest turnaround for a company that was on the verge of being bankrupt just 15 years back!

And it is not just about the revenue, but the huge profits that it makes by selling its iconic iPhone’s & iPads. Here are some facts that will probably raise your eyebrows – For the Quarter ending March 2012, Apple’s profit (USD 11.6 billion) alone was more than Google’s revenue was USD 10.7 billion Dollars.

Apple’s revenue from their 2 products (iPhone & iPad) alone was twice that of entire revenue of Microsoft.

The following Infographic created by businessdegree.net lays down these facts along with others which I am sure will surprise you.