Last year, Google initiated an online shopping bonanza called GOSF: Great Online Shopping Festival which was held on December 12, 2012 and around 90 ecommerce retailers participated in that event. The concept was new, and people loved it.
Encouraged by the response, Google organized the event again this year, between December 11 and December 13, 2013; which got extended to December 14, 2013. The number of ecommerce retailers who participated jumped from 90 to 240 this year, and as per the statistics available, it was a bumper hit.
In the first 24 hours of the shopping festival, the website encountered several technical glitches which made access to the portals a tiresome activity. Servers were down and at one moment, rumors were flying high that the site has been hacked! It was such tremendous response that even Google hadn’t anticipated such huge volume of traffic.
Nitin Bawankule, industry director of e-commerce, Google India said, “At midnight on the 11th itself (the day it started), we saw a huge surge of traffic, with people queuing up and waiting for the GOSF site to go live. So, I would say this was a combination of a huge traffic surge plus added to that there were some technical glitches,”
Maybe this technical glitch added to the charm, and instead of repelling people, it brought back even more number of people to the website. And all the partners who participated in this online shopping festival left with their cash registers happily ringing.
Even premium hotel properties like Hyatt had to enter this shopping festival for registering a presence and increasing their bookings during this period.
Google started a Twitter contest wherein they were giving away one Nexus 7 Tablet every hour of the day, and this added to the frenzy. And the most important factor which will benefit the ecommerce sector as a whole is that, almost half of the purchases were done by first time buyers; and this data comes from Google itself.
As per the reports, almost half of the purchases were made from Tier II cities which justify the huge increase in online shopping by first time buyers.
Major highlights of GOSF 2013
Tata Value Homes announced that they were able to sell properties worth Rs 25 crore during GOSF. “The company concluded India’s first-ever online home booking with sales totaling more than Rs 25 crore. Tata Value homes sold more than 50 apartments in four days with payments via debit and credit cards during GSOF by Google,” Tata Housing announced in a press release. And interestingly, 40% of the bookings came from Tier II cities of India; 30% from NRIs.
– Yatra.com witnessed a jump of 25% in terms of overall tickets and hotel booking. Sharat Dhall, president of Yarta.com said,’ We have garnered incremental sales of about 25 per cent. Hotels have been a huge hit, as we were offering a flat 35 per cent off, closely followed by flights and holidays,”
– Snapdeal registered 10 times more sale compared to regular days.
– Kent RO System, a participant in this event announced that their sale increased 146%, with 72% increase in revenues
– Myntra.com was able to sell one lakh fashion products on Day 1 of the event.
– Amazon told that they saw a 5-fold increase in their overall sales volume, with electronics and mobile being the hottest segment
– Infibeam announced that their website saw 67% first time buyers during GOSF
– Jabong.com witnessed their highest increase in sale for male-category fashion products
– Homeshop18 announced that purchases made from Tier II cities doubled during GOSF.
– Yebhi.com witnessed 2x more sales compared to normal days.
While these are some of the GOSF participants who announced their sales during GOSF, I am sure others also saw similar kinds of jump during GOSF days.
It is safe to say that even with all the initial glitches, GOSF was a bumper hit!
What do you think?
[…] last year’s GOSF, Tata Housing was able to sell properties worth Rs 25 crore as more than 50 apartments and offices were booked during the event, with 40% of the bookings […]
In terms of the objective of new people joining e-commerce is concerned, you can say it was a hit..However, in terms of User experience & deals, it still wasn’t upto the mark for the routine online shopping consumers.