I am Back ....with ‘Love’!

Valentine's Day, is a time of not just love but some of the cleverest, most heartfelt e-marketing campaigns. Even if your e-commerce business isn't in the business of selling chocolate or jewellery or flowers, if you aren't capitalizing on Valentine's Day, you could find your heart broken and your site abandoned.

While Surfing for some of the Top most E-Commerce sites for shopping for Valentine gifts, we come across sites like; 99labels.com, Dealsandyou.com, Fashionandyou.com, Yebhi.com, Myntra.com and Styleever.com. The most amazing thing about Valentine’s Day is that it brings out the most beautiful artwork from the marketing teams desks.

While the 99labels.com has introduced the “Love Express” Valentine’s Day special discount shopping on their website, the brands that they offer varies from ‘Allen Solly’ to ‘Louise Philippe’, to ‘Tommy Hilfiger’ in the Garments, and Ed Hardy, Ferre Milano, D&G, Calvino, Art Mania...and the list goes on of the Branded products that go from Hand Bags to watches, from Ties to Hookahs...You name it and they got it.

StyleEver.com is next on our list for Valentine shopping; the portal offers brands like Mishka, Vintage and N-GAL. The products available for Valentine gifting are Tops, Tunics, Dresses, Hand Bags, Sunglasses, Jewellery, Lingerie..in short almost every product available on the site is well suited for Valentine Gifting. The best thing about Styleever.com is that it offers unique products due to its in-house range of ‘Mishka’ Apparel.

Dealsandyou.com offer heavy discounts for sales as well as services, and the special attraction for Valentine’s day shoppers is the “Valentine’s Shop” which is a particularly economic place for you to buy best quality branded gifts, like Perfumes, watches, handbags, jewellery, spa treatment, Toys, chocolates, Garments and the list goes on.

The next E-commerce portal in our radar is the Fashionandyou.com, now the valentine gifting products that the site offers vary from Stuffed Toys to Jewellery and Hand Bags, Lingerie, Shades, Men & Women Wears and Accessories. And the brands that the site offers are from Armani, to Tommy Hilfiger, Nine West, Play boy, Paris Hilton, Ferre Milano etc.

The Valentine’s Day exclusive Shopping at Yebhi.com, opens up to two optional tabs, namely “Gifts for her” and “Gifts for Him”. The brands that the portal offers are Addidas, United Colors of Beneton, Aiva, Blanka, Calvin & Klien, Chhabra 555, Nakshtra, Philips, Acer, Action, Archies, Allen Cooper, Arrow and the list doesn’t stop at this. The products offered for Valentine gifting is with or without Discounts varying from Brand to Brand.

Snapdeal.com, is yet another site for valentine shopping, online. The Valentine shop section of the site offers Amazing discounts and offers on jewelleries, cosmetic products for Men as well as women, Apparels for Men and Women, footwear, Bags, sunglasses, Accessories etc. The Brands that the Site offers are Adidas, Adolfo,  Ambi Pur  , Antonio Banderas,  Aramis, BRITNEY SPEARS,  Benetton,  Beverly Hills, Polo Club  Bogart ,  Burberry,  Bvlgari, CHRISTIAN DIOR, Calvin Klein , Carolina Herrera, D&G  D&Y,  DELUXE PERFUME   DKNY  Davidoff  Diesel  Dior  D&G    Elizabeth Arden  Elizabeth Taylor  Emporio Armani  Enliven  Escada  Evaflor  FCUK  Faconnable  Ferrari  GAP  GIANNI VENTURI  GILLETTE  GIORGIO ARMANI  ..And the list goes on.

For lovers it’s now easy to express and gift...no need to waste time roaming around to shop...rather spend that time holding ones sweethearts hands...another advantage of Internet and E-commerce scaling up in the country ;-)

Impact of Social Media on E-commerce search results.

E-commerce is growing in India. Existing sites are getting more traffic. New Websites are acquiring new users. New product categories are getting sold online. Logistics companies are creating separate divisions to cater to E-tail orders. Newer ways of selling online are being experimented with and many new online shopping companies are likely to come up in the next one year.

In spite of a lot of product categories coming in to play, there will still be the top categories like, Electronics, Jewelery, Books and a couple more that each E-tailer would like to have in the portfolio. The fact that there are common vendors and sources for products across sites in India, is also not in for any major change in the near future. Another thing which is not going to change soon is the fact that most people will continue to search for products on Google before entering a shopping site.

For people who are into E-commerce business but think of people engagement features as a waste of time must read the next paragraph.

In a Scenario when most product descriptions look alike, there are chances of your page being left out of the results display by Google. Google has the result indexed in its data, but it uses a duplicate-content filter method so the display of the page will largely depend on the extent of Original/ different content on that page. Hence you loose out if you only have the manufacturer-supplied copy, on the product page.
 
When user reviews augment catalog and product descriptions, it increases the crawl-ability of the product pages and also improves the display placement of the product. It is like outsourcing your copy-writing to the users and getting it done for free.

User Reviews not only serve the purpose of SEO, they also add to other factors like trustworthiness of  website, that contribute to conversions.

Hammer the Jet !

When dear friends Suneet Manchanda and Akhilesh Kumar updated their Facebook status with a link to bid on a private jet flight, I was impressed. It made me think 'if I do so, who will I become equal to, among the known people in India', so I asked Suneet and the answer (conversation pic is attached) made me go wow!!









Auctions the world over:
Since the time Ebay was founded, back in 1995, it has been the world leader in the online auctions domain, with an exhaustive list of items and categories as compared to any of it's competitions. Now Ebay has a number of specialty Verticals and also many regional sites in different countries. The amount of user traffic that Ebay generates has prompted a lot of API integrated bidding applications to help people and companies reap profits out of Ebay.Ebay also operates as Ebay.in. Although the Indian site nowhere matches the Ebay.com site in its outlook, the categories are same on both the sites and the focus also generic at both the places. Another large international auctions site http://www.ubid.com/ also has similar categories and focus in terms of the products available. The site however has a nice positioning by saying "Excess inventory from worlds leading brands".

Auctions in India:Most Indian sites that do Ecommerce in India also have an auctions platform. The categories and products available are nearly the same as on the likes of Ebay. Indiatimes used to have an Auctions site as well that was launched in 2002-03. For people who are not aware that http://www.auctions.indiatimes.com/ is no longer operational, let me tell you that this happened very recently, some 3 months back. The auctions link now redirects to the Shopping homepage! In its early days Indiatimes Auctions did not have much to offer apart from the newness of the concept in India. They tried to innovate with things like fancy timings for auctions (Late night Auctions etc), slowly graduating to offering Air tickets @ 1 Rs Auction and then creating some wonderful propositions for its users. Now this is all over.
In this not so happening scenario when you come across an idea that catches your eyes, it deserves a place on PraveeL. The http://www.tradus.in/ homepage is strikingly different from most of the others found in the www. It shows the differentiator (Experiences money can't buy)upfront as a visual, and the whole page is absolutely neat and clutter-free. The help tools are also perfectly placed and the whole bidding process is also quite user friendly like most of the other products from IBIBO.Hope they continue to retain the user interest after a good first impression. Hey Guys! What about "A night out with Katrina @ Rs1" ...No, that would sound like all the actor meet-up offers that are abundantly available.

V-Day to C-Day...E-Com to C-Com

William Shakespeare said “They do not love that do not show their love...”

No wonder each year as 14th of Feb inches closer, the willingness to express and express it in a distinct, loving and at times outrageous ways by the youth provides the media with enough content to add pages to print.

All through the year there were news of Moral policing from different parts of the country. We have been treated with some fantastic drama being unfolded from 'Bar Bharo' to Lathi charges to the photos of Armed police, guarding love struck couples in gardens.

The 'Chaddi Campaign' has been the highlight of this Valentine season. Ram Sene chief Mr Muthalik now has the potential to be the biggest Lingerie dealer in the country. He can get the 'Pink Chaddi' Brand patented and sell Chaddis at a huge discount globally.
This V-Day was indeed C-Day courtesy Mr Muthalik....



So where does this C-Comm come from.

Here. What are the top selling products globally as Valentines day gifts?

Jewelry holds the number one position followed by Eating out and Health & Beauty Spas. Clothing including Lingerie comes at number four and is ahead of Flowers at five. This is followed by Confections/Candy, Stuffed Animals and Cards.

But this year was different in the Indian context. If you are a regular visitor to the Indian on-line shopping platforms like Indiatimes shopping and Rediff shopping you would not have missed the Naughty gifts being sold on the shops. One of the leading vendors to these sites has confirmed to me “at least 4 lac Rupees worth of Rose Panty has been sold in the Valentine week”. Isn't it amazing? The Global number four category nearly became number one in V Day E-Comm.















Thanks Mr Muthalik :-)

Helped by a 'Halwaii'

In these last few years of creating and managing Internet products, I usually had a tough time explaining my 'work' to people and friends in general. Internet is, still to a majority of people, nothing more than Email and Chat. However a lot of kids would tell you that they know Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia.
I might sound like I live in a far off village somewhere in the Himalayas, but no, I am in New Delhi and that too in the heart of the city in South Delhi, however the setting is a mix of modern day apartments and an adjoining semi-urban residential colony.
Last evening, everything changed! Thanks to the neighbourhood Halwaii (sweet shop owner).
I was at Madhuvan Sweets to buy Kadai Paneer to have it for dinner. It usually takes 10 minutes to get it packed, so I was just standing idle waiting for my food to arrive. I heard the shop owner talk to another person, and was immediately drawn near as I heard the word 'Search'.
Bunty (the shop-owner) was expressing his inability to find a machine for producing 'Vark'. Vark is a thin silver foil that is edible and is used to decorate traditional Indian sweets. He said he had searched and explored all resources on the Internet. I became even more interested and as I thought I can really contribute, I suggested him a few sites like Globalsources, but he knew it all.
With people like Bunty looking at Internet as a utility, people like Praveen can enjoy the 'Kadai Paneer' and have a 'Rasmalai' too!!

Fly for less!!

I would now wait for this one. Travel portals in India like Yatra, Indiatimes, MMT, Cleartrip, would be looking to implement this sort of a service for their users soon......
I am talking about YAPTA which is a clear disruption in the online travel space. Yapta does a lot of things for its users:

1. Gives alerts on Price Drops!
2. Tags exactly the flights that you want to track.
3. Gives refund if the price drops!!
4. Tracks prices of all flights at 1 place

The user needs to,

• dowload the Yapta Tagger. Whether you have already purchased a ticket or are just starting your travel planning
• All the trips are stored in theYapta account so the user can glance at all the latest prices in one location.
• User enters the confirmation code and Yapta will then track prices on that flight and alert the user if eligible for a refund.

Launched as beta Yapta currently works with the following sites...
Alaska Airlines Northwest Airlines American Airlines Orbitz
Continental Southwest Airlines Delta Air Lines Ted Airlines
Expedia Travelocity Frontier Airlines United Airlines JetBlue US

Lets see when something like this comes up in India.