Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) is
experiencing a consecutive rise in takers every year, due to an increase in
online shoppers in the country. It has started to get recognition as the day
when all the e-commerce companies together give heavy discounts.
10th to 12th December
2014 will be the third for GOSF, and the online players should have a better
planning than last two years to avoid the mistakes being committed in past, and
disappointing the consumers in return.
Following the trends
of GOSF of last two years and other mega sale festivals hosted by companies
like Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal etc it has been observed that, though these
festivals were customer centric, their output did not result in all the
customers being satisfied. Consumer dissatisfaction was seen in form of
criticism over all social media websites like Facebook, Twitter etc.
From the website
crashes to auto order cancellations, the list of reasons these festivals give
to users for being upset are several. The Indian e-commerce industry has been
maturing for over a decade now and it is high time for the online businesses to
buckle up and stop repeated blunders.
Checklist for Online Retailers
There are few points
(learning from the past) that retailers should keep in mind before the
upcoming mega sale of 2014, so as to not lose out on their customers, since the
cost of customer acquisition is already high enough.
§
Deploy
Enough Servers
Let alone the online stores, last year GOSF’s official website
itself went down for several hours. When the retailers are already anticipating
a heavy traffic, they should also prepare themselves for the same. For Flipkart
it has become a routine affair to crash, sometimes it is at time of mobile
launches, some times it is for flash sales, and most recently it was on the Big
Billion Day Sale. The founders accepted that they had scaled up the servers but
were still under prepared. While on one hand website going down is a good sign
of a heavy footfall, but it’s an even worse indicator or turning away the
incoming customers. The traffic is expected to increase by 4 folds
than what last year’s GOSF had, a better preparation technology wise will help
the site to function better and smooth in case of rush hours.
§
Know
and Manage your Inventory Well
It has been in
observed in the past that the article is still shown listed on the website,
even when it has run out of stock, and the user is sometimes notified about the
unavailability after the payment has been processed. The critical-ity of this
point can’t be emphasized enough. If you are running an online retail business,
whether you use in-house technology or use an inventory management software,
there should never be a discrepancy in what you show and what you really have.
§
Clear
the Backlogs and Plan Logistics in Advance :
Online shopping
portals should clear any pending orders i.e. deliver the items ordered before
the commencement of the Big sale festival. Supply Chain needs to be solid.
During Flipkart’s Big Billion Day Sale, several sellers were left out because
they had orders already in the pipeline, leading to dissatisfaction among them.
The same should we informed well in advance not on the day of the sale. Also,
all the logistics partners should be given an approximation of the volumes they
should be expecting.
Another thing that should have transparency on the front-end is
the logistics capability for every product. As pointed out by Rahul S
Dogar, Director, Holisol “Limit sales to pincodes where delivery
capacities have been created”. And also, to build special customer
service teams to keep a track of orders. ”The delivery companies were
still struggling with clearing-up the orders for Diwali until recently.” he
added.
§
Maintain
the Festival’s Credibility
It has been the complaint of many users that the discounts given
on sales festival days are almost same as any other day. And also at times the
prices on sales days are higher than non-sales days, such a practice is a kill
joy for anyone. As, Ravitej Yadalam, CEO and Founder, Pennyful suggests
that online websites should provide genuine deals as compared to the prices of
items on regular days. The pricing should be fair and over-marketing should be
avoided
§
Engage
in Social Listening
Social networks,
particularly Twitter, are the real channels where the consumers voice their
joys and concerns. Listening closely to what they are talking about your brand,
your competition, your industry, what they want can go long way especially
during high traffic times. Addressing the issues as soon as they are brought up
publicly, even a response that it’s being looked into will prevent the user
from shunning your store completely and save you from undue bad publicity.
What is the Industry Saying
Bipinpreet Singh, Founder and CEO, Mobikwik
A company should be true to its customers, in terms of pricing,
when participating in GOSF. Users these days are well aware about the product
they want to purchase so transparency should be maintained. A bad marketing
strategy can and will backfire in the present scenario, so a proper
understanding of the target audience should be the prime focus while creating
any campaign. Also, to gain more traction out of GOSF, companies should build
and engage in conversations about GOSF on Social Media.
Sanjay Sethi, Co-founder and CEO, Shopclues
Technology is the backbone of any e-commerce business. When
planning our GOSF initiatives, tech-readiness is our prime concern – and that
implies capacity building for the surge in traffic and for seamlessly scaling
up to manage the volume of business transactions. We are tweaking and tuning
all our tech infrastructure in preparation for GOSF. Given the response we
got during Diwali this year and the enthusiasm among shoppers, we expect over
120% increase in traffic and 180-200% increase in sales over GOSF 2013
Ravitej Yadalam, Founder and CEO, Pennyful
GOSF is indeed a very exciting time for the Indian ecommerce
Industry. GOSF was conceived by Google in 2012, we are certain that over the
last two years, retailers have learnt a few best practices they need to keep in
check for this year’s GOSF. Based from their earlier experiences, retailers
should leverage GOSF to reach and acquire new customers. As seen in the case of
the last two years, GOSF 2014 will witness a lot of shoppers who are
transacting online for the first time. Each of the 450+ partners of GOSF need
to see themselves as a representative of the entire e-commerce industry.
Shankar Nath, Senior Vice President, Paytm
GOSF is an excellent platform for the e-commerce ecosystem in
India. A key focus area of this festival is to acquire first time
transacting users, and thus it expands the online market. If you are a serious
player in mobile commerce and e-commerce, this is an initiative you just cannot
miss. We are expecting significant incremental growth during this festival.
Swati Bhargava, Co-Founder of CashKaro
Google’s third edition of GOSF is expected to be bigger and
better than the last two years. In some of the recent shopping festivals,
consumers have been disappointed with the quality of deals so I’d say let’s
ensure good value is being offered. Mantra should be to under-promise and
over-deliver. Also,retailers should be prepared to handle huge volumes which are
bound to come as many first time shoppers are also expected during GOSF. This
includes building capacity to handle higher site traffic, more orders, ensuring
availability of products, planned logistics and more customer support teams.
During the 3 day GOSF period, we are expecting a 400% increase in traffic on
CashKaro.com and 300% increase in revenues
Vikash Khetan, Founder and CEO, CouponzGuru
We started a specially designed website gosf.couponzguru.com for
the purpose of this sale. Extensive preparations have been made to not only
bring the best offers in real time to users, but also to ensure that their
website is able to handle the onrush of 5 times their normal traffic. We
have set up deals with a large number of 450 and counting vendors, who
will be participating in the online festival. At CouponzGuru, we expect to
attract 3 lakh visitors in the 3 days of the festival.
Rahul Dogar, Director, Holisol Logistics
In our opinion there are a few things retailers should look at.
Firstly, study the capacities of their logistics networks – whether inhouse or
outsourced – and plan sales accordingly. Don’t leave it to luck or chance but
plan well. For this to happen, marketing/sales/merchandising/logistics
functions needs to work together to make it successful. Also, Look at the alternate to airline haul
– the capacities on air are limited and usually creates huge bottlenecks during
such high peal sales. It is advisable to look at alternate rail and road hauls
which are able to meet same delivery timelines as airline haul.
Marketplace companies are increasingly building the tendency to
pass the buck to sellers, sellers need to be engaged and educated of all these
issues as well.
Sudhanshu Kapoor, Founder and CEO, PayOOM
Most of our publishers have created special landing pages/Micro
sites for GOSF and have a number of special marketing plans in the box for
promoting same. We are expecting at least 3X of traffic and at least 2X of
sales during GOSF. We have seen a similar trend during PayOOM affiliate
week, which we did in the last week of November, where most of our advertising
partners have shared special coupons/offers promotions.
Rohit Chadda, MD and Co-Founder, Foodpanda
GOSF is one of the largest online event of its kind in the
e-commerce space. We are specially targeting the virgins in the online shopping
space and believe food is the best first time experience to get yourself
introduced to the online shipping experience. We are expecting 50-60%
spike in Sales during the event but more importantly we are excited about the
proposition of converting non-shoppers into first-time shoppers during the
event.
The industry is
expecting a four fold times higher turnover of customers than last year. High
on plans, strategies and expectations this GOSF is being eagerly awaited by the
Online industry and the customers as well. Will it be better or even worse than
earlier, we’ll find out in one week.
