Tag: ecommerce

Bilkul Pakka ads by Flipkart are brilliant

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India has the second largest online population (at 354 million), beating that of the United States (at 266 million). We are still miles to go from China’s 650 million.

However, with the largest population based in the world, and with the highest rate of Internet penetration in the developing countries, India is seen by many online businesses as the geography to target.

There are the naysayers and folks who debunk the entire populace as freebie seekers and saying that thirld world economies are not there yet. However, when it comes to e-commerce, India clearly has shown great traction.

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Dell Laptop Prices – Laptops That Offer Powerful Performance at a Reasonable Price

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laptopslaptops

First came computers, the big giant ones that occupied a whole room; too much for an individual. Then came those mini desktops that were only to be found in work premises for extremely crucial work. Slowly the trend changed, technology improved, therefore reducing the size and they were welcomed into our homes. In the last few years, technology has sky-rocketed leading to the emergence of laptops.

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Why to use GOSF Coupons

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Great Online Shopping Festival is an exciting event; it is a Mecca for online shopping lovers. The GOSF 2014 is scheduled to start from 10th and better than the previous two edition. If you have been waiting to go on a shopping spree, wait till the festival begins and use the GOSF coupons for shopping. The coupons are a great way to save money. Some of the best uses of these coupons are discussed below:

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Rise of Social Media in E-commerce

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Rise of Social Media in E-Commerce

If you have an e-commerce start-up and are just starting your marketing outreach program, then this is a great infographic which can be of help.

Social Media can be used by organizations for ATL activities such as branding and for BTL activities such as promotions. The visual and witty element inherent in social media helps brands to sell well. The infographic above shares some stats which are quite high and make a marketing manager relook at Social as one of their channels.

For some sites such as Pinterest where the look of the product on display really matters, e-commerce becomes a natural extension. Go to any of the boards on the site and you will find atleast a series of photos which turn the social media site into a catalog of retail products.

Add to this, people love posing for pictures on the new products they have. There’s a whole element of showing off the latest purchase through unboxing videos, through product reviews.

Discount Sites driving Business

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I am a big fan of e-commerce and Indian e-commerce especially. Having worked in the web development field for more than a decade, and having seen multiple start-ups in the e-commerce and e-learning domains, I love the fact that this industry is still booming. What drives this is simple retail sales.

The sheer number of sites who have set up shop within the past two years is mind boggling. With large foreign multi-nationals also entering this market, the influx of money to the country has also strengthened the economy. Obviously with a limited number of consumers (although this is a significant number), and growing number of providers, the competition had to go up.

To battle competition, services and sites started providing deep discounts. Consumers started using these deep discounts to make spot purchases, which drew sales for different service providers.

So much was the power of these spot sales that multiple sites started aggregating these discount coupons and discount sites were born. Sites such as Cuponation.in have spawned and boosted the e-commerce market in the country.

Now why should a consumer like you and me visit a discount site like Cuponation?

The answer is simple, getting a sweet deal on a product which you otherwise would have bought at a full price!

This is like the NET50 coupon of Dominos which you keep handy whenever you want to buy a pizza … have your cake and eat it too!

So why should a service provider look at registering on such sites … hmmm … to be honest, at a business level, you have to start thinking about the cost of sales of an individual customer versus the cost of a discount. If for a 1000 INR product, my cost of sales is INR 160, then I am more than happy to provide a 10% discount on that product since that would drive up my sales.

Another way of looking at this matter is if the contribution (revenues – costs) is positive and I am looking only at the revenues (in which case most likely I am VC funded ;-) ), then I would want a sales promotion like this to drive up my sales.

So it’s a win-win deal. The end customer is getting a good deal on a product he wants to buy, the seller is getting higher sales, and the intermediary (Cuponation in our case) is getting the commissions.

Jinx’s awesome service

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I have always been a fan of Diablo, and even better cool Diablo T-shirts that I can wear at work. Jinx, is one of the few online e-commerce fronts which provides such products. This is the story of their service, and what makes this entire event worth mentioning!

Prelude

It was the 6th of June, and my family wanted to gift me some clothes for my birthday which was in the next month (9th July). So after great deliberation and going through their broad choice of shirts, I finally decided to purchase 4 shirts and opted to ship them to India using the basic shipping method, that’s USPS.

Now, for those of you who have not shipping anything from abroad, keep in mind that USPS is the US equivalent of the Indian Post Office (I certainly was not!!). What this means, is that they are as efficient as their Indian counterparts!

Eternal Wait

I ordered the goods, and the expected date of delivery was after 20 odd days. Great, no problem. After a good 20 days, the dispatch was yet to arrive. So I started tracking the dispatch. Turns out that USPS does not provide tracking of the dispatch once it leaves the American shores. That means, its pretty much lost in the darkness!!

Thus, started my period of eternal wait. Everyday I would try following up with different agencies – USPS customer center (as bad if not worse than their Indian counterpart), Indian Customs Office (try find their number online, even Google fails!), Indian Postal Office (who keep directing you to different numbers).

Re-Shipped!

With the d-day close, I got in touch with the folks at Jinx and informed them about the lack of tracking. The support was understanding and they immediately shipped a second shipment. This was due to arrive in India by the end of July. The shipping was still the same, USPS, which meant that I would face the same problem tracking the shipment. As expected, tracking shipment was an impossible task (we visited the GPO, the local PO, the Customs Office), no luck.

Now I was getting pissed off, and quite disappointed, two shipments dispatched and not one was being tracked. I gave up hope and did not follow-up for another month.

And there shall be Light!

Finally, in the month of August (near 25th or so), I dropped the support person a mail, and asked what can be done regarding this issue. This time around, they verified my shipping address and informed me that they would be using the premium shipping method … whew, I was glad to be rid of USPS service!! Or so I thought, the premium service used USPS in the backend as well! Contacting them was even more futile and I had more or less given up all hope of those 100 dollars that I had spent 3 months back.

It was the first week of September, when I received a call from my wife, and she informed me that a shipment had indeend arrived and it was from Jinx! I was elated .. finally the package had arrived!!

Thank you Jinx!

Not only was this service patient and understanding, but also they were willing to go the extra mile and provide me outstanding service. The package delivery was not exactly their problem, however, they owned the delivery and ensured that it finally was delivered. Good show on you folks!

48craft.com

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This is an open letter to all of you.

It’s a bit personal and the subject at hand is very close to my heart. It’s about start-ups and seeing a company slowly bleed its way, somehow so stuck in day to day operations that we cannot immediately stop the bleeding and start the recuperation process.

A friend of mine, Vamsee had quit his campus job post an MBA, and started a company in the e-commerce area. Coming from the culturally different region of Andhra Pradesh (the region is a fusion of 3-4 different cultures, correct me if I am mistaken!), there are a lot of local handicrafts makers in and around this state.

Typically, artisans are local people focused on day to day sales in order to fill their bellies with a days worth of food. They do not have access to larger markets (and certainly do not have access to international markets). The site was created to primarily help these artisans reach out to bigger markets.

That in mind, 48craft was created. You can take a look at this handicrafts site here.

With a lot of work from different professionals, the 48craft was hand-crafted lovingly. As the site’s popularity grew, so did it’s product base. Today within a span of two years, 48craft hosts thousands of products and has to maintain an equally large inventory.

So if you are passionate about start-ups or handicrafts, then head on to 48craft.com and check out some of their cool ethnical stuff.