eCommerce Blog

In the offline world, imagine walking into a store and you see clutter everywhere – the only thing that is clearly visible is an exit sign. However good the pricing is, if the store is not organized in a presentable manner, you are likely to walk straight through that exit door. Similarly in the online world, a lot of online retailers do not focus on getting objective feedback from external users on site usability. This is true especially for the small and medium size retailers who feel that things like usability testing are for the big guys who have a lot of money at their disposal. Not any more – there are several cost effective tools available now that would allow you to test and improve the usability of your site in an objective way, without causing a dent in your wallet. Here are 10 low cost ways to understand and improve the usability of your site: Read the rest of this entry »

All online retailers are concerned about minimizing charge-backs and payment fraud. This is one of those costs that can be minimized if appropriate and proactive steps are taken.  Manju Murthy has done a good job of providing a background on online payment fraud and some of the new initiatives such as two factor authentication. Thanks Manju!

Malware on the PC (and elsewhere) can harvest credit card numbers when entered during ecommerce payments.  Such harvested numbers can be used by fraudsters to purchase goods with purchase showing up on the users credit card bill.  This results in chargebacks, penalties and increase in interchange rate.  In India, online merchants see chargebacks of around 3% (some verticals have over 20% fraud).  In a market that is at $5B and growing at a CAGR of about 30%, you can quickly compute the impact of online payments fraud in India.

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Chicago, 2010: Dan is looking to buy a decent home theater system to complement the new LED TV he purchased. Dan doesn’t know much about home theater systems so he logs on to Bestbuy.com where he has setup his online “Media Closet” which tracks all the gadgets and electronic devices he currently owns. Dan is able to find 18 “Audio Gurus” who also have an expertise on the products that are currently in his media closet. These gurus have been voted as the experts by the online community so Dan thinks that he can trust their recommendations. Dan invites one of the experts to view his “Online Media Closet” – which shows the information about the Blu Ray player, LED TV, a Netflix streaming device and a WII console that he would like to connect to the home theater system. The expert makes recommendation for two high end home theater systems that are currently on sale. Dan purchases one of the home theater systems and the Audio Guru receives affiliate points from Bestbuy for his help in the consultative selling.

New York, 2010: It is 11:30pm and Sally is looking to buy a new dress for the upcoming Christmas party. She logs on to Looklet.com, picks up a dress and matching shoes and saves the new look in her profile. She gets prompted by Looklet if she would like to get an opinion from her friends. Looklet displays all her online Facebook friends via Facebook connect . Sally sees that her best friends Nancy and Tina are still online and invites them to give an opinion on the new look. They are able to chat and view the products in real time. Both Nancy and Tina love the new dress but aren’t too crazy about the new shoes. Sally is able to find other “Fashion Experts” on Looklet who have favorited the same dress – and she is able to find better shoes based upon recommendations from those experts.

Welcome to a new phenomenon in online retailing – “Social Shopping”. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently ordered a Boston Acoustics subwoofer from an Amazon marketplace seller because it was significantly cheaper than buying directly from Amazon or from a local retailer. 15 days later, all I hear is a whistling sound from that piece of equipment. Now I am not a big audiophile but if all I hear is a whistling sound while watching a loud thriller movie, I can tell there is something wrong with the sub. I know – hindsight is 20-20 but I should have probably purchased that item from a local retailer so I could have at least returned that 40 pound brick without much hassle. I can’t even imagine packing such a heavy piece of equipment and shipping it back to a 3rd party marketplace seller.

Marketplace concept has been fairly common with online retailers such as Amazon.com and buy.com. However, it seems that multi-channel retailers are also joining the bandwagon. Sears and Walmart have both opened up their online platforms to allow third party sellers to list and sell their merchandise. This definitely opens up an alternative source of revenue for retailers and in these trying times, who doesn’t want to have additional revenue sources. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past several months, I have been in touch with several bright entrepreneurs who have recently launched or are planning to launch an eCommerce related offering in India.  I am really excited that we have so much focus and energy around eCommerce and I really think that the landscape is about to change in India.

There is a perception out there that eCommerce is not really picking up in India and that companies are struggling to scale up their offerings. There is no question that the overall market is still pretty small in terms of numbers. However, we shouldn’t ignore that all factors are slowly moving in favor of eCommerce. Retail is getting more and more organized, availability of global brands is larger than ever, internet penetration is climbing and some internet retailers have started to focus on customer experience as a way to differentiate. Most importantly, and I can personally attest to this one , there are some extremely talented individuals who have recently launched new ventures and are passionate about making a big difference in the eCommerce space in India.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while – Read the rest of this entry »