by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Emerging Businesses, Finding Customers, Marketing Basics, Markets, Medium Enterprise, Online Marketing, Sales, SMEs, Technology
By Anurag Avula,
Diwali is a great time to start your new online business or to take your existing business online.
So what is your next step? You’ve created your online store, taken some amazing photos of your products and activated an appropriate payment platform. Congratulations, you are up and running. Now you just need to sit back and wait for the customers to come pouring in, right?
Well, yes, in an ideal world — but with the explosion of growth in e-commerce, you still need to make your store stand out from the crowd, grab your customers’ attention, hold it and keep them returning for more. Here are five golden rules to start a successful business this Diwali.
1. Make your site clear and simple to use: When a customer reaches your site it should be obvious what you sell. Use a clean and professional template design that is simple in its message. Don’t allow the customer to be distracted by countless and un-needed information. Show your most popular and best-selling products first as a way to draw people in to start exploring your site. Consider using a “carousel” picture collage so that they can easily scroll through the images and see what’s on offer.
2. It’s the little extras that make a big difference: Free shipping, great returns policy (or free returns over a certain purchase value), a toll free number — making use of incentives to attract users is a great way to encourage loyalty. If you are able to offer these great advantages, make sure you shout about them loud and clear on your homepage.
3. Testimonials and reviews: Take one of your glowing references and put it somewhere obvious on your homepage. If you can accompany this with a picture, it reinforces the fact that real people trust and use your products and services. Customer reviews are trusted 12 times more than marketing by a company
4. Daily deals and other discounts: Daily deals are another hugely popular idea. By selling a limited quantity of products for a short amount of time you can generate new interest and increase your client base. Once you have drawn them in — invite them to preview your other products.
5. Make a connection: Try to re-think your site as a content site that happens to sell products. Talk to your customers as you would to a friend and engage them so that they keep coming back for more. If you can demonstrate that you are passionate about your products and give tips and ideas on ways to use them, such as a demonstration video or a pinboard using your products, it adds more value to your site.
(Anurag Avula is the CEO of goshopmatic.com. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at anurag@goshopmatic.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Large Enterprise, Markets, Online Marketing, Sales, SMEs, Social Media, Technology
New Delhi : It is time again to loosen your purse strings! With attractive deals and huge discounts across various categories on offer, almost all major e-commerce platforms are geared up to commence their sales for the festive season.
While e-commerce giant Flipkart and the online retail platforms it owns — Jabong and Myntra — will start with their five-day-long “Big Billion Days” sales from September 20, Amazon India’s “Great Indian Festival” will begin exclusively for its “Prime” customers on the same day at 12 p.m.
However, the festival sale for all customers of Amazon India will be from September 21 to 24.
“For the first time ever, the Great Indian Festival will start early at 12 noon on September 20 only for ‘Prime’ members,” Manish Tiwary, Vice President, Category Management, Amazon India, told IANS.
“We expect more customers to join the digital ecosystem and shop with us during this festive season. With expanded selection and a robust logistical support system, we are ready to handle the massive customer traffic that we are bound to receive this season,” Tiwary added.
Amazon India will offer deals across several categories, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, large appliances, baby products, clothing and accessories, beauty products, home and kitchen products, furniture and stationery products.
Swati Bhargava, co-founder of CashKaro, said: “What is interesting this time is that earlier, very often it used to be only Flipkart and Amazon trying to announce sales. This time, all the main six to seven e-commerce retailers, like Jabong, Shopclues and Myntra, Paytm Mall… are doing sales on the same day.”
CashKaro, partner to more than 1,500 e-commerce sites, provides its members with cashback offers on their online shopping at various sites like Flipkart, Amazon.in, Paytm, Shopclues and Jabong.
“Typically, we see about a 300 per cent increase in our GMV (gross merchandise volume) which goes through CashKaro during the festive season. Even in September, if we were to compare with the numbers of August, I am sure we will see at least a 300 per cent increment,” Bhargava told IANS.
She added: “We will probably be driving over Rs 100 crore of sales in this month alone to all our partner retailers.”
In online retailing, GMV indicates a total sales dollar value for merchandise sold through a particular marketplace over a certain time frame.
“Also, this time, it is not ‘start of the month’ sale, it is mid-month. There will be a little bit of cash crunch also, which is why this is a good time to bring in cards and EMI offers,” Bhargava added.
Online marketplace ShopClues’ “Maha Bharat Diwali Sale”, which will run from September 20 to 28, will offer a wide range of products with discounts ranging from 50-80 per cent off across the home and kitchen, electronics and accessories, and fashion and lifestyle categories.
“ShopClues aims to achieve 75 per cent plus growth in business over September-October,” said Radhika Aggarwal, Co-Founder and CBO, ShopClues.
“We have also ramped up our associations with top banks, portals and e-wallets, to enable a seamless and delightful shopping experience for our customers during this Diwali,” she added.
In line with the e-commerce giants, Paytm Mall, owned by Paytm Ecommerce, will also launch its first ever festive season sale — “Mera Cashback Sale” — from September 20 to 23.
“This is our first festive season sale and we are expecting 5-6 million new customers on our platform during the four-day sale,” said a Paytm Mall spokesperson.
While the full-on sales are slated to start from Wednesday, some other e-commerce sites such as LimeRoad have their festive sales ongoing.
“LimeRoad introduced ‘The Festive Love Affair’, a collection featuring an array of handpicked kurtas, sarees, suits, heritage jewellery, traditional home décor and a lot more… It is live from September 15 to 26 and caters to both budget buyers and luxury shoppers,” said Suchi Mukherjee, Founder and CEO of LimeRoad.
Mukherjee told IANS that approximately 30 per cent of the total revenue inflow is seen during the festive months.
Flipkart will also run its “Flipkart For India” campaign as part of the sales offer during which it will ship festive gift hampers to the families of army martyrs, and current personnel of the army, Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force, posted in hostile locations away from home.
“The specially-packaged boxes, numbering a few hundred, will contain an assortment of dry fruits and a gift voucher worth Rs 10,000 that can be used to shop on Flipkart,” the company said in a statement.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, News, Opinions
By Meghna Mittal, New Delhi, (IANS) As a wide section of Indians get used to paying bills and shopping online through internet banking or credit cards, here comes another mode of payment that has remained in the shadows so far.
You can now pay your mobile or DTH bill through the digital currency, Bitcoin. Online shopping and utility bill payments via the virtual currency should be available soon.
“Users are increasingly using Zebpay to pay their mobile bills using bitcoins and to buy vouchers for online shopping. Last month, users paid bills of more than Rs.15 lakh using bitcoins. This number is doubling every month,” Sandeep Goenka, co-founder of Bitcoin mobile app-based platform Zebpay, told IANS.
Bitcoin is a digital currency not produced by any government or statutory authority. It’s generated by encryption techniques using peer-to-peer technology to operate. It has the power of infinite divisibility, which enables its use for tiny online transactions.
The total number of Bitcoins is limited as its global supply has been fixed at 21 million by its founder, who has remained out of sight. Nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part in it.
When a user wants to pay for a bill of, say, Rs.500, the bitcoins from their Zebpay wallet are transferred to the company at the current bitcoin price. Zebpay then pays the amount in rupees to the mobile carrier companies. For the user, the process is instant.
By the year end, Zebpay plans to expand services to payment of broadband, electricity and landline phone bill, Goenka said.
Bitcoin’s legal status varies from country to country. In India the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) maintains that the digital currency is under observation. But it has neither been banned nor is it regulated.
“Unregulated does not mean it is illegal, just that there are no specific laws for this new technology. It is legal to buy and sell bitcoins under all existing laws,” Goenka said.
At present, only the state of New York in the US has started giving licences for bitcoin trading. The NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) also has an official bitcoin index. Russia, though, has moved to ban it.
Each bitcoin’s value now is around Rs. 30,000, having rallied over 100 percent within a year. The price of bitcoins depend on demand and supply, just like the price of shares. The bitcoin exchanges publish prices, which are influenced by factors including international rates, liquidity and trading patterns.
“Like gold, there is a finite supply of bitcoins at 21 million. Bitcoin was modelled in several ways after gold: they are both scarce, and it is impossible to artificially inflate supply,” Jincy Samuel, COO and Center Head, Coinsecure, told IANS.
But if bitcoins are likel gold, how do you mine them?
Well, you need huge computing power to mine a block of 25 coins. High-end hardware is required to process, but even then a solo effort perhaps would take up more in electricty cost — and depreciation — than the value of coin it will yield. Working alone, it could take up to three years or more to build a block.
That’s the reason why people join pools of “miners” putting together their computers and running the algorithms endlessly to produce a block.
Bitcoins are kept in digital wallets on the computer. If you lose the computer then the you lose the money.
With trading companies offering bill payments at a very low transaction cost of less than one percent, the virtual currency is being seen as an alluring proposition.
Coinsecure, a trade platform for the currency, said it is going to launch a service later this year which will allow the users to directly shop online in bitcoins.
“We will soon be launching our merchant payment gateway this year, which will allow mobile companies or anyone else to accept bitcoins at zero percent volatility risk. We will be charging one percent transaction cost, instead of 3-4 percent by credit card companies,” Samuel of Coinsecure said.
“We are in talks with the service providers for tie-ups to accept bitcoins and a lot of them are willing. We see a lot of online service providers, e-commerce companies and start-ups coming on board,” Samuel said.
The grey legal area for the digital currency creates concern, but like any new technology the laws are yet to catch up with it.
“Bitcoin operates on blockchain technology, which is an open ledger and offers full transparency. Flipkart and Ola were also not regulated earlier. It is only recently that the government has regulated e-commerce and defined marketplace. We are also a marketplace,” Kamesh Mupparaju, CEO of bitcoin trade exchange platform BTCXIndia, told IANS.
Blockchain is an open digital ledger that records all bitcoin transactions that cannot be altered.
The companies claim that fraud is unlikely with bitcoins as the entire operation is digital in nature, secured by strong encryption keys which guarantee the ownership of the currency.
“Bitcoin works on self regulation,” online portal Unocoin Co-founder and CEO Sathvik Vishwanath told IANS.
Unocoin has already about 2,000 average mobile and DTH bill payments taking place through its online platform. “In a month’s time we will launch insurance premium, electricity and water bill payments at zero percent transaction cost,” Vishwanath said.
The popularity of bitcoins has seen a sharp increase in India.
In its very first year of operations last fiscal, Zebpay crossed Rs.100 crore turnover. At the same time, BCTXIndia jumped from a mere Rs.4 crore turnover in 2014-15 to Rs.70 crore in 2015-16. Unocoin said it is expecting to grow by 10-20 percent per month.
China, where the currency is unregulated, like India, does a trade of more than Rs.10,000 crore in bitcoins every day. The trading amount in India is around Rs.500 crore per year, Goenka said.
That is likely to change quickly.
(Meghna Mittal can be reached at meghna.m@ians.in)
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Markets, Online Marketing
By Aparajita Gupta
New Delhi:(IANS) Aiming to make the most out of the Republic Day, e-retailers in India have jumped onto the bandwagon, each offering a big bang sale with some even promising discounts of up to 80-90 percent.
For electronic gadgets, clothing, accessories, kitchenwares, skincare and even the daily grocery, the pitch is particularly forceful. While for some products the sales discount is around 15 percent, for some others it is as high as 80 percent.
Almost all the major e-retailers like Flipkart, Amazon, eBay, Myntra and Snapdeal have come up with their own themes.
Flipkart was among the early birds, naming its three-day pitch “Republic Day Sale”, while Ebay’s week-long affair is called “Democrazy Sale”. Snapdeal’s named its sale “Republic of Savings” spanning from January 21 to 26.
For Amazon the “Great Indian Sale” was also spread across three days.
“With this 72-hours marathon deals our customers will have a delightful time shopping in the New Year across a wide selection of products at best possible price-points,” Samir Kumar, vice president with Amazon India, said while announcing the sale.
“Consumer demand isn’t much these days. But during Republic Day sales, the interest is incredibly high. The response from the public is fantastic so far and the demand graph for electronics is increasing,” added Rahul Taneja, SnapDeal’s vice president.
“For example, mobile phones ranging within Rs.10,000 have been in great demand like the Lenovo A6000. The sale of Nexus5, i-phone 5S and Micromax is also increasing as January 26 is approaching,” Taneja told IANS.
According to both the shoppers and the e-retailers, this time around the sites were operating at satisfactory speeds, despite the heavy traffic due to a large number of people logging in for the sale.
The target segment of these shopping festivals are youngsters and working couples, as they seek to lure them away with much wider variety than an physical store, lower prices, heavy discounts and door-step delivery.
For Indians, online shopping is growing by the day with Goldman Sachs predicting the size of the market — including travel, payments and retail — to breach the $100-billion mark by 2020.
According to a survey conducted by Flipkart that concluded last month, the Delhi National Capital Region was the most online shopping-savvy area, followed by Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.
“E-commerce business grew to $23 billion in 2015 from $13.6 billion in 2014 — a 70-percent percent growth. The e-tailers contributed $12 billion against $4.5 billion in gross merchandise value,” Rajat Wahi of KPMG’s India unit had told IANS earlier.
“As one of the fastest growing segments, e-tail has evolved, but it is yet to mature to compete with its offline counterpart (retail). From deep-discounting, e-tailers are focusing on growth and return on investments.”
The main players:
– Flipkart named its “Republic Day” sale over three days
– Ebay named its “Democrazy Sale” over one week
– Snapdeal named its “Republic of Savings” over six days
– Amazon named “Great Indian Sale” over three days
– Myntra named its “Right to Fashion” over five days
– Paytm offered extra 6.7 percent discount on 67th R-Day
(Aparajita Gupta can be contacted at aparajita.g@ians.in)