eCommerce Tips for Indians
What differentiates a successful eCommerce venture from an unsuccessful one? How do you get more customers and grow your business faster in India? Why do Indian eCommerce ventures such as Flipkart.com, Snapdeal.com and Healthkart.com have succeeded, while so many others have failed?
If you’re thinking of starting an online store in India, the eCommerce tips for Indians given here will be really useful to you and help make sense of the questions raised by us.
It’s All About the UX!
Essentially, all the eCommerce tips for Indians given here relate to User Experience or UX. It is the UX that determines if an eCommerce venture succeeds or not. To understand UX, it is important to know how UX is different from UI or the User Interface – which is the website design.
UI may be compared to an attractive car which looks great, with all the bells and whistles. UX is what drives the car – the functionality and the usability. So, as an eCommerce venture, your success will largely depend on the functionality of your website – how well the payment gateway works, if the items are displayed well enough, whether the navigation functions smoothly enough, if the user review section appears authentic and so on.
[Udemy India: Democratization of Learning]
Who are Your Customers?
Your customers – who are they? Are they men, women, college educated, higher, middle or lower income, are they from metros or are they from small towns in the hinterlands of the country – these are questions every eCommerce venture in India grapples with. It’s hard to know who your customers are in a country like India, which has 1.2 billion people with the sort of diversity that is not seen anywhere else in the world. But you should have some idea of your target customer, what motivates him or her, their passions, interests and dreams. What are they truly looking for and how can your business provide them the value they seek for their money? This is something you should think about very deeply.
What Do You Aim to Achieve With Your Venture?
So how would you like your eCommerce venture to look like 2 years from now? What are the values you consider to be important and how can you make sure that your business will hold on to them? There is nothing about the eCommerce business in India that is for certain.
[Flipkart vs Amazon – Let the Games Begin!]
Companies such as eBay, which essentially began the eCommerce revolution in the country have lost out because of a failure to stick to the values that made them popular in the first place – such as great customer service and giving sellers the importance they should be given.
Others like Flipkart held on to their core values, which has led them from success to more success. Companies like Amazon have come to India with a plan and a definite goal, which is why they have had such a great start to their campaign so far. So what are your plans with your venture?
What’s Your Marketing Strategy?
Most ambitious eCommerce ventures in India spend over one-third of their budgets on marketing. Some spend millions of dollars on TV advertisements, even hiring Bollywood stars and cricketers. Now, this is often a hit and miss strategy. If it works, it does get the eCommerce business a lot of attention and will boost the incoming traffic to their sites by a considerable extent.
But if the advertisements fail to get the public excited, it only means a lot of money down the drain, and possibly the end of the venture. It’s far better to grow gradually and affordably, through Pay-Per-Click advertising and word-of-mouth publicity, rather than to burn your fingers trying too hard to succeed in the shortest time possible.
Getting Your Customers Involved in Your Business
The best eCommerce ventures succeed because they get their customers to get deeply interested in what they do, talk about their services on the social media with their friends, check out the latest deals on a regular basis and be a part of its success. Flipkart succeeded because it built a strong and loyal customer base, people who were never really used to buying online before and found Flipkart to be a safe, reliable and fast way to get what they wanted.
Flipkart’s customers were happy enough to review the products bought by them on Flipkart’s user review section, led their family, friends and colleagues to the website as well, and became integral to Flipkart’s rise. It became cool to shop on Flipkart. While Flipkart’s success is not easy to replicate, there are certainly many lessons to be learned from its success.
