GOSF Who gains what?

The Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) achieved a roaring success in 2014 and as per the participated brands, This time they achieved growth around 5-7 times higher.

 

The Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) has seen a huge surge in the online consumer count at the close of 2014, with several unique and high value products being sold and booked at the GOSF 2014. In India, people from 220 cities participated in the festival that went on for a three-day long period from December 10-12 till midnight.This festival saw a huge consumer involvement from smaller cities in India, and mobile bookings also exceeded all expectations in this year’s festival.

 

Hits and Misses

Sponsored by Google, GOSF witnessed participation from 450 partners, across categories. According to Nitin Bawankule, Industry Director- eCommerce, Google India, “GOSF 2014 was a roaring success, with all partners seeing great engagements across product categories. We got 80 lakh visits to the site during the three-day festival. And a total of over 1.4 crore visits to the site, including promotion period.” He further added that the user engagement was up by seven times from 20 lakh visits recorded last year from India during the festival.

 

A lot of buyers from India shopped in the ‘Rs 299 Corner’ and some of the smaller partners reported growth around 5-7 times in their daily conversions. Notably, around 40 per cent of the Indians who bought during the festival accessed the details via mobile. Sundeep Malhotra, Founder & CEO, HomeShop18.com stated that they recorded a 4X increase in sales, saw a doubling of call flow and a jump in average order value by 32 per cent during the festival.

 

And the winners were-

According to a report by a popular deals aggregator website, Desmi Dime, Amazon India and Snapdeal were the top eCommerce websites during the three-day GOSF sales. Both websites did see an increase in their overall transactions by a whopping 600 per cent. Among fashion retailers, Jabong and Myntra performed extraordinarily well, while ShopClues was an outstanding performer in the show.

 

It has been noticed that products under the fashion category garnered the highest conversion rate, followed by mobile phones, other electronics, travel and food.

 

While eCommerce sites had a lot to gain during the festival, Google arguably earned a lot more. As the festival attracts hordes of new online shoppers, Google stands to benefit from the multitude of advertisements and marketing campaigns launched by eCommerce portals. That’s why this festival was a dramatic success for Google that reported over 1.4 crore visits to its site through the GOSF.

 

Thus, this initiative of Google to bring together several online retailers in India to offer discounts on their products during the festival has surely seen a boost since its launch in 2012. Vice President & Managing Director, Rajan Anandan, Google India stated, “Great Online Shopping Festival is India’s version of Cyber Monday in the West and is an exciting platform to raise awareness and consumer adoption of online shopping in India.”

 

As per Peyush Bansal, CEO & Founder, Lenskart.com, they have achieved 100 per cent sales jump in categories like eyeglasses and contact lenses, 300 per cent in sunglasses and traffic jumped by 200 per cent from their daily average visits.  

Vikram Chopra, CEO & Founder, Fabfurnish.com informed, “Our revenues increased by 400 per cent and the website traffic increased by 150 per cent. We clocked five transactions per minute during the three-day shopping festival. We processed a cumulative number of 20,000 transactions across all three days. Average selling price increased by 30 per cent despite discounts and ‘Rs 299 corner’ initiative from Google.”

 

Aasheesh Mediratta, CEO, Fashionandyou.com said, “It’s a win-win for all, as the e-retailers acquire new customers, trade partners move better volumes, while the first time shoppers, as well as existing online buyers avail amazing deals and discounts during the three days of festival.”

 

Sameer Maheshwari, MD & Co-Founder, HealthKart.com revealed, “The GOSF 2014 was bigger and better compared to last year. More importantly, Google was much better prepared and organised to catalog the deals and send the traffic to merchant sites. We, as participating merchants, were also well prepared to handle additional traffic and backend