Cyber mantra for e-tail : Global clientele, local costs

The renaissance of modern era began with the launch of the US Defence Department project called ARPANET. At the present time, the formerly developed project is widely known as Internet, the network of networks. E-tail or E-retail is the changed facet of Internet, which has brought the convenience shopping option at the shoppers' virtual doorstep. The shopper shops virtually from the web site, fills the e-shopping cart, performs the electronic transaction, and finally, receives the ordered product within a specified period of time. All this, without any hassle of going out to shop, especially when the malls or retail outlets are located far away from their place of residence.

So, what does e-tailing offer to a brick-and-mortar outlet owner who has never had the opportunity to know the tips and tricks of a completely Internet operated click-and-mortar store?

A retailer does not have to dress up like a five-star hotel chef to promote his dot com venture’s kitchen store or jump out of the skin to signal an interest in a business presentation on kids clothing. Any retailer can have an e-tailer’s advantage if he wants to,

provided that he has to be capable enough to endure the times when dot com’s stock prices fall, and losses mount. Also to be taken care of are the core areas of marketing, inventory and warehouse operating costs.

Some e-tailing websites head towards profitability so fast that investors might even stop worrying about whether the site will ever mint money. They could simply debate how much.

Saima Afzaal, an e-shopper who is a 25-year-old college graduate says, “I have been surfing the internet for the last five years in a row and I mostly pay for only three things on the Net: the Wall Street Journal, online bridge gaming spree, books and CDs from Amazon.com That these companies have fetched money from my purse depicts that they are on the right track called e-tailing.”

 

e-Customer care

Working for the customer-care section at these e-tailing sites can often be correlated to watching the Disney World from underground tunnels: there is a consistent smile on the face but the work is gruelling and demanding. Customer-care service executives have a pivotal role in getting the probable e-shopper hooked on to the site. Synchronising 

his activities with the executives, an e-tailer has to micromanage his way via keeping track of average contacts per order, average time per contact, the breakdown of e-mail vs telephone contacts, and the total cost to the company . 

 

After ONE click

While the physical world revolves around the ‘location, location and location’ criteria; the three most important terms in e-retail are ‘technology, technology and technology’. If we take a sneaky peep into the back-end operations involved in the process of e-retail, we will find that there is a growing demand for warehouses turning inventory at a faster pace. At large warehouses, the ordered commodities are electronically directed to pluck items, then dropping them into their respective containers. Shipping the respective item to the relevant address is another task of prime significance.

 

Online auctions: Bid, bid, buy

A strong money-making and business-enhancement tool, online auction helps e-tailers to improve their sales and tap potential buyers in the global arena. Online auctioning provides an excellent option to e-tailers who are willing to develop new global markets.
E-tailers, by choosing the most successful auction types, the brands, the timing of listing products, best price range, keywords and strategies along with presentations et al can earn more even while sitting in their Small Office Home Office (SOHO).

 

A High School dropout, Amit Nautiyal has found out a new way of supporting his family. For the last two consecutive years, Amit has been an eBay member. He sells country- manufactured camera parts through eBay, the auction site. Among his buyers, there are those who, mostly foreigners, buy camera parts because Amit sells them for a much lesser price and shipment charge, and the parts, manufactured in a nearby industrial area, are good in quality. Amit says “My clients have shown faith in me by ordering regularly, and I have now become Power Seller at eBay, with good points earned through positive buyer feedback. Not only this, PayPal has shown me the way to keep track of the money I gained through transactions. We can also track the couriers mailed to foreign countries. I always make it a point to communicate with the buyer once he receives the products."

 

E-shopping: Fill your e-carts

Amazon.com is committed to offer a great product range to its e-consumers across the globe. With years of experience in e-taling, Amazon has, to its credit, thirty-six different categories of products with most of the popular international brands under its virtual roof. E-customers log in at Amazon.com from different countries like Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, France and China to shop for the very latest variety of products in each category.

Product categories range from books, music video downloads, electronics, audio and video, camera, cell phones, to home and garden, bed and bath, furniture, food, kitchen and jewellery, watches, grocery, beauty & healthcare products.

 

Virtual shopping malls

Sifymall offers a complete virtual mall experience with lots of categories and sub- categories like accessories, men's apparel, women’s apparel, arts & crafts, kids games, edutainment, computer & peripherals, e-gift shop selling gifts, sports goods, home & furnishing, super stores, universal gift vouchers, jewellery, kids store, electronics & durables and magazine subscriptions.

Brands like C K One, Escape Man, Hugo Boss, Jeanne Arthes, One Man, Rochas

and others are also available.

Other virtual malls that are widely known are www.fabmall.com and www.creativemall.com

 

 

 

 

 

Industry giants go online

It has become a trend for the top-class retail companies to go online in order to craft their presence worldwide. One such top class retailer is Pantaloon Retail (India) Limited, a company that owns and manages multiple retail formats, which cater to a wide cross-section of the Indian society and is able to capture almost the entire consumption basket of the Indian consumer. Propagating itself online, the group has various websites, which include, Futurebazaar.com, Futuregroup.in and Kshitijfund.com.

Three other retailers online are www.titan.com, www.levi.com, www.lakme.com.

 

Online air ticketing

Jet Airways is India’s most preferred airline and operates over 300 flights daily to 43 cities across the country and to many overseas destinations including London (Heathrow), Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Colombo and Kathmandu.

 To get cheap airfares and great deals on international and domestic air tickets online, for  popular travel sectors like New Delhi to Bangalore, Mumbai to Bangalore, New Delhi to Mumbai, Bangalore to New Delhi, Mumbai to Goa, Delhi to Goa and more, one can book   his /her ticket for  travel by Jet Airways.

For more information, a globe trotter can log on to http://india.makemytrip.com
Another such site is www.travelport.com/

 

E-tailing: Much to explore

Indiatimes.com is a popular Internet destination and is taking the digital age into people's lives. Indiatimes.com provides the total fun-surfing experience: from Bollywood to cricket; from online games to astrology, the site features multi-media microsites, most-sought-after downloads, latest stories and rare pictures.

The portal website is a market driver in value-added services (VAS) for mobile phones and landlines. Setting up the first VAS messaging service, Indiatimes 8888 quickly scoped out to include multimedia messaging, dating, chatting and e-mail on mobile. It recently launched Chikka, a PC to mobile free messaging service. 
Indiatimes initiated airline ticket auctions in India. The auctions have spurred air travel in India making the site flier's first port of call. Indiatimes also has great deals on hotel rooms and holiday packages across the world. 
Leading the rest in online shopping, Indiatimes has more than 400 products to indulge in. With convenient payment options, including cash-on-delivery, and a secure credit-card payment system, Indiatimes has become a shoppers' paradise online. Indiatimes, in partnership with ICICI Bank, has also launched a credit card, which is designed to specifically address to the needs of the e-commerce customer.

Outsourcing: Practicable e-tailing solution

While e-commerce is a meaningful e-tailing activity, outsourcing forms an essential part of e-commerce and is in the fast lane for quite a few years in the country now. An upcoming entrepreneur like Kim Shah finds that outsourcing is a viable solution aimed at cutting costs and freeing up internal resources. She says, “Through outsourcing, I can concentrate on beating the competition rather than cribbing over the risk factors involved. A sharp focus on marketing and a substantial increase in profits are the benefits of outsourcing."

 

What are portal websites?

A good portal involves an appropriate integration of design and content with other services offered to the end-user with extraordinary vision and latest technology.

B2B portal websites: Valuable information can be accessed through Portal websites, which serve as the entry-points or gateways to knowledge resources on the internet. Commercial and industry portals provide numerous opportunities for e-tailers to create and maintain their cyber identity. Product catalogues are available at very low or for almost no cost at all through Business-to-Business (B2B) portals.

B2B portals cover the following sectors: advertising, agriculture, chemicals, electronics & semiconductors, energy & utilities, food & beverage, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, retail, telecommunications, application service providers (ASPs), associations, chat & community, consulting services, education & training, e-mail, employment, events, internet service providers (ISPs), news, software, streaming media, venture capital et al.

In generic terms, Business-to-Business (B2B) e-commerce is considered to have a larger impact on the economy than Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce.

B2C portal websites: Electronic commerce involves online marketing and selling solutions to the consumers. Features that make a site dynamic and fully operation-- shopping cart, inventory order processing & tracking et al--- integrate the website and cater to the demands of the business firm. This helps create a better environment for business to flourish online, ultimately ensuing profits and better results. Advanced versions of shopping carts provide more features to Gen X and Y surfers on the internet and offer more options to them to buy or sell particular product, service or know-how to the client or customer who visits the B2C Portal. Our advanced shopping cart solutions integrate dealers, affiliates, wholesalers & bulk buyers as well as small retailers.

With the evolution of cyber community comprising e-shoppers, e-tailers, casual surfers, bloggers and the rest, distances have been shortened and communication has become easier, and at a convenient pace. Speedy transactions, timely deliveries, a huge variety of products to choose from your virtual Window to the outside world, e-tail has encapsulated technology, products and services to the advantage of both the consumer and the e-tailer.

 

Box item: #1

 

Experts comment

Mr. Gaurav Munjal, business development manager, Infoedge Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd says, “An online retailer can do a sales analysis via calculation of seasonal variation index and pure seasonality index. This is a systematic approach to predict the likely impact of season on sales. The only pre-requisites an e-tailer needs are a spreadsheet, simple data analysis techniques and past information. A balance of high and low SVI products as well as a mix of positive PSI products in each of the 4 quarters will help to achieve a balance in product portfolios and in optimising the flow of sales and income.” 

Vice President, Ferns 'N' Petals, Pawan Gadia, says, “At Ferns ‘N’ Petals, we sustain consumer interest by offering them the incentive to visit our website in the form of unique product range, including gifts, feng shui items, bakery products and other offers. Discounts or freebies are other popular attractions to invite the shopper to our site.”

 “Online retailers promote and offer discounts and schemes which act as key elements of differentiation. E-tailers attract shoppers with seasonal product range, heavy discount and offers that are irresistible. From technological point of view, there is a separate promotional module that empowers these online offerings and seasonal promotions. A very stable system should be there to handle heavy seasonal traffic. As retailers are keeping their eye on profit margins through e-tail, we are doing the same for their application and servers.” says Mr Manu Agarwal, CEO, ANMsoft Technologies.

Head of E-commerce, Jaipur Rajai Arts, Mr Abhay Mathur, says, “E-shoppers get bitten by the shopping bug when they see running banner ads and various kinds of discounts online. These e-marketing features really hook the customers to online buying rather actually visiting shopping malls. Especially during the festive streak, flaunting of jazzy gift packing and serving e-customers with express delivery and the finest quality products ensure creation and maintenance of loyal customers online for the products.”

 

 

 

 

Box item #2

 

Online shopping tools

 Following is the percentage of clientele that use different online shopping tools.

 

Chat rooms                          3 %

Blogs                                    6 %

Message boards                   13 %

Customer service                  15 %

Independent online review 37 %

Online retailer reviews       44 %

Catalogues                           62 %

 

 

Box item #3

Facts influencing online shopping

Even when the online sales are not at their peak like sales during the holiday shopping seasons, e-shoppers do hunt their favourite sites to buy the commodities of their choice. It is, therefore, essential to get an insight into the shopping demeanor, experiences and expectations.

Key findings include:

Ripple effect of good or bad online experience

 The ‘word of mouth’ effect of a good or bad online experience can really effect the

 e-tailers. A good percentage of the respondents would inform five or more friends if they had a bad online experience. That would become equivalent to a substantial amount if a  serious calculation is given.

Some excerpts from what online shoppers conveyed:

  • Lila Kidwai says, “I ordered few CDs and got nothing delivered to my place.”

  • Says Mr Raj Mattoo, “It was a tiring experience wherein I spent an hour putting an order together, then tried to check-out the site, seemed to get caught in an unending loop and couldn’t even complete the order!”

Three Ss of e-tail: Speed, Simplicity and Service

It is a common observation that most of the online shoppers abandon an e-tailer’s

website after three or fewer unsuccessful attempts at completing a purchase. E-shoppers, generally the holiday shoppers, might not be very tolerant of slow websites. Heavy graphic and fancy designs are commonly linked with slower page loads.

Online research has strong impact on offline sales

According to National Retail Federation, the projected holiday spent in November last year was $457 billion, so a positive or negative online research experience could potentially influence sales of over $157 billion of offline purchases during the holiday season. 

Online reviews, print catalogues drive online shopping purchases

Most online shoppers use online reviews as compared to the users who use print catalogs to guide their online purchasing decisions.

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