We have been giving you every small detail about the happenings in the ecommerce world, but with the curtains down on 2014, it’s time to put everything in a capsule. Needless to say, it has been a year of tremendous success for online sellers, with traditional brick-and-mortar stores feeling the heat.
The loudest bang this Diwali was not firecracker, but from the unbelievable shopping deals that ecommerce biggies like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon offered. Flipkart even had its own exclusive day of sales, the very famous ‘Big Billion Day’ on 6th October which brought in hundreds of crores of rupees. Apparently, Flipkart managed to sell goods worth 100 million USD (Rs 600 crores) within the first ten hours of launching its sale. Of course, it also garnered a lot of flak for allegations of making false claims to customers. Even this was well sorted by an elaborate email sent out by Flipkart to its customers, earnestly apologising for the flaws in its operations. Snapdeal and Amazon were natural winners of this game as well, because customers ended up browsing and comparing products on these two marketplaces as well.
Mobile apps became the next best thing after shopping online. Due to the peculiarity of internet penetration in India and the affordability of mobile phones, more and more people have begun to access ecommerce through their mobiles, setting off the mcommerce revolution. So much so, that Myntra has even declared that it may become a mobile-only shopping site by 2015.
Cash on delivery continues to remain the most popular payment choice amongst Indian consumers, who are wary of shopping frauds as the Indian ecommerce industry witnessed the past year. This payment option also allows people without banking facilities like net banking or credit card to make online purchases, which is beneficial to improving sales but has a high cost to ecommerce companies.
Grocery was a product category that was both popular and precarious. This is because many people in busy metro cities would like to save themselves a trip to the grocer’s in the traffic, but sellers would have to deal with the challenges of transport and storage of perishable goods. Nevertheless, several online retailers launched grocery stores, sparking the online food shopping frenzy in India. In fact, several other food/ restaurant apps like Food Panda sprouted up as well, taking it to yet another level.
The year ended with the Great Online Shopping Festival, which received thunderous response. Over 80 lakh people browsed through the sale offerings in three days, with an astounding 350% increase in revenues as compared to normal days.
What does 2015 have in store for the online retail industry? We will be giving you all the details as they come!
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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