migliore-e-commerce

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This ranking has been generated by Alexa.com, which  is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com which provides commercial web traffic data. Once it is installed, the Alexa Toolbar collects data on browsing behavior and transmits it to the Alexa website, where it is stored and analyzed, forming the basis for the company's web traffic reporting. As of 2013, Alexa provides traffic data, global rankings and other information on 30 million websites, and claims that 6 million people visit its website monthly.

In this ranking I have selected those e-commerce companies which are in the top 500 list of Indian websites.This ranking keeps on changing with the performance of the website and will be updated as per the changes.

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23 Online Tools to Research Your Competition

Sometimes the best way to improve your own business is by taking a hard look at your competitors. By understanding their most and least effective strategies, you can fine-tune your own marketing efforts.

Here is a list of competitive research tools. There are tools to research your competition’s keywords, linking strategies, traffic metrics, and more. There are both free and paid tools. If you have any other favorite resources to research your competitors, be sure to add them in the comments below.

Free Tools

Alexa. Search Alexa by keyword or category for traffic trends on competing sites. Get rank, related keywords, and site analytics for free.

Alexa.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Plug in a URL and get the keyword ideas Google thinks the page should be advertising for, as well as the monthly keyword volume estimates.

Google Trends for Websites. This Google tool gives you traffic estimates, related websites, and related keywords. Compare trends between multiple sites. Data is only available for higher traffic sites.

Archive.org. This site provides free access on how old a website is and what it looked like in the past.

Archive.org.

Google Traffic Estimator. Enter a website and get estimates on the number of AdWords ad clicks and bid prices for the top ad position.

SearchStatus. SearchStatus lets you view a site’s Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank, Alexa related links and backward links.

DomainTools. Search "Whois" domain ownership data. Or get reverse Whois information, if you know domain owners and want to know which sites they own.

DomainTools.

Webpage Similarity Comparison Tool. Enter URLs and compare different pages, including meta information and common phrases.

Marketing Grader. This is a free site grader that measures a site against one or two other sites.

SEO Link Analysis. This Firefox extension enhances link data from Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and MS Webmaster Portal. It gathers PageRank for the linking page, the anchor text used on the link, and checks whether the link is no-followed or not.

SEO Link Analysis.

Yahoo Term Extraction. This tool allows you to extract key terms from a piece of content. Enter your competitor’s site text to analyze keywords. It utilizes Yahoo!'s Search API.

Quantcast. Quantcast shows a site’s visitor demographics, visits, views, audience "also likes," traffic frequency, and traffic sources.

SEO Toolbar. Get useful market research data from a variety of sources, such as Google PageRank, links to domain, and estimated traffic value. Look at a side-by-side comparison of up to five sites.

SEO Toolbar.

Paid Tools

SEMRush. Get a list of competitors in organic search and paid Google Search results. Get keywords for any site, with volume and costs information. Price: $69.95 per month.

Compete. Compete.com gives you free visitor and rank information on competitors. Paid version gives you traffic, engagement, and demographic analytics on millions of sites. Learn about websites that your competitors are using to drive traffic. Price: Pro version starts at $199 per month.

Compete.

SEO SpyGlass. SEO SpyGlass is an easy-to-use backlink checker that enables you to check on your Google and Yahoo! competitors and reveal their entire link-building strategies. Find out your competitors' total number of backlinks, PageRank of every backlink, and more. Price: $99.75.

SearchMetrics. Start analyzing not only your own sites but also those of your competitors straightaway, no matter if you want to analyze SEO, search engine marketing, keywords or universal search. Price: Plans start at $99 per month.

SpyFu. SpyFu gives you compelling keywords, and helps you find out what other advertisers ran into when they tried those keywords. Or take the top advertisers on a keyword and discover the rest of their shared terms. Price: Plans start at $79 per month.

SpyFu.

Trellian Competitive Intelligence. Identify the search terms and keywords that your competitors rank on. Find out what keywords drive the most traffic to competing sites and which sites send the most traffic to your competitors. Compare your business with other competitors. Price: $995 per year, per domain.

SEMRush. Get the list of your competitors in organic and AdWords search results. Get the estimated search engine and AdWords traffic for any domain. Price: $69.95 per month.

Majestic SEO. Majestic SEO is a giant link database. Enter a competing site address and get its link profile, going as deep as you want. Price: Free on sites you own; for reports on other sites, plans start at $49.99 per month.

Majestic SEO.

URLTrends. Allows you to view vital search engine information about any URL. See the URL's link popularity, PageRank, Alexa Rank, keywords that you can find the site by, and more. An unlimited number of trend reports can be generated at no cost. Price: Paid plans to track URLs start at $8 per month.

Open Site Explorer. This is another link engine with a simple design. Compare up to five pages at once for in-bound links, linking domains, link metrics, and more. Pro membership gets social media links and advanced filter reports with lists of up to 100,000 links. Price: Pro membership is $99 per month.

[migliore-e-commerce]

For Ecommerce Branding, Use Videos

In today’s social climate, it is more important than ever to create a recognizable brand for your store. Vital to that effort is building a relationship between your store and your customers that exceeds the usual search-click-buy interaction.

Most storeowners think about two things: traffic (how to get more targeted visitors to their websites), and conversion (how to turn those visitors into buyers). Few realize that there is a critical third piece to the puzzle: community engagement. This means connecting with your customers by adding value to your marketplace beyond just listing products for sale. By interacting with your customer outside of the sales process, you create more opportunities to build familiarity and trust for your brand.

People prefer to purchase from companies they know and trust. When you establish yourself as more than just another company peddling a product, you give consumers more reason to purchase from you, rather than your faceless competitors. This is the basic principle behind ecommerce branding.

So what is branding, exactly? Is it a color scheme, a logo, a sound? It is more than the sum of its parts. It is the feeling your customers associate with your store. This feeling is shaped by all the interactions they have with any facet of your business.

Videos on Informational Pages

Some of the most commonly overlooked opportunities for branding on an ecommerce store are on the pages that provide additional company information, such as your privacy policy, shipping information, contact, and about us pages. Believe it or not, people read these. By doing so, they give you the chance to build and shape your relationship with them. It is a perfect opportunity for some face time via a video explaining the details on each of those pages. This has the added benefit of increasing your store’s conversion rate. These videos — particularly the shipping information and FAQ videos —can also be placed on your individual product pages, which will increase your conversion rate all the more. This works best on a template that allows tabbed product details.

Zappos understands this and does a very good job implementing it on its "Shipping and Returns" page.

Zappos includes a helpful video on its Shipping and Returns page.

Educational, How-to Videos

One of the best ways to build brand recognition within a market is to offer something beyond products to your customers. This could be solving a problem your customer has, via an educational guide about a product line, a how-to video, a product bundle, or a list of resources.

I recently experienced this strategy as a consumer. I was shopping for a new video microphone. I did my research and picked the one I wanted. As I compared prices online, I found the product for roughly the same price on several different sites. One site grabbed my attention, however, and it had nothing to do with the price. The site, The Podcaster's Studio, is not a store. It's an informational hub about audio and electronics. It contains an educational video on how to use the mic and how to pair it with complementary products — which it listed.

I ended up purchasing the products through the site's affiliate links because it added the most value to my shopping experience. When I need another piece of electronic equipment, I’ll check that site first and likely buy from its recommended products — i.e., affiliate links — because I trust its expertise. By offering more than just a "search-click-buy" experience, the site branded itself to me as a helpful source for making purchasing decisions about audio and video equipment.

An educational product video is an opportunity for branding. This one on The Podcaster's Studio, an informational hub, explains how to use a microphone.

This educational video strategy should be applied to all of your best selling products in our ecommerce store. Video on product pages typically increases conversion rates. Simple how-to videos are easy to create. A similar option is a how-to-choose video, as seen in the example below. This is a good choice if you have multiple products in a category. It allows you to explain the differences and features of each item in more detail than you could in a written description.

Simple how-to-choose videos are easy to create and can lead to more conversions. This video, from Bella Luna Toys, explains how to purchase a harp.

Summary

Taking advantage of all available opportunities to connect with your customers via video allows you to become more than just another faceless company. This leads to more satisfied customers and more repeat business. It builds your brand.

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How to Analyze Your Ecommerce Competitors ?

In online retailing, an accurate and current competitive analysis accesses rival merchants' strengths and weaknesses relative to a seller's own operations, providing a significant advantage or identifying opportunities.

For small and mid-sized online retailers, a basic competitive analysis should include a regular, qualitative review of the competitors' websites, prices, product mix, customer service, policies, and marketing. This data can be used both offensively and defensively to improve your bottom line.

The competitive analysis process is a bit frontend loaded, meaning that it will take more time to complete the first time you do it than it will each time you update it.

Identifying the Enemy

Often war or combat is used as an analogy for business competition. On the battlefield, the enemy is that group of people or units that seek to take your possessions or affect your way of life. In online retailing, the enemy is any company that can affect your profit.

Some enemies may be weak while others may pose an imminent threat to sales and revenue. To create a competitive analysis, focus on those competitors that are either an immediate threat or that could become a threat within a year. This should reduce the size of your competitive set to a manageable number.

To help identify these competitors ask two basic questions about your business and your market.

1. What is your industry segment?

2. Who are your customers?

With the answers to these questions in hand, look for the competition. For example, imagine that you answered the first question with “tack and equestrian supplies,” meaning horse saddles, bridles, brushes, and similar. Next, imagine that you answered the second question — Who are your customers? — as “women living in suburban or semi-rural areas who ride and show horses.”

With this information in hand, make a list of potential competitors, by noting the following.

Any competitor you already know.

Retailers that appear at the top of organic search result pages for important queries.

Retailers that purchase pay-per-click advertising for industry-specific keywords.

Retailers that advertise in industry-related publications.

Retailers that appear in dealer locators (from suppliers or manufacturers).

Retailers that tweet about the industry on Twitter.

Retailers that post about the topic on Facebook.

Using the tack and equestrian example above, such a merchant might end up with a list competitors like the one below.

State Line Tack

Tractor Supply Company

TackWholesale.com

Dover Saddlery

Jeffers Equine

SmartPak

Thornhill

Identify What Impacts Sales

Customers may choose a merchant for any number of reasons, including how much they trust the retailer or like the retailer's business philosophy. You should make a list of the factors that influence your customers. Below is a list of several areas to consider.

Website aesthetics. Remember, how good a site looks impacts how much it is trusted.

Website content. Includes blogs, articles, videos, and product descriptions.

Product selection. Does the site have one type of widget or several to choose from.

Price. Pricing relative to the market.

Customer service. A site with a phone number might be better than one that only allows email contact.

Shipping options. Is free shipping available?

Social media presence. Identify the social sites and the activity on them.

Email marketing. How is email used?

Search engine position. In organic search results.

Advertising. Pay-per-click, banners, video, other.

Other marketing. Trade shows, blog posts, other.

Rate the Competition

Now, objectively rate your competition for each of these categories on a scale from one to ten, where ten is best. Consider awarding the competitor that performs best in a particular area a ten. Another competitor that did half as good a job would receive a 5 and so on.

Be sure to actually research each competitor. Once the scores have been awarded, arrange them in a competitive array. An example array follows.

A competitive array is really a chart or spreadsheet.

Using the Analysis

If left as a chart saved in your hard drive, this competitive analysis would not be terribly valuable to your business. So its findings should be used for business decisions and improve your own operations.

For example, if one competitor is leading the pack in customer service, it may make since to implement similar or better policies. Likewise, if you discover that you have a significant advantage in social media marketing, look for ways to further your lead. If you notice that the entire competitive set is lacking in one area, consider focusing some of your attention there.

Summing Up

With competitive analysis, you can obtain information that you can use to improve your business's position relative to your competition. Revisit your analysis about every three months, monitoring changes in the competition and how well your business performs in comparison.

Read More

[migliore-e-commerce]

How to Research your Ecommerce Competitors ?

Many ecommerce business owners have told me that they pay little attention to their competitors. Most said that they did not have time, or that their competitors’ tactics did not matter to them.

But you should regularly monitor your competitors' businesses, for the following reasons.

Locate new products. They may sell products that you are not aware of.

Analyze promotions. They may be running aggressive promotions that impact your business.

Pricing effects. Their pricing strategies may provide you with an opportunity or challenge that you should act on.

New ideas. You may see new promotional ideas for your business.

New keywords. Their websites may be a source of keyword ideas for your search-engine-optimization or pay-per-click campaigns.

Slow-moving products. Their clearance sale items may be products you should avoid.

Do not dwell on your competitors. Spend 30 minutes each week researching their stores and tactics; you will likely learn information to incorporate into your own business.

Research on Google

Put yourself in the mindset of your customer. Open an "incognito" window in Chrome — i.e., private browsing; here are instructions from Chrome. Pick a product in your store and do a Google search on keywords that you think a consumer would use to find it. Be sure to do it incognito so that Google does not skew the results with your personal search history.

Note who is advertising on that keyword. Is it your direct competitors, Amazon, brand manufacturers, or no one at all? Are they high quality ads? Do they link to relevant landing pages or a home page?

What do the organic search results look like? Are they local stores? Are you in the top five? Are your competitors? Is the content of the search results relevant to the keywords?

Are any Product Listing Ads or video links showing up? Those are most likely to be clicked on. So even if you are in the top five, you may have a lower chance of a click.

Do several searches with different keywords. Pay attention to Google’s suggested keywords. Those are the next most likely keywords that consumers use.

Track these results in a spreadsheet. This can become a baseline analysis to repeat in several weeks or months to see what has changed in your competitive space. You may be surprised at how often you find an unknown competitor.

Go to Competitors' Sites

Next, click from the search results to your competitors' sites. Note where you land in their sites. Is it a product detail page, a landing page, or category list of some type? If it's from a pay-per-click ad, is it consistent with the keyword you used?

Note the content page layout and design. Is it comparable to your own? Is the content unique? What types of images and image features do they have? Note their pricing for products in the category you chose. Put them into a spreadsheet that tracks prices by product for various competitors. What are their shipping policies? Are they promoting cross-sell or up-sell items?

Put a product in the competitor's cart to see if it is doing any promotions or up-sells within the cart. Browse other areas of the store to identify any promotions or seasonal offerings. What new products are they introducing? What items are they trying to get rid of through a clearance or overstock sale?

Note, also, competitors' product variety. Do they have many price points or do they focus on a single pricing level for a given product? What is their breadth and depth for a given product?

Write a short summary of the things you liked and did not like about the experience. Try to stay in the mind of a consumer, not a competitor.

Build a Knowledge Base

None of this has to take much time. You can easily scan several competitors in 30 minutes. By collecting information in a spreadsheet, you begin to build a knowledge base that may be useful in the future.

Over time, you can use tools like Compete and SpyFu to monitor their traffic and what they are investing in through pay-per-click advertising. You can learn which keywords and affiliate sites are sending them traffic in the premium versions of these services.

SpyFu can help identify your competitors’ keywords for search marketing.

Summary

The point is not to copy your competitors. It's to have your eyes open to trends and tactics that will impact your business. If you suddenly have a drop in your conversions, but no change in your overall traffic, it may mean that a competitor has changed a pricing tactic or is running a promotion that is diverting your sales. You may or may not want to react. But you will sleep better understanding the nature of the problem.

[migliore-e-commerce]

Multi-brand retail with FDI barred from ecommerce in India

Government announced the decision to permit FDI, up to 51%, in multi-brand retail trading, vide Press Note dated 20.9.2012, subject to the following conditions:

(I) FDI in multi brand retail trading up to 51% shall be allowed through the Government approval route.

(ii) Minimum amount to be brought in, as FDI, by the foreign investor, would be US $ 100 million.

(iii) At least 50% of total FDI brought in shall be invested in `backend infrastructure` within three years of the first tranche of FDI, where ‘back-end infrastructure’ will include capital expenditure on all activities, excluding that on front-end units; for instance, back-end infrastructure will include investment made towards processing, manufacturing, distribution, design improvement, quality control, packaging, logistics, storage, ware-house, agriculture market produce infrastructure etc.  Expenditure on land cost and rentals, if any, will not be counted for purposes of backend infrastructure.

(iv) At least 30% of the value of procurement of manufactured/ processed products purchased shall be sourced from Indian `small industries` which have a total investment in plant & machinery not exceeding US $ 1.00 million. This valuation refers to the value at the time of installation, without providing for depreciation. Further, if at any point in time, this valuation is exceeded, the industry shall not qualify as a `small industry` for this purpose.

This procurement requirement would have to be met, in the first instance, as an average of five years’ total value of the manufactured/ processed products purchased, beginning 1st April of the year during which the first tranche of FDI is received. Thereafter, it would have to be met on an annual basis.

(v) Self-certification by the company, to ensure compliance of the conditions at serial nos. (ii), (iii) and (IV) above, which could be cross-checked, as and when required. Accordingly, the investors shall maintain accounts, duly certified by statutory auditors.

(vi) Retail sales outlets may be set up only in cities with a population of more than 10 lakh as per 2011 Census and may also cover an area of 10 kms around the municipal/urban agglomeration limits of such cities; retail locations will be restricted to conforming areas as per the Master/Zonal Plans of the concerned cities and provision will be made for requisite facilities such as transport connectivity and parking;  In States/ Union Territories not having cities with population of more than 10 lakh as per 2011 Census, retail sales outlets may be set up in the cities of their choice, preferably the largest city and may also cover an area of 10 kms around the municipal/urban agglomeration limits of such cities.

The locations of such outlets will be restricted to conforming areas, as per the Master/Zonal Plans of the concerned cities and provision will be made for requisite facilities such as transport connectivity and parking.

[migliore-e-commerce]

A Rant On India And E-Commerce

Over the last few days, over multiple conversations, I’ve heard rumors about significant layoffs in e-commerce in India, and e-commerce companies being shopped around. Funding has dried up, and because businesses are not yet profitable, there is “consolidation” in e-commerce in India, with investors pushing for businesses to combine operations, with the idea of cutting costs and combining user base, and mostly with the objective of weathering the storm that hit Indian e-commerce after the Indian government announced that it was allowing foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail, but not allowing any investment in e-commerce.

This has forced businesses to change business models in India – from direct-to-consumer retail to a marketplace model (since marketplaces are allowed under the current FDI norms). Many e-commerce businesses have shut shop. I’m hearing of large e-commerce companies that have two to six months of capital left, and while it might be good that speculative e-commerce ventures that were created just to be sold might not make it, there is a worry that even large ventures which are highly leveraged will have to take certain decisions for lack of capital.

As K. Vaitheeswaran, Founder of IndiaPlaza, and someone who has spent around 12 years (maybe more) building an e-commerce business, told MediaNama a couple of days ago, even marketplaces are collateral damage, because investors are spooked:

Even though we have a model which is above board, we are struggling to convince investors because many investors are saying that they want to see how the investigations play out before they start writing cheques. Most companies are not getting follow on capital for growth, and there is collateral damage. (read more)

In all of this, Minister of State of Commerce & Industry, Dr. S.  Jagathrakshakan has reiterated to the Indian Parliament:

Some representations to remove the ban on retail trading through e-commerce have been received. 

As per the extant Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy, FDI, up to 100%, is permitted under the automatic route, in business-to-business e-commerce. Retail trading, in any form, by means of e-commerce, is not permissible for companies with FDI. No proposal for amendment of this policy, is under consideration.

What really gets my goat is the statement above in bold – that no proposal for amendment of this policy is under consideration. Why is that? Why is the government so opaque about the decisions it makes, and why it makes them. Why is there no explanation from the government about why, explicitly, e-commerce is not permitted. Is it because of politics? Is it because of the need to safeguard certain business interests? Is it because e-commerce players often sell at a discount to physical retail? Or does someone not like the idea of multi-colored socks being sold on the web?

Yes, it appears that the industry used loopholes in the FDI law to build e-commerce businesses, but what it has done is identified that there is consumer demand for both digital goods, and goods and services online. E-commerce has made great products available in areas that where they wouldn’t otherwise be available because of distribution or retail issues/costs. There’s a wider variety available online even to those buying in big cities, because physical retail has limited shelf space. E-commerce is a superior form of retail – it brings consumers greater choice.

Yes, there are many non-serious players in the space, and there are times when goods don’t get delivered, the banks payment gateways suck so orders don’t get processed, but you can’t kill an industry just because of that. Frankly, even if they did flout FDI norms, what are the norms there for? To protect some vested interests or to help create better, more efficient models that serve consumer interest? I’d be the first one to say that if they broke the law, take them down, but really – what is the rationale behind this law?

If Indian capital was unwilling to help build this industry, but foreign venture capital was, what’s wrong with allowing an open and competitive market, among investment firms, and e-commerce players? The consumer benefits!

What the government – and I’m not sure if it’s just the government, but given how the opposition was opposing FDI in multi-brand retail as a whole, it’s our entire polity – has ended up doing is send a message out to entrepreneurs that the Indian market isn’t one for you because regulations can screw you over (like the RBI did in mobile payments space a few years ago), and you’re better off relocating to San Francisco (some have, and some I know are considering it). And don’t even get me started on how they’ve screwed up telecom.

Over the next new months, we expect more bad news from e-commerce in India. You know whom to blame, but there’s not much anyone can do about that, it seems. Representations after representation, as we’ve seen with the draconian IT Rules and Section 66A which impact freedom of speech online, are falling on deaf ears on stubborn heads.

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Backed by the power of e-commerce

Decades ago when women stormed the men’s bastion and turned entrepreneurs, what was most expected was a new beauty parlour at the corner of a housing society or a saree or jewellery shop in the neighbouring market.  The fetish with clothes and jewellery somehow remains constant but the medium of sale has changed with time. New age women entrepreneurs have taken to e-commerce to showcase their business skills to the world. Metrolife shares few stories that have a modern twist to the tale. One such story is of siblings Riddhima and Saloni Sayal, who had a family business in exports but after Riddhima completed her Political Science (Hons) from Lady Shri Ram College, she felt the need to create her own identity.  The internet came to her rescue and after research she ventured into the handbags industry. “Initially, we didn’t want to invest in setting up a store. Since online is coming up in India, we decided to launch risabags.com, which helped us to create a boutique brand,” says Riddhima.  She feels that it is important to have an aesthetic sense rather than a mere degree in designing. But whatever nitty-gritty is required in designing, her younger sister Saloni, who is pursuing her graduation in fashion designing and merchandising, proves to be of help. While Riddhima and Saloni wanted to create their identity, Monica Gupta, the founder of craftsvilla.com, felt the urge to provide Indian handicrafts a global exposure. “It all started with a road trip to Kutch when I had taken a year long break after completing my MSc in Accountancy from US. I realised that the place is a hub of beautiful handicrafts available at cheap rates as compared to their prices in urban cities. I realised that huge chunks of money was being pocketed by intermediaries rather than the craftspeople whose next generation is moving out of the profession due to the economical crunch.”  It is to fill this gap that she started with craftsvilla.com and purposely chose the online medium because she felt that India’s rich art and craft could not fit into a physical shop. “At the moment we have one lakh products online, it is physically not possible to place them in a store,” she says. Sushma Earaiah has a similar tale. After completing MBA from IIM Bangalore Sushma worked with Microsoft for four years. “I knew the corporate world and wanted to do something on my own rather than playing safe. I thought, if I don’t take up the challenge now then it will be never.” Her urge and research made her find out that the segment of jewellery is not being catered well. “There was a lot of clutter available online and when a consumer visits a jewellery portal, he or she doesn’t know what to buy.”  She thus decided to launch scrunchh.com which is her initiative to “identify and curate best jewellery designs for Indian women,” says Sushma who hand-picks designs from India and even abroad. “I did have a passion for jewellery and was already into programming so I could relate to e-commerce,” she says adding that this is her full time venture now and will remain her focus since it has grown bigger than what she had envisaged!

[migliore-e-commerce]

NDTV to venture into E-commerce

NDTV is said to have invited nine creative agencies to pitch for the creative duties of its e-commerce operations. The process is currently under way in Delhi. After NDTV’s Board approved the entry of NDTV Worldwide, a subsidiary of the company last month, to enter into the e-commerce business, the company is working out the details. The platform would offer Indian ethnic wear and designer as well as other accessible brands. The agency’s creative mandate would include launching the domain name, logo options and formulate a social media strategy. As reported earlier, e-tailing platform Fashionandyou’s Co-founder Rahul Narvekar joined NDTV to set up its e-commerce operations. Since, then there have been speculations about whether the company is launching an online commerce business or planning a new TV channel on the lines of Star CJ Alive and HomeShop18. While on one hand the e-commerce marketplace is heating up with many ventures fighting to create a foothold, on the other hand lack of funding options, too many mergers and acquisitions and change in senior level management is putting a question mark on the survival of these websites. Now, it would be interesting to see how the new venture will differentiate itself and be profitable.

[migliore-e-commerce]

Google Shopping Express e-Commerce Service To Go Head-to-Head With Amazon Prime?

Google loves a challenge. And it’s all set to diversify once again, this time by developing an Amazon Prime rival – Shopping Express. Here, copywriter Jack Adams examines whether the launch of Shopping Express could mark the start of a major push into e-Commerce for the search engine giant.

Futuristic glasses, new e-Commerce services – Google’s certainly been very busy. Source: Flickr

During the past few weeks, gadget aficionados have been foaming at the mouth at the prospect of pulling off the bespectacled look of ‘90s techno heroes Orbital.

Well, actually, that’s a bit of lie.

But anticipation has been simmering away over a pair of hi-tech glasses – Google’s latest vision of the future, simply entitled GLASS.

However, whilst Google GLASS has succeeded in getting people talking left, right and centre, the search engine giant has also been quietly slaving away over the development of another new, exciting and potentially more important product – Shopping Express.

Rumoured to be in the very early stages of development, according to Reuters, Shopping Express will enable small local businesses to sell their products to Google’s droves of searchers.

Nothing particularly ground breaking about that, right? And isn’t that what it already does by directing searchers to business’s sites via Product Listing Ads and PPC ads?

Well, yes, that’s true.

But with Shopping Express, Google looks all set to lay down the gauntlet to e-Commerce giant Amazon.

The product is expected to go head-to-head with Amazon’s Prime delivery service by enabling shoppers to place their orders and get them delivered on the same day.

Through the service Google will arrange for a courier to collect a customer’s order from a local store, and deliver it right to their front door – rather than dealing with it directly.

With testing on the service already underway, people are now questioning whether Google’s planning to make a fully-fledged leap into the vast e-Commerce pool.

We’re all familiar with the company’s dominance of the search engine market – for example, it’s got a 67% share of the US market, according to comScore’s figures for January.

Although that could come under threat in the future from Amazon. comScore figures, released in 2012, showed search queries on the site increased by 73 per cent, suggesting that consumers were going straight to Amazon to find products, rather than conducting research on Google first.

So surely now would be the perfect time to get working on an e-Commerce platform – an Amazon challenger?

And Google’s recent history displays that it’s more than prepared to rival other well-established services.

It’s attempted to wrestle away social media’s first place rosette away from Facebook with Google+ –albeit with mixed results – and offered an alternative to iTunes in the form of Music on Google Play.

Can we expect to be logging, en masse, into a marketplace run by Google in the future?

The analysts seem to think so, and it certainly sounds like a viable prospect.

Overtaking Amazon though?

That’s likely to be far more difficult, but if anyone’s up for such a significant challenge its Google.

[migliore-e-commerce]

IRCTC to enter e-commerce realm

 From food and online tickets at present, to books, footwear and mobile phones in future – the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) plans to spread its wings far and wide.

  “We are discussing with existing firms in the e-commerce space to thrash out the details. This will help us monetise our registered user base of over two crore,” IRCTC Managing Director R.K. Tandon told Business Line.

  The Railway Ministry’s arm, which may also start selling furnishings and electronics, will make sure that its online shopping plans do not affect online ticketing traffic, Tandon said.

  “Even now, our system capacity is free during the large part of the day, barring peak hours. And now that we will invest in further upgrading the IT infrastructure, we would like to increase asset utilisation to earn more revenue on the same costs,” he added.

  To enter the online retail space, IRCTC is following the white-label model, which basically means back-end jobs will be outsourced, while the front-end ones will be owned by IRCTC. This is the same model that it followed when it diversified into hotel booking and flight ticket booking services.

  Now, it has invited qualifying bids from companies in the e-commerce space for building and managing the platform.

  Broadly, the proposal is that IRCTC will pay the players different levels of commission based on the total value of sales achieved on the Web site. The commission will go down once sales value goes up.

  UPGRADE PLANS

  In a related move, IRCTC plans to spend Rs 90-100 crore to increase transaction capacity of its Web site, said Tandon.

  Taking note of the delays in booking train tickets online on IRCTC’s Web site, Railway Minister Pawan Bansal had announced that by this year-end, the capacity will be upgraded to support 72,000 tickets a minute, from the current level of 20,000 tickets a minute.

  The upgradation will also support 1.2 lakh simultaneous transactions, thrice the current capacity.

[migliore-e-commerce]

Bigtree Entertainment acquires Ticketgreen.com

Bigtree Entertainment, which runs the online ticket company BookMyShow.com, has acquired a Chennai-based entertainment ticketing portal, Ticketgreen.com, underlining the growing consolidation in the country's ecommerce sector.

This is the third buyout of an online commerce company by a larger rival this year as paucity of risk capital forces many young companies to seek exit options.

"When the winds are high all the boats squeal, it is only when winds drop you know which are good to sail," said Ashish Hemrajani, founder and chief executive officer of Bigtree Entertainment, who did not disclose the financial details of the transaction.

The deal will give Bigtree access to partnerships with over 100 regional cinemas that Ticket green has forged in the southern states where it sells nearly one lakh tickets per month. Around four billion movie tickets get sold in India every year.

"Growth in the multiplex space will in turn drive growth of on-line ticket booking companies," said Raja Lahiri, a partner at Grant Thornton, a consulting firm.

BookMyShow retails tickets for the latest movies, music concerts, plays, stand-up comic acts and major sporting events in the country. It has associations with over 350 cinemas and theatre venues such as Mumbai's Prithvi Theatre, India Habitat Centre in Delhi and Rangashankara in south Bangalore. A significant portion of its revenues come from managing non-movie events including Formula 1 and Indian Premier League. Last year the company received funding of 100 crore from early stage investor Accel Partners.

India's e-commerce industry is witnessing a spate of acquisitions as many smaller companies are unable to raise follow-on funding to sustain operations. There were 15 mergers and acquisitions in the sector in 2012, according to data from research firm Venture Intelligence.

[migliore-e-commerce]

IIM-A grads take e-commerce route to entrepreneurship

Amid a downing economy, e-commerce seems to be the flavour ofentrepreneurship for the class of 2013 at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).  All five students who spurned job offers from multinationals this year, are starting online ventures. The start-ups include a professional network for photographers, an online sampling and market research portal and an e-commerce venture for project equipment.  Punit G, who is graduating this year, will launch his portal for online sampling and market research with two batch-mates.  "The three of us had offers from large companies but we rejected those to get into entrepreneurship," said Punit, a veterinarian from Mumbai.  At present, the students are operating out of the Centre For Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship at IIM-A.  Even as e-commerce companies queued up at IIM-A this year, another student Venkat R, also decided to set up his own venture in the online sphere. Venkat launched a professional network for photographers to connect with each other.  Passionate about photography, Venkat's aim was to create a place where photographers could find opportunities.  "As there is no professional network exclusively for photographers, I zeroed in on the idea of setting up a networking site for such professionals. Whenever a photographer gets an assignment, we will get commission. We will also provide customised solutions to any issues that the photographers may face," said Venkat. The venture has 2,000 amateur and professional photographers on board within six months of its launch.  Another student from the class of 2013, Kunal Gupta, has also started an e-commerce venture to supply project equipment to engineering students.

[migliore-e-commerce]

80% e-commerce players on life support

There are more hidden skeletons in India's ecommerce story. Almost 80% of the venture capital backed e-commerce firms are on life support after failing to raise fresh funds, said investment bank Allegro Capital, in a recent report on the sector. In the last three years, 52 ecommerce start-ups raised $700 million in VC funding, but only 18 companies were able to attract any follow-on investments. The more alarming statistic is that just seven firms could raise a chunky late stage funding in a business playing on the 'last man standing' model, the report added. Allegro's analysis goes on to state that inventory-carrying multi-category retailers like Flipkart may require at least $200 million to get to profitability, while other niche e-tailers must burn about $80 million to report gross profits. Flipkart, which has raised about $250 million till now, is still burning cash and is not yet operationally profitable. "This is a challenging environment for e-commerce players to raise follow-on funding," said Prashanth Prakash, partner, Accel Partners , a profilic e-commerce investor. But he argued that the funding ecosystem in India was going through a phase known as "dumbbell formation" wherein there is a lot of interest from PE firms in the early stage and late stage periods. Forty-seven venture funds have backed the e-commerce game in the last three years, with 10 of them having invested in three or more firms. Eighteen of these funds have more than one ecommerce investment in their portfolio. Accel Partners and Tiger Global top the chart with 10 and eight investments respectively. IDG and Helion Venture Partners have five each; Norwest Venture Partners and SAIF have four each. "Investors need to brutally cull their portfolio and back one or two companies with necessary capital. Brave investors with deep pockets, infinite patience and global experience may create winners," Deepak Srinath and Aravind GR wrote in the report, arguing that most investors underestimated the capital requirements of the sector. The industry is getting close to the $1 billion mark in sales. It has notched up 20 million online unique visitors and 40 to 50 million online orders per year, mirroring where the China online shopping market was seven years ago, before a huge takeoff. However, current FDI rules and investigations against leading e-commerce engines for alleged violations have added to investor caution, the report said. The beating down of Chinese e-commerce stocks listed on US bourses may have also delayed the plans of companies like Flipkart to have public issues overseas, jamming a critical fund raising opportunity.

[migliore-e-commerce]

Online Sales Trends — Size Matters

[migliore-e-commerce]

E-Commerce Landscape & Opportunity in India

Session on E-Commerce Landscape & Opportunity in India taken by Vikram Sehgal, Vice President, Forrester Research at Internet Retail Expo 2013. In this session Vikram provided the overview and landscape of opportunity of ecommerce, he also discussed about the key fundamental drivers for ecommerce in India and why multichannel is important.

Key Points were :

Mobile internet will play a larger role in Market like India; fundamental behavior of what people will be transacting from Mobile will be different from what they are transacting on the ecommerce site. It will play important role not only as a transactional channel but also enabler of offline retail.

 Markets take a similar path when it comes to development of e-commerce not everyone moves in a same pace, few move much faster, largely on a behavioral perspective this is how it evolves.

Travel has been the key driver of ecommerce regardless of which market it look at be it India, Brazil, etc. And travel is the largest category in India, then consumer electronics and apparel.

Ecommerce in India is current about INR 75Bn; expected growth rate is definitely there. Consumer and electronic products makes the large chunk of where the market is.

 India’s percentage of total retail is extremely small, there is lot of opportunity, fragmented nature of retail in India is actually the opportunity for ecommerce because, if you think about why people shop online, price is important its lowest common denominator  beyond it it’s the  availability of product selection.

 Larger fundamental driver from the consumer perspective is income and tenure, Income essentially means the you have larger disposable income, you are more likely to spend, you are more technology savvy. Tenure is basically how long have you been online, more you would have been online you are more likely to do sophisticated activity, the more time and money you will be spending online.

When you think about ROI on your site operations, don’t just think of pure transactional rupees that move through that site, how much transaction you were able to move through your website but what overall impact it had on your business.  It’s a larger number but a truer metric to look at. “Ecommerce is not a Twenty Twenty it’s a Test Match.”

[migliore-e-commerce]

A Boost to Retail E-Commerce will Give a Boost to SMEs

With the Union budget 2013-14 round the corner, there are many expectations that the SME players have from the Finance Minister. What will really benefit the SMEs? Here Kiran Murthi, CEO of www.getitBazaar.com shares his views.

“As far as expectations are concerned, I hope the Budget this year brings in policies and taxation schemes which benefits the e-commerce sector and SMEs.

Online shopping is truly catching on in India. According to Assocham, estimated revenue from this sector is expected to be about $15 billion by 2015. There are over 100 million Internet users in India and this number is expected to cross 350 million by 2015, which will make India the second-largest Internet country in the world after China. A recent report by Google India indicates that online shopping in India registered an impressive growth of 128 percent in 2012 as compared to 40 percent growth in 2011. e-commerce revenues in India is expected to increase by more than five times by 2016, jumping from US$1.6 billion in 2012 to US$8.8 billion in 2016.

Implementation of the comprehensive GST will indeed prove to be an important tax reform for us. After the implementation of GST, we will be able to pass on the benefits in terms of savings on products to customers and that will promote growth in this sector.

Logistics is an integral part of any business, and e-commerce is no exception. For a lack of efficient and cheap logistics, the government should invest in infrastructure and enable easy, efficient, reliable connectivity within India. Better logistics is required for e-commerce businesses/ SMEs to flourish in Indian rural heartlands. The growth for these two entities (e-commerce and logistics) must be simultaneous.

A boost to retail e-commerce will give a boost to the SMEs. The biggest problem for the SME to sell all India is the inter-state transaction documentation that restricts e-commerce transactions for SME. Also simplified tax structure will breathe a fresh lease of life into the small and medium-scale sector.

Last but not the least, one of the major drivers for this growth will also be the strengthening of the Indian economy, leading to a higher disposable income in the hands of people who will then be more open to shopping on the internet. The other important factor will be stricter regulations on online transactions by the government, reducing frauds and resulting in trust building for the medium.”