WildBlueSkies - Trends and strategies in Digital Media » ecommerce

Online Holiday Spending Dips … But Not Everywhere

dhirender — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:27:27 +0000

Online spending during the 2008 holiday shopping season declined about 3 percent from last year, though Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Apple still came out ahead, according to comScore.
E-commerce sites took in approximately $25.5 billion between November 1 and December 23, down from $26.3 billion in 2007.
The drop was the first time comScore has reported negative growth for the holiday seasons since 2001.
Apple saw a 19 percent increase in the number of visitors to its Web site in December with 35 million. Amazon Web sites, meanwhile, grew 7 percent with 76.2 million visitors, while Wal-Mart.com visitors increased by 4 percent. Target saw a 1 percent decline with 46.8 million visitors overall.
eBay actually recorded the most traffic in December with about 85 million hits, but that was a 4 percent decline from the same period in 2007. Hewlett-Packard came in at number 13, but its 19.4 million recorded visitors was a 28 percent increase over last year.
Best Buy traffic remained the same, Circuit City saw a 28 percent decline, Dell dipped 17 percent, while Overstock.com also saw a 16 percent drop. [Via]

Indians Hitch Onto eShopping

dhirender — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:45:21 +0000

A piece of jewellery sold every 7 minutes; a coin or note every 16 minutes, a stamp every 19 minutes, apparel every 22 minutes and book every 27 minutes – and that’s India we’re talking about.
eBay estimates that a product is sold every minute in India – moreover, it is not software or other computer-related products that are catching the attention the most. It is jewellery that is the most sought and a piece of it is sold every seven minutes on eBay India. [Via]
If this is true, it says a lot about the maturity of the medium in India.

Photrade – Make Money From Your Photos

dhirender — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:04:22 +0000

Adding the additional layer of commerce to what sites like Flickr provide, is recently launched Photrade.com – a platform that allow photographers to “share, protect and make money” from their uploaded photographs.
Apart from revenues the photographer could generate when someone buys your photograph, an advertising system also allows the photographers to earn from the visitors who view their photographs. The interface is fantastic. As their site claims:

Photraders decide how, when, where and at what cost their photos are used online. We provide unprecedented protection for photos and offer a free photo marketplace where photographers can sell stock, prints and merchandise or use our Adcosystem where photographers get paid for every view of their photo, anywhere on the internet.

Get Ready For A Slew Of Online Retailers

dhirender — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:58:10 +0000

Online shopping is one of the largest contributor to the B2C e-commerce industry, estimated at Rs 5,500 crore for the year 2006-07 and expected to rise to Rs 7,000 crore by the end of 2007-08. Etailing stood at Rs 850 crore for 2006-07, contributing maximum to the online non-travel industry. It is expected to be Rs 1,105 crore by end 2007-08 says the Economic times.
Among the larger retailers which have an offline presence, the Future Group has been an early mover, but others such as Reliance Retail, RPG Cellcom, and Tata Woolworths are gearing up to launch their own online shopping portals. Even the smaller players such as Vishal Retail, Subhiksha and Spinach too are looking at e-tailing as the future revenue generator. Most of them however, are looking at lower pricing to get consumers on board.
According to a report by AMR, retailers in India and China are expected to hike their IT budget by 25% by 2010 – no doubt a chunk of this would go to setting up the online retailing platform.
Globally online shopping has become crucial to the organised retail business. For instance, UK-based Tesco earns $1.2 billion from its online business.
Whether the Indian retailers will be able to crack the online model remains to be seen.

100% Cash Back? Yes With A Catch

dhirender — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:21:49 +0000

In an effort to increase repeat purchases on its site, CafeGadgets has recently introduced a 100% cash back offer, on its first anniversary, which is applicable for all purchases made on the site.
Making a purchase entitles the consumer to a cash back voucher, with a validity of June 15, 2008, for the same amount as that of the purchase, which can be redeemed on CafeGadgets against the purchase of any other item on the website.
The catch as usual, lies in the small print. As the site claims:

Buy any item of Rs. X amount on cafegadgets. CG Cash-Back Voucher entitles the owner to a discount of Rs. X on a minimum value of Rs. 5X on next purchase.

When Gambling Goes Online

dhirender — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:56:46 +0000

The world wide web now boasts of an estimated 15,000 sports betting websites, including some 13,000 illegal ones, shuffling around a staggering 15 billion euros (23.6 billion dollars) a year, according to this article – a number that is leading to concerns about global corruption, money laundering and gambling addiction. The amount of money traded on a single website can surpass 100,000 euros for a match in the third division football in Romania, or even the first division of the Czech women’s league, and it is estimated that 85% of these websites have been created for the sole purpose of “washing away” dirty money. According to one estimate, French gamblers place sports bets worth more than 510 million euros on the Internet every year, of which, only around 12 million euros is believed to be legal (via the French National Lottery, the only authorised online sports betting operator in the country).
According to Declan Hill, a journalist and British expert on the problem, the amount of corruption in global sports has increased almost 100-fold in the past five years thanks to Internet-based gambling.

How Much Does The Internet Influence Our Purchases?

dhirender — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:12:07 +0000

Not all that much if you believe the latest research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. While the Internet is routinely used when making buying decisions, its influence wanes when compared to offline channels such as friends and sales personnel.
Of the 2,400 adults (which included 1,684 Internet users) surveyed, relatively few say online information had a major impact on the product choice they eventually made. Only 7% of music buyers, 10% of cell phone buyers, and 11% of those who bought or rented a home in the prior year say that online information had a major impact on their decision, and moreover, just about 22% of the music buyers and 12% of cell phone purchasers ultimately bought their product over the Internet.
“The Internet helps people eliminate irrelevant alternatives,” according to John Horrigan, Pew’s associate director. “The Internet may influence the choice modestly but has important consequences in getting better deals and in having a more focused search process along the way.”
Clearly, shopping portals need to emphasise on building trust.

Cash Cards Get Their Place In The Sun

dhirender — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 08:36:22 +0000

According to this article in the Business Standard, cash cards are increasingly being accepted as a mode of payment for online ticketing. For instance, in the last six months, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has seen reservations through cash cards increase by 1 per cent every month. The number of bookings through credit cards, on the other hand, is coming down by 1 per cent every month.
For instance, of the 2.2 million tickets booked this February by IRCTC, almost 600,000 tickets were booked through cash cards, accounting for 27% of the Rs. 221 crore revenue for February.
“IRCTC has tie-ups with close to 30 banks but the booking done by three cash card operators is the same as these banks. Penetration of cash cards is three times more than credit cards,” says Sanjay Aggarwal, general manager (operations), Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC).
Could one of the reasons be the low penetration of credit cards, or is it because cash cards are more of a cash business which does not leave any financial footprints of the customer? In this case, however, cash cards should be equally prominent for other forms of online payments.

KnickerPicker.com – The Shape Of Shopping To Come

dhirender — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:45:33 +0000

Now, here’s a site that is almost reminiscent of what used to be Boo.com. While people would tend to remember it as the site that burned through £100m in 18 months, it was also the site that used technology way before its time – be it in the pseudo-3D views of wares or the voluptuous Miss Boo sales avtaar which made the pages incredibly heavy, or in the global launch of the company which made currencies, payment, taxation and fulfillment an incredibly herculean task (TechCrunch has some images of the erstwhile site here).
KnickerPicker.com gets a few things right – the KnickerPicker Dressing Room, for one, where using video content and interactivity visitors can choose from three models vaguely representing small, medium and large-ish frames, dress the model in selected lingerie and have them do the catwalk on command. Visitors can then go to BeCheeky to actually purchase the article.
To be fair, broadband speeds, and technology has also contributed to making this a worthwhile experience, but this could very well define the shape of online clothes shopping to come.

Launched – Reverse Auction Site AtYourPrice.in

dhirender — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:48:22 +0000

Recently launched AtYourPrice.in aims to be an online travel marketplace where consumers can buy products and services at the price that they are willing to pay and vendors can dispose of unsold inventory at lower than the published price.
To begin with, airline tickets online are being provided, with the plan being to include other product/services such as hotel, holiday packages, car rentals and other travel services.
Priceline is probably the best successful example of this model – now to see if it works in India.