The Great Online Shopping Festival is now open

Worldtechzone.Com

In the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday, when the clock struck 12, netizens woke up to one of the biggest online shopping jamborees in the country. With over 5 million potential shoppers already visiting the site gosf.in to register themselves, the 72-hour Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) from Google has 450 vendors this time, up from 250 last year and just 90 in 2012, when the festival was just for 24 hours.

Last year, about 2 million users visited the site and the merchants posted twice the growth on their daily average sales. This year, most partners are expecting three times the sales.

However, unlike the enthusiastic netizens, most websites woke up to this year’s GOSF late. While Jabong’s mobile app was updated and ready with GOSF discounts early on Wednesday morning, Amazon and Snapdeal reportedly woke up to the event a little later in the morning. However, Amazon and Snapdeal reportedly did not have GOSF on their main menu even after Myntra, now owned by Flipkart, interestingly had a very tepid discount of only 30% (for orders above Rs 1,599 – next to nothing in e-commerce terms) under the GOSF deals. In contrast, Myntra had a 50% off sale on Sunday.

This year, Google has a special section offering products at Rs 299 with free shipping and cash on delivery to attract first-time buyers, who comprised over 30% customers last year. Discounts may not be on the lower side this year, but are visible across fewer and select categories and brands.

Compared to last year, discounts have indeed come down for gadgets, a category that has picked up tremendously in online retail, said Nitin Mathur, co-founder, 91mobiles, an online gadget research and comparison site. “However, online retailers may be utilising discounting as a tool more to promote other emerging categories such as fashion and accessories (which are relatively newer categories for some of the online stores), and new distribution channels such as their mobile apps…” he added.

Discounts are just a medium to attract first-time shoppers, said Manu Agarwal, founder, Naaptol: “…The idea of Google is to educate people who haven’t experienced e-commerce as a shopping medium.”

On the first day of GOSF, on Tuesday, Jabong observed an extraordinary leap with its revenue rising four times compared to its sales on any regular day. “There has been a rise in revenue from mobile by at least six times compared to the last GOSF. Even the traffic from GOSF on the website has significantly risen by eight times as compared to last year,” said Praveen Sinha, founder and MD, Jabong.

This year, Jabong has opened its doors to some of the best offers from exclusive brands like River Island, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge, among others, Sinha added.

Meanwhile, ShopClues saw unprecedented sales and an increase in traffic by as much as 200%, just within the first 90 minutes of the festival launch. Sanjay Sethi, co-founder and CEO, ShopClues, said, “When the GOSF offers went live at 12 midnight, our site saw a 200% surge in traffic and close to 250% increase in sales within the first 90 minutes.

ShopClues had discounts going up to 85% on some of its top-selling products.

eBay India has special promotions and offers every day with customers having the opportunity to win an iPhone every 15 minutes and a Google Glass each day. Shivani Dhanda, head – marketing, eBay India, said: “This GOSF, eBay India customers will be able to access great deals and discounts across a wide range of products. We are offering special deals across brands and categories along with discounts on watches, cameras, TVs, laptops and home décor, among others. We are also offering consumers exclusive eBay merchandise including the iberry Auxus ONE smartphone and iberry RIST smartwatch.”

HomeShop18 is offering discounts of up to 80% with deliveries at no extra shipping cost, with its lowest product going for as little as R149. “In previous years of GOSF, we witnessed exceptional increase in traffic and sales on both the website as well as our mobile platform. This shopping festival has proved beneficial for us, recording a 3x increase in sales and 40% more traffic via the app… The categories that drive sales during the shopping festival are clothing, accessories and footwear, digital products, electronics and gadgets,” said Sundeep Malhotra, founder and CEO, HomeShop18.

For the second year in a row, Adlabs Entertainment is expecting online ticket sales to go up by 50-75% for Imagica and Aquamagica, its theme and water park, respectively, located at Khalapur off Mumbai-Pune Expressway.

At Adlabs, 20-30% of ticket sales continue to be from its website where customers pick and choose their choice of packages and offers.
As part of GOSF, Amazon India is doling out offers from across categories with a 10% cashback on HDFC Bank debit and credit cards (for purchases above R3,999). The e-commerce major is offering up to 70% off on home and kitchen products, books, movies, music and video games, up to 60% off in fashion and a flat 40% off on select products in toys and games. Infibeam, on the other hand, is giving out up to 45% off on mobiles, up to 50% off on tablets and up to 70% off on home theatres and home appliances, among others.

The action is also moving towards cashback and MobiKwik, a mobile wallet service provider, seems to be leading the way. As opposed to heavy discounting, cashback seems to be a better way of rewarding your customers this season, said Upasana Taku, co-founder, MobiKwik. “We are offering 20% cash backs on all leading e-commerce sites such as Snapdeal, eBay, Shopclues, HomeShop18, Naaptol, Infibeam, Dominos, MakeMyTrip, BookMyShow, Purplle, Pepperfry, AmericanSwan and FashionAndYou, among others, for payments made through the MobiKwik wallet. This is beyond the merchant offers for GOSF. Consumers stand to save money and make more purchases. We gain customer loyalty and increase awareness about our product,” added Taku.