Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

HealthKart, gurgaon based online retailer has raised $5M from Sequoia Capital and Omidyar Network as part of series B round.  In April 2011 HealthKart had raised $1M from Kae Capital and Sequoia Capital.

Primarily the investments will be utilized in strengthening the product portfolio, supply chain system and good chunk of investments will be deployed in marketing.

Healthkart, is founded by two IIT-D graduates – Prashant Tandon and Sameer Maheshwari. They have able to bring in some talented entrepreneurs in their core team, for instance Animesh Jain is head of Online Marketing & Product, Animesh was CEO and Cofounder of iTasveer.

Healthkart which began as online health store has expanded its product portfolio, now it sells baby care, cosmetic products as well.

Lets have a look at their monthly traction:

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	–	150K
Unique visitors (users)	–	69K
Page views	–	1M
Total visits	–	150K
Avg time on site	–	8:00

-Hitesh, vcBytes

a2zbaby, a Mumbai based startup is a new e-commerce player in the baby care product vertical. a2zbaby aims to provide an e-commerce storefront where parents can find and discover products for their baby and buy it at will.

a2zbaby offers, chemical safe products, considering the safety and development of the child at each stage. a2zbaby delivers wide range from diapers to toys, car seats to cozy bouncers, food maker to laundry detergent and specialty child care products to designer cribs.

a2zbaby is founded by Premanshu Singh (IIM-A alumnus) and Kapil Chawla (MDI Gurgaon Alumnus). Premanshu has rich experience and worked in ITC, J&J and Webaroo Technologies while Kapil has worked with Infosys and Webaroo. Since they being the parents of new born babies they felt the need of an online store where user can find different brands under one place.

a2zbaby has more than 2500 SKU’s, across more than 25 brands, on offer now. Parents can visit the portal, explore products, talk to a product expert and buy it online. a2z doesn’t levy and shipping charges, Cash On delivery is available for orders above 999, provides 24*7 customer support and delivery time varies from 3-7 days depending on the user location.

a2zBaby, is very fairly simple to use. They have well planned page layout with neat categorization. Checkout is very easy and simple and works like a breeze.

a2zBaby directly competes with Hushbabies, Babyoye, FirstCry.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

India’s largest and most trusted online retailer Infibeam has succumbed to daily deal phenomenon and  has launched “Infibeam Magicbox” – a section on the site with a unique product to be put on sale every Midnight. The product will be priced extremely attractively for customers.

Magic Box products would carry heavy discounts from their list prices but would be limited in stock. For all those who miss out on the Magic Box deal, they can request Infibeam to inform them as soon as they get available next. This initiative is bound to enthrall shoppers. Also, for shoppers that have missed out on Magic Box products, Infibeam offers Hot deals on similar products; with attractive discounts.

Infibeam has always offered lowest prices on most products and Infibeam Magic Box will be a major highlight.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Booksvilla is a startup which is joining the crowded online bookstore space. Booksvilla is founded by Chirag Rathod and Rohan Pimparkar, both students of Entrepreneurship Development Centre at Mudra Institute Communications. Both are voracious readers and very passionate about books which propelled them to develop an ecommerce site on books which will improve browsing and shopping experience.

Booksvilla has put up books 90+ categories ranging from acting to tarot, search feature is implemented well. Though prices are not very competitive when compared to flipkart.

Besides selling new books Booksvilla offers a unique, first-of-its-kind online book exchange program through its portal. The website enables its users to put up a list of books they own and also put up a wish list of books they would like to read and thus facilitates a barter system amongst its users by registering online.

After a good deal of research they realized that there was no such platform for online exchange of books and started working on this idea which became an entrepreneurial reality after putting in a lot of hard work for over a year. Cost is one of the critical factor for Indian consumers when it comes to buying any commodity, it also solidified their decision for exchange platform.

This program will indirectly also reduce piracy since the program focuses on exchanging original copies of the books.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Sequoia Capital India has invested $8M in Fashionandyou, a flash sale and invitation only shopping site. Fashionandyou is 1 year old startup founded by Pearl Uppal(ex Yahoo director sales) and Harish Bahl of Smile Interactive (Tyroo, Zoomtra, Quasar media). FashionandYou offers its registered users deals from designers at significant discounts, through limited time sales

FashionandYou will infuse the funds in their technology, supply chain and CRM. The runaway success for FashionandYou is providing its users premium brands in perfumes, clothing line, apparels, watches, accessories, jewelry category at 40-70% discount. The only demerit is their slow delivery process, they have not been able to fasten it and generally it takes 3-4 weeks to receive the shipment. With competition picking up in this space and investments coming in they should be able to focus on speedy delivery.

Lets take a look at FashionandYou monthly traction-:

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	–	420K
Unique visitors (users)	–	420K
Page views	–	5.5M
Total visits	–	830K
Avg visits per visitor	–	2
Avg time on site	–	9:10

99labels.com, Exclusively.in(which recently raised $2.8M from Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners) and Bagittoday.com are main competitors for FashionandYou.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Data can be pretty overwhelming when you have thousands of entries. To get a quick insight Visualization tool really helps -

Wordle

Wordle allows you to fetch a visual representation of that text on the screen. This is very useful for getting an overall view of your keywords. My blog returns the following visualization.

I have written about e-commerce, that word doesn’t appear! i need to focus on my keyword selection and usage. I need to pay attention to why the word “also” is so big.

Heat Maps

Heat maps is a smart tool which allows you to look at your important pages without having to scour rows of data on your top content. They also provide much-needed information on what people are doing relative to the page size, length and placement of items, which data cannot do alone.

Its highly recommended that you run heat maps on important pages like check-out pages, product pages, search pages. This will give you quick, useful information on whether people seem to be glossing over vital information or ignoring key functionality.

You need to ask yourself some Questions -

• Whether users are able to find “Add to Cart” or “Proceed to pay” easily
• if users are not navigating as per product design?
• if spacing is inappropriate that no one is noticing?

I found CLickdensity a very useful heat maps tool.

Website Overlay Tool

This feature in Google Analytics overlays percentages, conversion rates and other usable statistics on pages to tell you what users have done and clicked on different pages. It allows you to see how people are navigating the website. Did 20% of visitors go to the next most important page after this one?

Scrutinizer

End user really tests your system well and their feedback and insights can be highly useful to plug in any gaps. But its not feasible every time to get a real user for testing, user testing has no true substitute, but a few tools can help:

Scrutinizer shows you slowly how people may be viewing your website. It applies a filter over top the website, spotlighting the area where your mouse is pointing at. I don’t know how it works it would really show usability.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

If you running an e-commerce portal and would like to leverage on existing users by getting repeat orders, the essence is to treat them well after they placed their initial order then only there is high probability of repeat purchases.

Maximize Cross Sell opportunities - Cross selling is the strategy of pushing new products to current customers based on their past purchases. Cross selling is achieved by including in your confirmation email other items they may like, as well as mailers included when the product is sent.

The essence of any successful cross-selling strategy is recommending the right product at the right time. To do this, you must have information on the purchase history of the customer and product relationships. Cross-sell items in similar price points, or higher priced items

Incentive customers to buy again – Always include coupons with the package. Customers who have just brought from you are your best prospects to come back and buy again.

Consider product and money return policy - Having a money back return policy shows customers that you stand by your product and increases their confidence in buying from you. It also shows that you care about the satisfaction of your customer. Specify clearly how the customers should handle the process of returning the item, and when and how they can actually expect to get their money back. However, use this feature only if you can back it up and you are indeed willing to return their money back.

Unless you are selling questionable product, few people will actually take you up on the offer.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

If you have a fetish for military adventure gears and merchandise and not been able to find in the stores, here is the good news for you, OlivePlanet will take care of this need. Olive is an e-commerce portal that sells only these premuim military merchandise and gears.

Products are categorized quite neatly under various categories like – Apparel, footwear, electronics, camping etc, user can browse the entire product lists by clicking on desired product category. User can derive detailed information of the product on clicking it in product listing page.

Search functionality isn’t that great, it could have been implemented in much better way. For simplicity Oliveplanet should implement a generic search instead of categorized search, at present each product is mapped to a category. If a user searches for ‘Torch’ under electronics there will be zero result, it will give result if ‘Lighting’ category is selected while searching.

One distinct feature Olive planet has adopted is variable pricing in shipping depending on courier service unlike majority of e-commerce stores which charges flat fee. User needs to specify the pincode and then he can generate multiple shipping cost. Great feature and really suits the need of a user.

Do checkout OlivePlanet and share your feedback.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Right traffic is the key for driving factor for high conversion rate. You can follow some of the underlying principles to get the right traffic -

Identify your USP – USP i.e unique selling proposition should state clearly what products you are offering to shoppers and how its different from competitor. Setting USP clearly can turn into a source of competitive advantage. For instance if you are selling footwear make sure you emphasize it and make it clear in all your marketing campaigns.

Advertise Rightly – If you are advertising your website, your priority should be to use advertising copy specific to your offering. Using broad terms may drive more visitors to your website that have no intention to purchase, resulting in a decrease in conversion rate. For instance you would like to sell Tour packages for Havelock in Andaman Islands but you bought keyword for “Andaman tour” chances are you will attract visitors interested in Andaman package rather than Havelock.

Generate good visibility and reviews in shopping comparison sites - Get your product listed in shopping comparison sites, Many Web users rely on shopping comparison sites to find the best-value products that are most suitable to their needs and requirements. They like to read the product reviews specified by other users and then decide on purchasing. You need to have a dedicated resource managing this task in shopping comparison and review sites. Naaptol, Tolmol, compareindia are popular shopping comparison sites in India.

Clear Landing Pages – If you are running marketing campaigns such as emails or PPC advertising, your landing page should be designed to sell your products and nothing else. The page should only have one purpose: to sell. Give the visitor the page that they want complete with product description, price and picture.

Webpage Performance – Users are quite put off if webpages takes considerable time to load and chances are quite minimal they would come back again. The faster your website, the higher the chances of engaging the visitor quickly.

Analyse your traffic - Your web metrics can give you clues as to how visitors are using your website, and what areas can be improved to help improve your sales conversion. Web analysis tools can help you analyze customer behavior and improve your site’s business success. Google Analytics can provide revenue based metrics with customer behavior. For example, companies can use techniques such as funnel-based analysis, in which they compare drop-off rates with lost revenue. Check the top exit pages and understand why people are leaving your website. Or why they are abandoning their shopping carts. Analyze your statistics at the product level.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

What is the key attribute behind the success of any e-commerce portal? It is trust and credibility your e-commerce portal needs to instill in the shopper and make them purchase products. Its easier said than done, it takes time to build the trust but good new is its achievable. You may follow the underlying guidelines

Show case you are in real business – Shoppers are not alarmed or scared while shopping at big name sites like Amazon, Infibeam, flipkart because they are familiar with these brand names. Shoppers believe in them and are assured product will arrive in time and in the quality they expect. If you are a new player in ecommerce space add – About Us section, contact number and email address, Contact address can also be added to boost customer confidence.

Hand hold your first time visitors – Remember 1st impression is last impression, not easy to wipe out. So make sure you don’t lose out on 1st time visitors, chances are hard to get them back in your website. Create enough tools, videos, tutorials so that transaction is seamless.

Provide Success Stories – Success stories always work, ask your initial happy customer to write the testimonial on your product quality and services actually deliver what you promise. Ensure that you use real customer testimonials with their photos.

Provide Safe Environment - Make sure shoppers transactions are safe, To achieve this Use SSL encryption, Use Thwate or HackerSafe services and prominently display their logo. Shoppers are always concerned of their safety and this concern amplifies while transacting in a new e-commerce portal.

State return policy clearly - Be fair and upfront while stating your return policy. One of the most common barriers to buying on the Web is the difficulty in returning items. Your return policies should include how the customer can return the item and what they need to know if they are returning the item. BigshoeBazaar return policy is simply amazing and its contributing immensely to their business.

Be Prompt - Be quick while responding to customers email, Customers who have mailed and shown keen interest in your product are most likely to buy the product if they are handled properly. Respond to these emailed queries fast. Customers appreciate lightning fast turnaround time and personalized responses.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com