Gearing up for the great festive rush for the season? Done your homework and ready with a great inventory and deals for your target online buyers? All set to lure your customers and provide them the best products and services this festive season? Looking forward with fingers crossed to the best sales season of the year!
A resounding “YES” is your answer.
Are you updated with the latest trends that can bring online buyers flocking to your store?
Umm... well not very sure.
How about some expert tips to sales of your online store? Would you like to have some insight and trends from the latest festive sales of leading online marketplaces in India?
Why not!
StoreHippo experts aim to keep our clients updated with the latest news and industry trends. To help you make an informed and better plan for the success of your online business, we bring a complete analysis of the trends that dominated the festive sales at the big marketplaces in India.
Let’s have a look at the customer behavior this season,
Table of Contents
1. Tier 2 and 3 cities embrace Online Shopping
Indians are opening up to e-commerce like never before. The recent festive offers on online marketplaces saw a huge increase in customers from Tier 2 and 3 Indian cities.
“Online shopping “was the most searched for term in far flung Indian cities and towns across the length and breadth of the nation. This list includes cities and towns of the far off states and union territories including Sikkim, Mizoram, Meghalaya, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Online marketplace bigwigs like Amazon, SnapDeal reported a 5x to 20x growth in traffic from Tier 2 and 3 geographies. Customer acquisition at Amazon saw massive growth with 70% of new users coming from these cities. Sales from Tier 2 and 3 geographies have started registered an impressive growth all thanks to logistics solution for ecommerce.
2. Small ticket items catching up
As famously replied by Amit Agarwal, boss of Amazon, India; “Churan and Hing” or the small ticket everyday items also saw a remarkable growth during the great sales. This indicates a great shift in the Indian online buyers’ mindset, who till last year focused mainly on electronics, lifestyle and large appliances.
Indian households which have till now purchased their grocery and everyday household items from the “nukkarwali shop” are opening up to online grocery shopping being delivered at their doorstep. Convenience provided by online shopping is catching up big time in India.
3. Services make a debut
Indian e-commerce has been predominantly about sales of products. But, this season saw a major shift with huge demand for service based offerings. Snapdeal partnered with various service providers for travel, food, home services, entertainment and other services which were received very well by the target audience.
Home cleaning and movie ticket booking services saw the maximum traffic in the online services sale. Indian e-commerce Festive sales are a clear indicator that the Indian ecommerce market has tremendous potential for growth and the players need to look beyond traditional ecommerce.
4. Surge in Mobile and App traffic
We all know that mobile commerce has catching up really fast and has already outpaced the growth of e commerce with a 3:1 ratio. As of now 36% of online traffic for major retail, ecommerce and travel companies in India, comes from mobile websites and apps generating 32% overall sales.
The big billion days sales further consolidated these figures with all the major players witnessing a huge surge in mobile and apps traffic and sales. Amazon saw 80% of sale’s traffic from mobile with a 7x increase mobile channel orders (as compared to last year). Other major players also saw a significant increase in mobile traffic as well as sales.
5. Increase in Online Payments
Online payments are slowly but steadily catching up in Indian market. With many banks and payment wallets offering cashback, additional discounts, no-cost EMI the percentage of online payments has gone up remarkably.
Many value added services like faster and free shipping have also lured customers to online payments. COD payments have gone down substantially this year. Cashless transactions have picked up and the use of online payment gateways for e commerce success is here to stay.
6. Fewer Discounts
Due to the latest regulations online multiseller marketplaces can no longer give the deep discounts they managed earlier. Deep discounts were the biggest allure of festive sales until the last season. Marketplaces used to offer discounts below the minimum operational prices to pull in larger traffic.
But this year only private labels were able to pull of such discounts. Brands did offer good deals but they could not give offer the huge savings to end customer as was the norm earlier.
7. Sellers and Customers Multiply manifold
Sellers from newer geographies lined up to make it big at the Indian E-commerce Festive sales. Over 10,000 sellers had their biggest sales ever in this period. Online sellers from 824 new pin codes received orders during the sale.
Conclusion
The stupendous performance of latest festive sales has proven beyond doubt that the new age Indian consumer has embraced online shopping like never before-commerce has provided the much needed answer for the demands of the Indian consumers and has empowered them by making products and services accessible at their doorstep.
Keep watching our blog section as StoreHippo advance e commerce platform experts bring more reports and latest e commerce trends for you.
Have your own take on the latest sales and other trends? Leave a comment below and we would be glad to include it in our upcoming posts.
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