Online retail spreads its net

Here's no secret about selling online. It's a simple three-step formula: lure more users to your website, hook them on to your site and see profits soar. It's all about being able to drive more traffic by creating better user experience. Then when these new users finally show up, you retain their interest and finally convert their interest into a sale.

But how do you get the traffic in the first place?

Interestingly, online retailers are looking beyond traditional online advertising methods like search engines, banner ads and email marketing to lure online consumers. Many online entrepreneurs these days are finding gold elsewhere—offline marketing is what's helping them boost their online sales!

Real world doorway to online shop
If you happened to notice the huddle around this tiny kiosk right in front of Big Bazaar at Lower Parel, Mumbai on January 26 this year, you'd know exactly what we are talking about. This was one of the first few offline experiments that Future Bazaar, the online arm of the Future Group, tried. And it was a runaway success.

What they did was set up tiny kiosks in some key areas in various towns including Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. These kiosks had catalogues of the merchandise that sell on their website. One had to simply walk into the kiosk, look at these catalogues and approach the sales people to place an order. These sales people in turn would log on to the Future Bazaar site and place an order for the items which would be delivered to the customer at home.

What worked with the kiosks is the fact that although the sale was happening online, the consumer never had to log on to the web. This made them more comfortable while placing an online order.

Although these kiosks were temporary initiatives, there is no denying their success. A normal retail outlet such as Big Bazaar has an annualised sale ratio of Rs 8,000 per square foot, while on sale days their annualised sale ratio can touch Rs 20,000 - Rs 25,000 per square foot. "But the kiosk did about 20 times more sales per unit of area as compared to the sale a normal retail outlet does even on sale days!" says Sankarson Banerjee, CEO Future Bazaar.

Thanks to this success, Future Group is planning to make these kiosks a permanent fixture at various locations in suburbs of metros and tire-2 cities.

Wooing customers from smaller cities
What prompted Future Bazaar to try this experiment? There are many facets to this, say analysts. The biggest factor is about location. As with brick-and-mortar retail, finding the right location is the most important factor for online sale too. Metros are important of course, but the real test comes when you are trying to attract non-metro customers. These customers are neither as tech-savvy as their metro counterparts nor do they have easy access to the internet.

Take for instance a city like Asansol which is a three hour drive away from Kolkata. Here the population is rich enough to be able to buy expensive brands, but they don't want to drive all the way to Kolkata to buy it. Nor are they comfortable about logging on to the internet on their own to buy products. This is the kind of population these offline marketing plans target. And these strategically placed kiosks do exactly this.

"Interestingly these kiosks helped us attract a very different kind of customer," says Banerjee. "For instance, a much larger percentage of women came to the kiosk than come online. We also saw people from different walks of life—from senior professionals to daily wage earners—wanting to take advantage of the offers available through this format," he adds.

Ironically, these offline initiatives have been very successful in the metros too. Future Bazaar's experiment at the Lower Parel Big Bazaar for instance, saw large number of customers who had just finished shopping in the store come and pick up more products at the kiosk. "This is because the same customer will buy different things at different times inside a Big Bazaar and for home delivery," said Banerjee

Partners in the game
Players like eBay have given a slightly different twist to the kiosk strategy. They are tapping internet cafes around India.

"We have partnered with Reliance Web World in 100 Web Worlds in 16 cities with plans of scaling up this quarter to 140 Web Worlds in 24 cities," says Rathin Lahiri, CMO, eBay India.

It works almost similar to the kiosks, the only difference being that the consumer goes to an internet cafe instead, where the cafe owner handholds her though the entire process of buying online.

There is no denying the fact that even today, the most widely used window to the internet is still cyber cafes. According to IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India) 24% of India's 50 million-odd internet users still accesses the net via pay-and-surf cyber cafes. So it makes superb business sense to have these cafe owners bring in newbies to your website. The strategy has worked for eBay India at least.

"Reliance Web Worlds were among our top three new user acquisition channels for the year,” says Lahiri.

Campaigning for more
Then of course there is the good old print media that online players are reaping benefits from that. Like the Indiatimes ad campaign called 'Readers offers'. Here, Indiatimes would select a product each day and place print ads with a special price in frontline publications such as TOI or the Mumbai Mirror. These offers would also run parallel on the Indiatimes site (www.indiatimes.com).

"The response so far has been brilliant. With this we managed to capture the entire readership of the print dailies which runs into lakhs of Indians," said an Indiatimes spokesperson.

Celebrity charm
Then of course there is the old trick of using celebrities to charm users into buying your product. eBay India has been running campaigns like 'Green House' that were heavily publicised in multiple channels such as radio and print ads. The campaign spoke about sports anchor Mandira Bedi decorating her house in Bandra with items bought only from the eBay India site. This worked wonders for the site, as people would log in to buy just the same products as Bedi. The number of hits soared for sections such as home décor and furnishings.

The same went for the apparel section which now ranks among the top accessed sections on eBay thanks to the 'Style Diva' campaign. This saw thousands of users voting for Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra or Bipasha Basu as their best dressed style icon.

Source: TimesofIndia