Sunday, August 3, 2008

There Is More To E-stores Than Just Shopping!

In a bid to encourage the online shopping culture in India, I have been highlighting its importance as well as benefits to any regular shopper. Whether you are a ready-to-go shopper or someone who chooses shopping as a regular hangout option with friends, you need to know why the world around you is choosing the online format over its traditional counterpart.

In my last blog post, I mentioned to you about the incorporation of social networking into the shopping portals, to enhance the online buying experience. But there is more to these e-stores than just the number of products to choose from at a click of a button or making friends with shoppers. Today, e-stores are a collection of possibly everything and anything you need to know about a product, before and after its purchase.

Some of the many distinctive features of e-stores for the use of an avid shopper include:

- Expert product review sites
These sites serve as your shopping guide and offer opinions from experts. These sites are the review sites where there is an ordered collection of product and brand assessments. They compare products and identify the best for you.

- Consumer review sites
These sites offer real-world evaluations of a specific product. There are consumers or online shoppers who have actually purchased a particular item or have had enough online shopping experience to be shared with their fellow shoppers.

- Shopping bots:
These provide a detailed account of the available products across the e-commerce domain and provide price comparisons to the buyers for assisting them in finalizing the best deal for them

- Ratings sites
These are the ultimate sites for you to identify the best products in the online market and also rank your favorites for other shoppers. The rankings are given to the sellers based on consumer satisfaction.

- Browser Cookies
They aid the customers in avoiding filling out information every time they sign up on a website. They store your personal data for future use.

- Digital wallet:
It stores your purchasing information (including credit card numbers) and feeds it to online forms at your command.

Therefore, online shopping, unlike its offline version, is not all about fun and get-together. The idea of bringing the many facets of shopping and product knowledge together on a common platform is the basis of online shopping. The more serious and directional approach to the selection and purchase of an item is primarily accomplished through this medium which is far more compact and easier than shop - hopping.

2 comments:

k.ø.c.h.ü said...

Hey that was interesting!

Rana Sinha said...

Very interesting. It's very interesting to study how e-stores grow in India and what segment of the population take to it in large numbers.