Category: E-commerce

Top E-Commerce Websites in India

Top 7 E-Commerce Websites in India

Recent years have seen an exceptional evolution in the way India trades and shops. E-commerce is one of the rapidly growing sectors, stimulating an entire generation of entrepreneurs, large scale manufacturing of small and medium-sized enterprises. E-commerce has enabled helped reduce barriers and bring the manufacturer closer to the customer. The presence of a virtual store on e-commerce websites has helped millions of business flourish in India and has led to more employment opportunities as well.

Today, technology has advanced at a rapid pace and with the use of smart phones, the online shopping experience has become seamless for customers. With easy to use mobile apps with elaborate store catalogs, e-commerce has ushered new opportunities for both traders and consumers.

India is one of the largest markets of e-commerce players. With giants like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Myntra, new entrants like PayTm Mall, Shopclues, etc are also establishing a strong hold in the Indian market.

Top ecommerce websites

1. Amazon

Amazon is one of the biggest online stores with a global presence. It not only provides a variety of product choices but also provides a great user experience and splendid customer service. Besides putting prominence to personalization, Amazon also monitors user’s browsing and purchase patterns in order to provide them recommended products for future purchases. It operates in India as a marketplace rather than a retailer.

Amazon has started two new initiatives for sellers in India: the ‘Self Service Registration (SSR)’ and ‘Amazon Easy Ship’.

Amazon SSR allows sellers to self register in Amazon marketplace, irrespective of location and size of the catalog. It enables sellers to start selling within a day without any third party intervention. With Amazon Easy Ship, the seller has to pack the shipment and confirm to Amazon that they are ready to ship. Additionally, many premium IT companies offer tools and services to enhance the selling experience, helping sellers optimize their operations and reach a wider audience. Amazon Logistics ensures that the pack is delivered to the customers within two to three working days. With new features such as Amazon Prime, customers can receive delivery of products within 24 hours. By reducing the shipping time, Amazon keeps both retailers and customers happy and increases customer stickiness on the website.

Right from mobile phones, to fashion products, electrical appliances, books, and grocery, Amazon has become a one-stop shop for all consumer needs.

 

2. Flipkart

Flipkart is an Indian based e-commerce venture and over the years, it has garnered a lot of interest in the minds of Indian consumers. It has opened up the scope for Indian e-tail market in a tremendous way. It started out as an online bookstore and now it has a gamut of products ranging from: books, apparels, electronics, digital music, home care and beauty. Moreover, it has now become a mega marketplace.

Flipkart’s fundamental differentiator is its supply chain efficiency— definitive delivery of goods. It has been continuously developing and improving the customer experience. The website is easy to browse, hassle-free, and convenient.

Two of the most important reasons for Flipkart’s grand success are the discounts and the option of Cash- on- Delivery which makes consumers more confident in purchasing products. Flipkart has an amazing customer retention rate with 70% of repeat customers.

Apart from the shopping experience, Flipkart’s biggest online shopping festival – Big Billion Days is one of the most successful campaigns and it churns out millions of orders during that shopping season.

 

3. Jabong

Jabong came into the e-commerce market with a bang and created a revolution within 6 to 7 months of launch. Besides selling products on their own through inventories, Jabong is also an online marketplace for third-party sellers. They predominantly cater to apparel, footwear, jewelry, and accessories and catalog more than 50,000 products across 700 brands.

Jabong is known for its own logistics network that ensures fast delivery. If you are in a city like Delhi, you are bound to receive the product within 24 hours of order placement. Jabong is also trying to expand its international presence through its site ‘JabongWorld.com’. It ships Indian products to international customers.

One of Jabong’s uniqueness lies in its new idea of a fashion magazine— “The Juice”an interesting blend of fashion, people, trends and pop culture. The magazine has everything in it that readers would love to read in a fashion magazine. Jabong has also collaborated with films such as “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”, “Main Tera Hero”, and “Humpty Sharma ki Dulhaniya” to offer exclusive products inspired by the movie.

The various payment gateways offered by Jabong have made it convenient for consumers to order products from the website. In 2016, Jabong was acquired by Myntra.

 

4. Snapdeal

Snapdeal is a successful e-commerce portal catering to customer’s buying needs at a much wider aspect. It was established with a concept of making products available to the customers at a discounted rate through offers and Snapdeal coupons.

It gives you the best deals in a particular city in various service categories ranging from: restaurants, spas and salons, apparel, footwear, baby care, home and décor. It has adopted the marketplace business model. Snapdeal came up with a unique idea of permitting local vendors and manufacturers to publish their product catalog and sell it on the Snapdeal portal. This avoids expensive costs involved in building own inventory.

Snapdeal’s business model was awarded with mammoth funding to scale up their products, business and operations. It focuses on logistics and efficient delivery to customers.  It operates in such a fast pace that a new product is added in every 30 seconds.

 

5. Myntra

Myntra is one of the largest shopping e-tailers in fashion and lifestyle merchandise. It supplies a wide range of products from clothing to footwear and accessories. It focuses on bringing the most fashionable brands for its customers. In 2014, Myntra was acquired by Flipkart.

Myntra has created a niche in the territory of e-commerce and subtle trust from people. Additionally, from discounts to Cash-on-Delivery benefits, the Myntra success mantra belongs to its hybrid logistics model. It takes uttermost care of its supply chain management and employs delivery agents with high experience.

Myntra has also come up with a complete guide to your everyday fashion and latest style trends. The “MyntraLookGood” is a daily fix of style tips, beauty tricks, celeb fashion, and non-stop entertainment. The tie-ups with celebrities and events are an outstanding strategy by Myntra to represent that fashion is in its DNA. Myntra has many celebrity brands— Hrithik Roshan’s HRX, Salman Khan’s Being Human, Deepika Padukone’s All About You, and Farhan Akhtar’s MARD. They believe that Bollywood influences fashion and frequent tie-up with celebrities helps to bring customers closer to Myntra.

 

6. Shopclues

Shopclues is the latest addition to the top e-commerce websites in India. Unlike Amazon and Flipkart, Shopclues is a market place that focuses on unstructured categories of home, electrical, fashion, and daily utility items.  The mass market of shopclues comes from tier 2 and tier 3 cities and most of its business comes from smaller cities. Shopclues helps give brands from unstructured markets a voice of its own.

Shopclues has a comparatively larger merchant base. It focuses on small and medium sized traders located in smaller cities and helps them take their business online. With over 50 million visitors on its website, one of the major revenue generating categories has been the home and kitchen appliances category.

 

7. PayTm

PayTm is the second largest e-commerce platform in India and has also made its way to the list of unicorn startups. Primarily started as a mobile wallet, in 2016, PayTm entered the e-commerce industry with PayTm Mall. As the name suggests, it is an online market place for products ranging from electronics to daily consumer needs.

One of the attractive features of PayTm has been its cashback feature. Consumers are given a variety of discount coupons to chose from and also provide good savings on the purchase of goods. With close to 120 million buyers on the platform, PayTm Mall is finding new ways to enhance the buying experience. It is also collaborating with retail brick-and-motor stores and with use of its mobile app and QR codes, it takes the customer through an online shopping experience with attractive discounts.

Thus, India is a growing marketplace and e-commerce industries are bound to flourish. But with the right technology and design strategy, new entrants can have a competitive edge.

 

8. E-Commerce Content Creation With Dresma

 

As we initially talked about how technology has advanced in recent years, now it is easier for sellers to get high-quality product photos for their e-commerce storefront too!

Meet an eCommerce content creation platform – Dresma – that empowers the sellers with Generative AI to get professional-grade and personalized content for their brand. Likewise, python web development helps eCommerce sites modifying customer data and regulate and maintain it effectively.

Their mission? To make high quality content accessible and affordable to all.

 

Be it a website, a mobile app, or even building a market place software from scratch, GoodWorkLabs has helped clients in the retail, real estate, and fashion industry build powerful e-commerce applications for their business.

Have a business idea and want to discuss the best solutions for your e-commerce business? Reach out to us and our team will discuss further about your requirements. Email us at – contact@goodworklabs.com or call at +91- 9863077000

5 reasons that make Ruby on Rails an awesome programming language

Computer programming languages are quite the same as our spoken languages. There are several categories and each of these further includes logic based, object oriented, imperative or functional elements. However learning the second language in the same category is quite easier than shifting to a whole new category itself. In most cases however, learning that first language becomes difficult enough.

If you are in the programming and IT development field, you will have idea about Ruby on Rails to a certain extent. RoR is a full-stacked programming framework that integrates both front end and back end designing. It has been the reason why Twitter, Basecamp and 43Things are getting so much attention and scaling up seamlessly in line with their business growth. Even brands like eBay and Amazon are adopting RoR elements in their e-commerce projects for reasons such as versatility, user friendliness and high demand.

Ruby on Rails

In case you need to start on the path to a new programming language then its worth every minute of your time exploring Ruby on Rails. Here are the top 5 reasons why every programmer should learn Ruby on Rails.

1. Easy to learn / beginner friendly
The best thing about Ruby on Rails as a programming language is the cleanliness of code structure. Even a beginner would be able to start picking up the nuances early on. The interaction between front and back end is highly simplified wherein all the elements work in a perfect sync, making the experience enjoyable for the developer. While experienced programmers would be able to easily pick up RoR, it wouldn’t take a lot of time for beginners too. For a newbie, Ruby on Rails is the perfect language to start with.

2. Great for MVP
Ruby on Rails is a highly recommended framework for building prototyping web apps and minimum viable products (MVP). It is highly important for any tech startup to gain customer validation with proof. RoR will help in building quick prototypes and also roughly demonstrate the technical and project management capabilities of the startup within short period of time.

3. Cheap and dynamic
Learning RoR is relatively less expensive, with several free resources, boot camps and short term courses. All you need to invest is some time, depending on your experience level. What you gain is a reflective, dynamic and general purpose programming environment wherein you can lean on the “creative” with least frustration.

4. A dynamic community
Ruby on Rails has a great fan following worldwide. The language offers thousands on free online tutorials, tech help forums and FAQ sites like Stack Overflow. For someone looking to build a career in programming, RoR has helpful meet-up groups where members are bound to have some working solution to any particular RoR related query or doubt.

5. In demand
You not only get to learn a language that is easy but a language that is in high demand. As of now, RoR is the 13th most popular programming language and is experiencing incredible growth in all spheres. Not only among employers and web owners, but RoR is also becoming a commonplace in DevOps roles (Chef and Puppet). RoR supports complex web programming possibilities and is being used in all types of project sizes. It’s really an amazing experience for the developer.

Write in to us and let us know about your experience working on RoR.

 

Which is the best payment gateway for your e-commerce site?

You must have encountered multiple instances of swiping your card at a store to conclude your purchase. Now imagine this scenario in an online world. What changes here is that payment gateway replaces the credit card transaction setup. While the end user sees a seamless movement from shopping cart to the bank and back to the shopping site, what actually happens is, a series of complex actions that allow this seamless transition and successful payment made. This is enabled by payment gateways that bridge the gap between the customer, the merchant and the financial institution/ bank. All this while it also keeps a tab on the security of the extremely confidential credit card/ net banking information that passes through different channels.

Payment Gateway for e-commerce

With our experience in designing highly functional e-commerce solutions, today we present a few types of payment gateways and its workflow.

1. Hosted payment gateways – this takes the customer out of merchant site to payment service provider (PSP) site. Once the payment is done, the customer will be re-directed to the merchant site.

Pros –

a. Card and financial details are kept secure at PSP end

b. Merchant simply worries about core operations and leaves all security and integrity responsibilities to the PSP

c. Merchant logo and design can be added on PSP site for providing confidence to customer

Cons – An end-to-end experience is missing as the customer has to leave merchant site during the checkout.

Example sites – Paypal Standard, Setcom, Payza

2. Self-hosted payment gateways – Here the customer has to provide details on merchant site itself. The site then routes the data to PSP for further processing.

Pros – Total customization of the look and feel of the page for consistent user experience.

Cons – It is the merchant’s responsibility to maintain the security and confidentiality of the customer details. He will also need to maintain the PCI DSS protocols.

Example sites – Authorize.net ARP, Paypal Pro payment

3. API based non-hosted gateways – In this one, the merchant has full control over the payment process. Right from cart checkout, card authentication, payment details and payment confirmation, everything is carried out on merchant site itself

Pros –

a. The merchant has full control over the checkout process and this gives his customers more confidence to shop with complete peace of mind.

b. By using an API, the merchant can expand the coverage of the payment gateway to other devices such as smartphones and tablets

Cons – The merchant is solely responsible for the security of the transaction. He may have to invest in additional SSL certificates for enhanced security.

Example sites – Braintree, Authorize.net CIM, Stripe

4. Platform based payment gateway – This type of gateway provides a medium to sell goods online directly from their own server. When customer surfs online for a product it is done on the merchant site, but when it the transaction reaches checkout stage, it is re-directed to the payment gateway site.

Pros – Customer can view local language and currency, which in turn, improves overall customer experience

Cons – Offers limited customizability as it is a totally separate platform from the merchant site

Write in to us and leave us a word on which payment gateway do you employ in your e-commerce website.

Looking to Bring Down E-commerce Development Costs? Here’s How You Can Do It.

Businesses looking to set up an online shopping portal are often put off by the intimidation of escalating costs at the development stage. While e-commerce portal brings in remarkable results thanks to shifting customer preference and the deep penetration of mobile, the prospect of high development costs is a key reason why most e-commerce sites do not get past the ideating stage. By investing in the best WordPress hosting, e-commerce businesses can optimize performance, reduce unexpected expenses, and improve operational efficiency—all of which contribute to cutting overall development costs.

How to bring down E-commerce Development Cost

If you want to know which are the pain points as regards costs during e-commerce development and ways to circumvent them, then read on…

  1. Hosting – One of the critical elements of e-commerce portal is the space needed to store descriptions, databases, high res images, payment gateway integration, individual integrations and security programming. Many companies face disconnect between the products they have listed on the site versus how much space is required to store them. Most e-commerce stores start small, with a handful of product categories and few seller networks. This calls for smaller hosting space. However, hosting space should not remain constricted but rather be flexible as per the growth of the store. Such smart managing of hosting space will help save a ton on overall development costs.
  1. Strategic Planning before actual development – Both client and developers have been guilty of not putting in enough time and efforts at the planning stage simply to save some time. However the benefit of investing dedicated time into meticulous planning far outweighs the negatives.

As a good developer you would start off with a brief questionnaire to know more about the client and its target audience. Some of the key questions to be answered at the planning stage would include –

1.   Knowing about the customer (e.g.- whether B2B or B2C)?

2.   Knowing about the best way to attract them to the portal

3.   Pointers on heightened customer experience during online shopping

4.   Key add-ons/third party/individual integration to the site

5.   Handling scalability and growth in future

6.   Handling scope creeps or revisions to schedules and estimates

Answers to these will help to decide on an appropriate choice of platform and back-end before you commence with the actual coding. If this starting point seems overwhelming to you, it will be good to hire the e-services of a good consulting firm. The investment and time will definitely help in a streamlined e-commerce portal development process.

  1. Choose the right platform- Each shopping platform has its pros and cons. You need to be aware of what suits your project needs best and then decide on an appropriate platform in order to keep development costs low. For instance, Magneto is a good choice if you need thousands of products to be put up on the shopping portal. However it tends to be very heavy. On the other hand, Shopify provides a hosted platform that guarantees 99% up-time, complete data security and competent tech support.

While Shopify may take a bit more time to customize the storefront, OpenCart provides a lot of flexibility in modifying the look and feel of your digital store. Also when we consider the compatibility and pricing of plug-ins, the open source OpenCart platform offers plug-ins that is around 30-40% cheaper than official Woocommerce plugins. On the flip side however, people have had problems with OpenCart tech support.

Considering above factors will certainly help you keep both costs and time of development in check.

Ready to start building your next technology project?