Nightlife. Every night, me and my wife finish up our chores, surround ourselves with bowls of snacks, connect the laptop with the TV and go shopping.
Online shopping is not a new idea in India. Times Shopping and Rediff Shopping have been offering this for a few years now. But it has become a practical idea now. Most of the shopping sites are funded today. They have the money, the set up and the understanding of the business. They are serious about their branding, quite a few spend crores on advertising and evoke the trust needed to shop on the basis of a few photographs.
Best of all, the sites are better. Almost all of them have thousands of products, pretty good photographs and easy to navigate modern websites. Check out one of the older ecommerce sites and this new one or this one and you can see why a stiff like me will so easily buy products that he can’t touch.
Anyway, there is no need for me to educate you about the joys of online shopping. Now, let’s get down in the trenches and get the hard work of comparing the sites done.
First up, Snapdeal.
Snapdeal.com –
Snapdeal started as a Groupon clone, a regular daily deal website. Gradually, it has evolved into a complete e-commerce store. I had bought a few deals before, so didn’t think too much about ordering a few products.
Payment:
I paid by credit card. I know it will come naturally to many to choose cash on delivery. But I was spending a nominal amount and wanted my reward points.
Order confirmation:
Once you place the order, you can jump to the my orders page and see the status for each of the products. The tracking works down to the last detail, tells you the status at every checkpoint.
Packaging:
Of all the sites I ordered from, Snapdeal had the most excessive packaging. Safe and secure, yes, but very excessive. Ten of the products I ordered the first time were sent in 3 different packages, all wrapped within a print out of the bill, bubble wrap and branding outer paper. If they can sort out the packaging and streamline the logistics, they will cut out a lot of wastage. If you think I am being a pain about the packaging, I am not the only one. Farhad Manjoo has a great post on how product packaging has improved.
