Trial in e-retail

In my earlier article on product trials, I briefly touched upon how product trials happen in the online world. This is something I'm really interested, especially in the case of e-retail and personal goods such as clothing, jewelry and perfumes.

Consumers would always choose to try out these personal items before they make a purchase. Apparel brands and retailers satisfy this expectation by providing trial rooms with full length mirrors in their retail outlets. Jewelers also help consumers to try out their varied designs before a purchase. In the case of perfumes, one actually experiences the fragrance and the feel when the customer care executive sprays the specific brand of perfume on your wrist.

Clearly, the different dimensions of experiential marketing come into play while we decide on these personal products in a physical store. Many e-retailers have been trying to recreate a similar experience while you shop online.

Appealing to the sense of sight, most of these e-commerce stores display the product offerings in bright and eye-catching pictures which make them look very appealing to consumers.

To experience the physical touch and feel of the product at your homes, many of them offer a try and return policy. Myntra and Jabong provide a 30 day return/exchange policy which help consumers to try out the offerings (clothes, shoes etc) at their homes and can exchange (if it is a size mismatch) or return the product.

Yebhi has recently launched the "Try-n-Buy" option where consumers can first try the product and if they like it, they can purchase it using cash-on-delivery. 

Their marketing efforts are focused around the same theme, with their latest TV ad campaigns emphasizing the trial-ability of the products.

Apart from trial-at-home, e-retailers have also started to provide virtual trial options. Zovi has a virtual trial room feature named Zovi Eye, through which consumers can virtually try any outfit using their webcam. 

There are also platforms available such as Imaginate's TRIALAR and Zugara's webcamsocialshopper which e-commerce stores can leverage to provide virtual trial benefits to consumers. If consumers are concerned over privacy issues, then such virtual trial feature will face resistance. Even if the resistance is lower, the bandwidth related issues will prevent wider adoption of such feature.

Innovative ways by which e-commerce stores can help consumers to try out personal products BEFORE making a purchase decision can be a sure shot differentiating factor. Return/exchange policies are good but because of the logistics and upfront payment, consumers feel the perceived risk and may not want to proceed further.

I was thinking of ways by which virtual trial can be implemented without privacy concerns. Instead of asking the consumer to allow access to his/her webcam, he/she can be asked a set of parameters to describe himself/herself. The parameters could be based on appearance, size and age. Based on these parameters, an appropriate mannequin can be used to wear the outfit. This would actually help the consumer to visualize how he/she would actually look rather than a perfect skinny model wearing the same outfit. Fitiquette's offering is similar to this idea.

E-commerce firms can also use the help of fashion designers to match right parameters with possible outfit options and can recommend mix-and-match combinations during virtual trial.

It would be interesting to see how the story unfolds in the next few years in the e-retailing scene in India, with a combination of the right technology, working around the bandwidth related constraints and helping consumers to experience their choice of clothing before they make a purchase.

Exploring the mobile app landscape

The recent trend of burgeoning mobile apps has piqued my interest in the last few weeks. Though I'm late into the smartphone segment as a consumer, it's quite interesting to observe the market dynamics, especially in India.

First, a few statistics that might be of interest:

   * 70% of India's population has mobile phones
   * According to the latest Mary Meeker's Internet trends report, the smartphones user base is just around 4% of overall mobile phone users. In China, the smartphone user base is around 24% and globally, this segment is around 17%.
   * Though the previous data point may not be encouraging, the smartphone subscriber base in India has grown by 52% in 2012 as compared to 2011
   * Only 12% of India's population are Internet users
   * Mobile Internet usage has surpassed desktop Internet usage in May 2012

From a demand perspective, the smartphone user base is growing and as a result, the need for innovative and useful applications is also on the rise. From the supply side, a lot of action is already happening in the mobile application development space. Android's marketplace Google Play has around 675,000 apps and Apple's app store has more than 700,000 apps available for download.

This supply-demand situation poses quite a few questions and challenges:

  1. Do users get what they want?
  2. Are users aware how they can leverage the apps that are available in the marketplaces?
  3. Are app developers able to market their idea/app to their target segment in an affordable way?

The first 2 questions are from the consumers' point of view. There is a problem of app discovery that has to be solved. Sifting through the loads of apps that are available in the marketplace and finding the one that you want might seem like a horrendous task.

These two statements that I came across summarizes the problem clearly:

From cnet
"both consumers and application retailers need to figure out a better way to surface the best content and weed out the useless stuff."

From Tim Bray's blog
"there are nuggets of gold among all the dross, things that would enrich buyers’ lives and developers’ wallets if they could only get noticed. "

Will an app search engine solve this problem? There are a few such mobile app search tools that are available such as quixey, appsfire and uquery
Will a business model similar to that of Google search evolve in this case? Sponsored apps similar to SEM? Mobile app optimization similar to SEO?

The third question is from the developers' point of view - the problem of app distribution. Presently, most of the smartphone users choose an app based on editor picks in their respective marketplaces, top downloads/ratings or based on third party reviews.

For a new developer building a niche mobile app, the only way to get the first few downloads is to take the viral route and market it through his/her social circle. Word-of-Mouth has been the main source through which consumers share their favorite apps with friends/family. In most of the social apps (Instagram for instance), the virality is built into the product. The most popular categories of mobile apps fall under games, music, social networking and productivity. The app development teams are incorporating collaboration, sharing, interaction and other gamification aspects into the apps to spread the word and thereby, increase the visibility for their respective apps.

I plan to explore further on the app distribution aspect which is the crucial element in app discovery from a consumers' point of view. This seems like an interesting and challenging problem. I'll continue to share my thoughts and learnings as I read up further on the overall landscape. Meanwhile, feel free to share your comments or thoughts on the whole mobile app eco-system.

Paradigm shift in learning

The last decade has seen a tremendous shift in the way we learn, just about anything. I remember vividly during my Engineering days (not so long ago) when learning meant picking up a text book or a reference book, sit down with a pencil/marker and read. There wasn't much collaboration, interaction or discussion during or after class hours. It was a one-way source of communication from the lecturer to the student. Internet was still at a nascent stage and neither accessible nor affordable (browsing centers were few and used to charge anywhere between 30-50 Rs per hour).

As I look at the way things have changed for the better, I feel inspired, excited and at the same time, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff one can learn in a lifetime. Being in the technology sector, I spent the initial years of my career, googling for tutorials and learning programming languages along with the skills needed at my workplace related to databases and data warehousing. It was still mostly text based where you read online instead of a book. But there was one distinct advantage. Given the need for practice when it comes to programming, you can immediately fire up a terminal/text editor, try out problems and code right there. Learning became much more involved because of this flexibility.

The next shift was interaction through various tech forums where one can post questions/doubts and someone would voluntarily help out from somewhere in the world. At one point of time, searching through such forums is sufficient to get answers to just about any queries.

Then came the videos and podcasts where demonstrations and structured sharing of views/theories enables anyone interested to pick up a new skill. The combination of visual and auditory learning has enhanced the overall experience.

Today, there is a proliferation of numerous learning platforms - Khan Academy, Code Academy, SkillShare, MIT open courseware, Coursera to name a few. And there are audio books, TED talks, e-books and much more. All one needs is commitment and passion towards continuous learning.

I'm a firm believer of the thought "Learning shouldn't stop with education. It should continue till you are around". This whole paradigm shift in the learning opportunities is exciting and it would be interesting to observe how my daughter goes about the whole learning curve once she starts school.

2012 in review

2012 was a special year to me, primarily because I saw my daughter grow from a tiny, innocent infant to a naughty, active toddler. She rolled over in Feb, started crawling in July, standing in Aug and cruising in Sept. I was there at home to witness all these special first steps. We are waiting for the moments when she starts to walk on her own and run around the apartment. We are already chasing her everywhere as she crawls at high speeds.

At the beginning of 2012, I didn't know a thing about what to feed my daughter once she is ready for solids. When the introduction of solids phase started, it was scary. Thank God to the power of Internet, I learnt so much on what to feed babies as they explore the sense of taste. As I decided to be at home to take care of her, I took the time to prepare home-cooked food, noted down her food log and introduced new foods gradually. Though a scary phase to begin with, it actually became quite interesting and challenging. I definitely would want to share what I have learnt during this phase so it can be useful to other new moms as well. This is one of my to-dos for 2013.

The key lesson I have learnt is that taking care of a baby requires effort and patience. Yes, there were times when I felt helpless and lost. But dear husband has always been there to give the much needed support and encouragement. In the busy year, I also managed to lose 5 kgs of my pregnancy weight (3 more to go!).

Ever since the pregnancy phase of my life, I have started to become very conscious of what I eat and what I feed my family. Nutrition is one area which I got really interested in, in the past 2 years. I have been exploring new recipes and expanding my knowledge of food. I can't imagine how much of junk food I used to eat in the initial years of my working life, blaming on the lack of time. Now when I get back to work, I'm sure I wouldn't be tempted by all the packaged and ready-to-eat foods in order to save time.

On the professional front, I did pretty much nothing in terms of actual work. There were times when I missed going for a job, the morning rush-hours, meeting and interacting with people at work, the challenges and the satisfaction of accomplishing some interesting work. But I kept telling myself that this is a temporary break that I'm taking for the benefit of my daughter. I started learning Python programming just for fun. I tried to do some work-from-home consulting work for a couple of startups. But the logistics and schedules didn't seem to work well. It's difficult to schedule and organize interactions only when daughter is taking a nap. I had to cut down on phone calls in between as soon as my daughter woke up. In 2013, I'm hoping to invest some time and get some traction on the work front but unlikely that I might restart a full time job like earlier. Maybe, a year later once daughter starts going to pre-school.

Reading books was completely on the back-burner for the most part of 2012. I had to make sure that daughter doesn't grab the book from my hand and tear the pages apart (BTW, tearing papers is one of her favorite activities). I managed to read 3 books, though.
- Don't lose your mind, lose your weight by Rujuta Diwekar - Highly recommended. Lots of useful information of what we should eat and how we should care for our stomach
- Revolution 2020 by Chetan Bhagat - Not as good and witty as his previous "2 states" but can read once
- How I braved Anu Aunty and cofounded a million dollar company by Varun Agarwal - Interesting fun read on how the author went about setting his e-commerce company

Wishing everyone a very happy new year. Hoping to write more and keep my blog active.

This day, last year

I've been meaning to write this post for quite a while and it has taken me a year to put down those wonderful memories into words. Memories to be cherished for a lifetime! Memories to be revisited whenever I want to gather some strength in life when I can proudly say "I did it!"

Experiencing labor pains and the transformation into a new mother - something that every woman goes through in her life which is very, very special. Around this time last year, I was having severe contractions and was immediately rushed to hospital. My husband was driving the car while I was holding my brother's hands tight. I never thought a speed breaker bump can be so painful when in labor. We reached Cloudnine hospital around midnight. The gynecologist confirmed that my labor had started and I was 4 cm dilated.  Since we had booked our room earlier, I immediately got settled. With each passing minute, the intensity of the pain was increasing. A glass of mosambi juice gave some temporary relief. The nurses came every hour or so, checking my blood pressure and other necessary parameters. Around 3:30 AM, the pain was severe but labor wasn't progressing much. So they gave me a choice to take a pain killer shot which would help me to get some sleep. I took it and slept for a while though I could still feel the pain every 5 minutes. At 8:00 AM, my gynecologist came and gave some medications for me to proceed with labor. For the next 2 hours, I was screaming with pain and yelling at everybody. Thankfully, things went fine with no complications and I delivered a beautiful, tiny baby girl. The nurses in the labor room were very helpful. My hubby was present with me, throughout the delivery and that was so comforting.

The nurse placed my little angel on my chest and she immediately started crying. That's supposedly a good sign. After checking her initial parameters, they wrapped her up in a clean, white towel and brought her to me. Our eyes met for the first time. I made a promise to her that I'll do as best as I can in my new role as her mother.

The medications and the recovery process made me feel so exhausted the rest of the day. I wasn't sure what was going on around me. The night was extremely tough with my daughter continuously crying and we had to call the nurse every 5 minutes. The nurses in Cloudnine were very helpful and supportive.

Sleepless nights, sudden crying sessions (both me and my baby) and emotional swings were all the after-effects in the next one month. It took me a while to actually lift my daughter with confidence. Slowly, the anxieties of a new mom came under control. I have never been so grateful to the power of Internet as I have in the past year. Even my silliest of doubts had an answer somewhere on the web.

From the beginning, I was very determined that I'm going to nurse my daughter exclusively and will not give her formula milk. I firmly believe that's the best gift a mother can give to a baby. Thanks to the Almighty, I'm still able to nurse my baby and it's been such a satisfying experience for the past one year. The introduction of solids has been an exciting and challenging phase as well. I have made sure that I give her home cooked food and not packaged foods. One thought that keeps pushing me in the right direction is "Choose what is right for the baby and not what is convenient to you".

As months passed, her milestones like rolling over, sitting, crawling and standing brought in a lot of joy and excitement. I can't wait to start walking with her, have conversations, play "Monopoly" together, answer her list of questions and many many more. But this first year will always be the most special one.