What the Industry has to Say for GOSF 2014

A company should be true to its customers, in terms of pricing, when participating in GOSF. Users these days are well aware about the product they want to purchase so transparency should be maintained. A bad marketing strategy can and will backfire in the present scenario, so a proper understanding of the target audience should be the prime focus while creating any campaign. Also, to gain more traction out of GOSF, companies should build and engage in conversations about GOSF on Social Media.

Technology is the backbone of any e-commerce business. When planning our GOSF initiatives, tech-readiness is our prime concern – and that implies capacity building for the surge in traffic and for seamlessly scaling up to manage the volume of business transactions. We are tweaking and tuning all our tech infrastructure in preparation for GOSF. Given the response we got during Diwali this year and the enthusiasm among shoppers, we expect over 120% increase in traffic and 180-200% increase in sales over GOSF 2013

GOSF is indeed a very exciting time for the Indian ecommerce Industry. GOSF was conceived by Google in 2012, we are certain that over the last two years, retailers have learnt a few best practices they need to keep in check for this year’s GOSF. Based from their earlier experiences, retailers should leverage GOSF to reach and acquire new customers. As seen in the case of the last two years, GOSF 2014 will witness a lot of shoppers who are transacting online for the first time. Each of the 450+ partners of GOSF need to see themselves as a representative of the entire e-commerce industry.

GOSF is an excellent platform for the e-commerce ecosystem in India. A key focus area of this festival is to acquire first time transacting users, and thus it expands the online market. If you are a serious player in mobile commerce and e-commerce, this is an initiative you just cannot miss. We are expecting significant incremental growth during this festival.

Google’s third edition of GOSF is expected to be bigger and better than the last two years. In some of the recent shopping festivals, consumers have been disappointed with the quality of deals so I’d say let’s ensure good value is being offered. Mantra should be to under-promise and over-deliver. Also,retailers should be prepared to handle huge volumes which are bound to come as many first time shoppers are also expected during GOSF. This includes building capacity to handle higher site traffic, more orders, ensuring availability of products, planned logistics and more customer support teams. During the 3 day GOSF period, we are expecting a 400% increase in traffic on CashKaro.com and 300% increase in revenues

We started a specially designed website gosf.couponzguru.com for the purpose of this sale. Extensive preparations have been made to not only bring the best offers in real time to users, but also to ensure that their website is able to handle the onrush of 5 times their normal traffic. We have set up deals with a large number of 450 and counting vendors, who will be participating in the online festival. At CouponzGuru, we expect to attract 3 lakh visitors in the 3 days of the festival.

In our opinion there are a few things retailers should look at. Firstly, study the capacities of their logistics networks – whether inhouse or outsourced – and plan sales accordingly. Don’t leave it to luck or chance but plan well. For this to happen, marketing/sales/merchandising/logistics functions needs to work together to make it successful. Also, Look at the alternate to airline haul – the capacities on air are limited and usually creates huge bottlenecks during such high peal sales. It is advisable to look at alternate rail and road hauls which are able to meet same delivery timelines as airline haul.

Marketplace companies are increasingly building the tendency to pass the buck to sellers, sellers need to be engaged and educated of all these issues as well.

Most of our publishers have created special landing pages/Micro sites for GOSF and have a number of special marketing plans in the box for promoting same. We are expecting at least 3X of traffic and at least 2X of sales during GOSF. We have seen a similar trend during PayOOM affiliate week, which we did in the last week of November, where most of our advertising partners have shared special coupons/offers promotions.

GOSF is one of the largest online event of its kind in the e-commerce space. We are specially targeting the virgins in the online shopping space and believe food is the best first time experience to get yourself introduced to the online shipping experience. We are expecting 50-60% spike in Sales during the event but more importantly we are excited about the proposition of converting non-shoppers into first-time shoppers during the event.