PMI ASSIGNMENT

INTRODUCTION

This presentation is an attempt to unravel two or more features that could be included in popular Ecommerce sites and could benefit its customers a lot. The features would be discussed with all its implications on UI/UX , customer service, payments etc. Also ,the features would be discussed priority wise.

FEATURE 1:MULTILINGUISTIC In India, out of 1.237 billion people, only about 20% of them can speak or

read English fluently.

Even Hindi , being the Official National Language of India , is the mother tongue of only about 20% people in India. Such is the Diversity of India.

There are 22 official languages spoken throughout the country. The Top 6Indian languages other than Hindi and it’s approximate number of speakers are : Bengali: 70 million , Telugu: 66 million, Marathi: 63 million , Tamil: 53 million, Urdu: 43 million , Gujarati: 41 million

This tells us that a lot of people are not able to use these ecommerce sites or are having difficulty in using it extensively.

BENEFITS People from all across India including people from neighboring

countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and Sri Lanka can easily use these trending ecommerce sites easily even if English is not their preferred language.

Customers are able to address their personal needs in their language only. This is because, for understanding the local needs of a place one has to communicate a customized message in the language of the place. People are more comfortable with such e-commerce sites, which gives them a perfect forum for disclosing their needs or views about a product or services.

Many times there are certain situations when a person is not able to understand a word or a line related to a particular product. So this linguistic feature can come in very handy in these situations. She/he can just change the format of the page to their convenient language and can easily solve the problem!!

EXAMPLE

An Ecommerce site namely Victoria’s Secret uses this feature. They include Spanish Language with every page.

IMPLICATIONS

FOR UI/UX: There is no doubt that there is a substantial cost associated with translating a massive product catalog into another language or even more. But having a product page that a percentage of your site visitors can’t read is a large, and growing, missed opportunity. I believe that there are more pros of this feature than cons and if implemented would show a rapid growth in customers substantially.

CUSTOMER SERVICE: The ecommerce sites would also have to provide customer care in all those added languages. This means hiring new people for call centers with fluency in all the added languages so as to complete the required increase. With this added feature I believe that any other module wont be affected much n thus nothing more new will be required to imply.

TECHNICAL FRONT A tab should be added to each page of the website with the option of

selecting a particular language. Default will be English only.

After a webpage is changed into some other language it should continue depicting the latest language in which it was changed for the rest of the session.

The payment information also should be depicted in the current language except the bill which should be in English only.

Addition of many languages would lead to a greater requirement in the database so it should be available.

A dictionary for each language can also be included.

WHY THIS FEATURE FIRST

I believe that this feature should be implemented first because the ecommerce sites in India are missing out a lot because of this language barrier being a major problem. Any site which implements this could literally be opening a gold mine for it.

Having a website in their language, increases the trust and favor from customers.

This feature is quite simple and wouldn't increase the input cost much and would surely attract more customers who face a problem with English.

Snapdeal, the eBay-backed Indian marketplace, has launched local language versions of its site in a move aimed at wooing over one-third of the country’s non-English speaking Internet users.

With over 20 million users, Snapdeal is India’s largest marketplace and nearly half of its total sales comes from smaller Indian cities.

This has happened when they have just added two native languages i.e. Hindi and Tamil.

“We are expecting a 20% increase in our traffic from the local language addition,” said Ankit Khanna, vice president at Snapdeal. Imagine what would the increase be when other languages will be added !!

FEATURE 2:PRODUCT VIDEOS A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words, according to Dr.

James McQuivey of Forrester, a leading technology research firm.

Product videos engage attention and convey information in a way that doesn’t require much effort on the part of users.

Videos bring a product to life more than static images.

Many times we buy a product like for example an electronic one which requires certain parts to be put together in a certain specific way. It will obviously contain a user manual but its not always easy to just read and implement. Videos come in very handy in those situations.

BENEFITS

Videos have the potential for increasing sales as well as improving search engine placement, product videos are likely to become a standard feature on e-commerce product pages in the near future.

Just a simple video attachment or a YouTube link of the product can be very beneficial for the customer . Customer’s satisfaction increases.

Videos provide more in-depth views of products – for example, showing how an appliance or tool operates, how a watch or other jewelry looks on an actual person, or how to assemble an item that’s delivered in parts and pieces creating stronger engagement with site visitors and a greater likelihood of a purchase.

EXAMPLE

About 68% of top 50 US online retailers offered some kind of video content on their site in 2009 (eMarketer). This number is growing rapidly as adding video content has now become the second-highest priority of multichannel retailers. For example Zappo’s is one such site.

IMPLICATIONS:

FOR UI/UX: With each product, a YouTube link of that can be provided which can be a demonstration or even an advertisement. Another option is to add a video itself with the product. Now this could increase the bandwidth of the website substantially. But the videos will definitely attract more customers as well as help them connect. According to a recent Forrester Research study, videos are 53 times more likely to generate a first-page ranking than traditional SEO techniques.

TECHNICAL FRONT Videos should be short : Attention span of online shoppers is very short.

Videos should be made accordingly. Depending on the product, video length can range from 15 seconds to 5 mins.

Add Text : Don’t completely rely on voice! You need informational text that shoppers can read while watching the video. It may sound weird, but there are users who watch video on mute.

Integrate Social Elements :Include ratings, reviews, Like and Share buttons, and links to your social presence such as Facebook Fan pages and Twitter. Also, allow users to comment on your videos.

Integrate with search:Depending on specific needs of your customer, it may be beneficial to indicate that a video is available when search results are shown. This increases the probability that user would watch the video and ultimately buy that product.

FEATURE 3: My DELIVERY DAY(SPECIAL MENTION)

Special mention for this feature because I faced it myself. It’s a very small but useful as well as an interesting feature that can be very easily added to any ecommerce site. It wouldn’t bring any huge change but some customers may find it very helpful. So firstly lets answer the question WHY.

Sometimes you are on a holiday or on a move and thus do not have a particular delivery address. Yes there are options like giving your friend’s address or a relative but its not always feasible because of many reasons such as personal. You cannot wait because the prices are low now. This feature will definitely help.

If you are a working person and you have tight working hours such as from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and you cannot get the product delivered elsewhere because its big. Again this feature will help for sure as you can also mention the time with the day.

Sometimes you want the ordered product urgently like in a day. The most popular ecommerce site in India i.e. Flipkart usually takes 3-4 days to deliver the product. Amazon claims to deliver in one day but has many terms and conditions applied. This feature can prove to be very useful for many customers. They can always be charged extra for the urgent delivery.

For example You need to gift something to your friend who lives in some other city and you find that a certain product that you wish to gift is having a 15% discount. But the problem is that person maybe on a holiday out of the country and will be back in 10 or more days. What to do? In this case this feature will be extremely helpful as you can buy the stuff and give the delivery day when that friend is back.

IMPLICATIONSFOR UI/UX: A new module would be required to be added to the site containing the option as to whether the customer wants an urgent delivery or a normal delivery. And then he/she needs to give the date and even time at which the customer would prefer the delivery.

FOR PAYMENT:If the urgent delivery option is selected by the customer then an extra payment will be required. So additional cost should be mentioned with the product cost stating everything clearly. Delivery day should be accompanied with the desired time stated by the customer on the bill.

FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE: An extra customer feedback system should be added to the feedback module asking the customer whether he/she received the product on the desired time and day or not. If not complain should be made against the non completion of the task and the delivery people should be enquired.

TECHNICAL FRONT An additional and totally separate delivery service will be required for customers

who opted for Urgent delivery.

The bill formed should include the additional charges clearly and the delivery date and time should be verified again with a pop up message asking the customer to confirm it.

Before providing the urgent delivery service to the customers, it should be checked with the seller whether this service is available on that particular product or not. If not, then it should be noted and the urgent delivery option should not be present with the product details.

Services if not provided on Sunday should be mentioned and the customer should be alerted if he/she chooses Sunday as the delivery day.

Time limit should be chalked out clearly to the customers while deciding i.e. they could select time only according to the provided time limit like for example between 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

THANK YOU!