One of India’s online marketplace trinity recently underwent a makeover. Snapdeal took a lot of pain (moneywise and otherwise) to relaunch its brand. The company also made some policy changes. All of this was in preparation for the Diwali sale season. Did it pay off? We decided to do a post-mortem to see the impact on its sales.
So what’s new
Snapdeal introduced the following changes in its brand:
- Modified the logo to depict an open box
- Repainted itself with vermello (a shade of red for the layperson)
- Changed tagline to – Unbox Zindagi (unbox life)
- Updated its website to reflect the new colour
The company reportedly spent Rs. 200 crores on the entire rebranding. It hired Prasoon Joshi and musicians Shankar Ehsaan Loy to shape up the campaign.
It also made the following changes to its seller policy:
- New packaging. Snapdeal required all its sellers to ship all new orders in the new packaging only. For those sellers with an existing stock of the old packaging, the company exchanged it for new packages free of cost.
- New seller rating framework. There was some relief for sellers as buyers who return products cannot rate the seller and only verified customer reviews would count in the rating. Apart from this, customers buying multiple times from a single seller can rate the seller only once. All measures are to prevent fake reviews and ratings that affect the seller’s performance.
- A business recommendation engine. Not strictly a policy, but this is a new feature that gives sellers information on best sellers, diversification ideas and other product-related information that can boost sales.
Apart from the image makeover, it also introduced a feature called Snapdeal Gold in time for the Diwali sale. A product comes under Gold if it is prepaid and if it is fulfilled by Snapdeal.
Did its efforts bear any fruit?
‘We have done better than we thought we would’
That is what Snapdeal is claiming. Well-placed sources in the company have said that it has outdone its sales estimate in this year’s Diwali sale.
“We have overachieved our targets for the four days by about three times,” said a person familiar with the numbers.
The company’s GMV has hit Rs. 500 – 600 crores, say the sources.
The company’s official spokesperson has also clarified that things have improved for them in the recent sale. A spokesperson said, “The new campaign has been a huge success for us. Despite September being traditionally a weak month, the traffic at Snapdeal was up by nearly 25% following the release of the campaign.”
Snapdeal also found itself marking significant milestones this season. Apart from an increase in prepaid transactions and orders from Tier 2 and 3 cities, the company said sellers had reason to cheer. 37 sellers hit the Rs. 1 crore mark in the few days of sale.
However, the company’s figures did not come close to that of its rivals. While Snapdeal sold roughly 11 million units, Flipkart recorded 15.5 million and Amazon 15 million. Plus, analysts had predicted that festive season sales would go beyond company’s expectations.
RedSeer Consulting had said, “E-tailers are likely to surpass all sales expectations in the ongoing festive sale days and for the month of October 2016 as a whole.”
The company had aggressively marketed itself to ensure good visibility. According to the figures with the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, Snapdeal’s visibility was the highest compared to Amazon and Flipkart.
More sale events
Similar to its peers, Snapdeal also held a second round of sale from the 12th to 14th. In a bid to boost its sale, it is also planning to open its own wholesale unit. To be called E-Agility, the sales unit is likely to function similar to Cloudtail or WS Retail. Snapdeal appears to be trying hard to catch up with its prime rivals – Flipkart and Amazon. It will surely take the company significant time to reach there.
Do you think the new Snapdeal will help online sellers? Let us know in the comments box below. If you are looking for help with your ecommerce needs, get in touch with Browntape. We are India’s largest ecommerce service providers.
