Whether you’re an owner of a consumer goods store, a marketer strategizing to maximize profits or a frequent shopper, the fact that world commerce is moving to your smartphone shouldn’t be new information. A 2017 global report by KPMG says that a staggering 72% of the Indian respondents open their phones to relieve boredom
- A more recent study by Adobe revealed that smartphones are emerging as the most preferred medium for all shopping tasks. 89% of consumers are currently able to fulfill the retail activities they want on mobile, showed the findings
- What’s more, in 2015, mobile retail e-commerce sales in India amounted to 6.02 billion U.S. dollars; these are projected to reach 37.96 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, says Statista.com
- These statistics add weight to the fact that since the past few years, the modern consumer has embraced m-commerce to fulfill its needs. And yet, cart abandonment in India is more than 70%
- The reasons are aplenty – buggy websites, boring designs, confusing traversing routes, and unsecured transactions. But the bottom line is that the average Indian shopper is wary of the current e-commerce scenario.
So, what happened? Well, the days of free-delivery or lowest-price-guarantee enticing customers are long gone. In today’s era of micro-moments, the key to charming the modern consumer lies in offering a rich and seamless buying experience. At least this is what New Delhi based startupreneur Nitin Sood believes is the reason behind the success of his social commerce marketplace – HappyShappy.
Nitin is the Founder and CEO of HappyShappy – a product discovery platform. What sets his entrepreneurial vision apart is his decision to stay clear of the “we’ll-fix-it-when-we-get-there” strategy embraced by a majority of m-commerce businesses in their nascent stage.
When he created HappyShappy, he was clear about one thing – to create a customer-first platform that addresses mobile shopping issues. And so came the HappyShappy app – an iOS and Android application that apart from bringing a wide variety of home-grown content to its users, has found a way to solve cart abandonment.
This, it has achieved, by successfully implementing what’s called a ‘Universal Shopping Cart’ feature.
The universal cart isn’t a new concept; since the beginning of eCommerce, businesses across the globe have tried (both successfully and unsuccessfully) molding it to suit their consumer needs. In the case of HappyShappy, the idea has been played out by accessing multiple retail sites via a smooth, uninterrupted browsing experience.
The vendor base is significant, and so the product feed is vast as well. The app lets you add, tag, and organize the stuff that you like. One can either file away the maybes, or immediately say yes to the yeses. This eliminates the arduous task of bookmarking dozens of different e-commerce pages and streamlining disparate user experiences.
Since the launch of HappyShappy’s Universal Shopping Cart, the platform has witnessed a 40% growth in its unique monthly visitors. Its success seems to lie in the fact that this particular implementation is purely about solving the average consumer’s pain points.
“We spent a lot of time plotting the shopping journey; instead of a needlessly long trip with multiple discount stops, we removed all such ‘noise’ and focused on created an unparalleled shopping experience; something that in itself would be a more-than-enough reason to capture the user’s attention. hat’s culminated, as a result, is a frictionless e-commerce cart that works with the fewest taps & scrolls. At HappyShappy, we don’t want a user to stay confused or lost; we want him to get closer to his favorite product as fast as possible. That’s the endgame!” explains Nitin.
From a technical standpoint, this means synchronizing 750 vendors across more than 20 categories to make sure the item in a user’s wish list is still available in the right size and color at any given point — all while making the shopping experience smoother and transactions easy and secure. That’s a tall order, but the start-up has nailed it and become the Indian shopper’s new go-to destination.
Smriti Sharma, a Bengaluru based professional and frequent shopper shares, “Between running to the office, the gym and the dance class, I barely get time to check out my grocery list. The HappyShappy app allows me not only to buy but also compare a wide variety of products from multiple vendor categories in one go.”
What’s differentiated HappyShappy’s offerings from the pack is its approach towards creating a relevant consumer base. As Sana Sood (Co-Founder & Creative Head of HappyShappy) explains, the platform doesn’t aim to shout from the rooftops about the lowest prices or the best deals. “We aren’t about becoming an authority on m-commerce. HappyShappy only aims to provide a one-stop solution where a user’s easy and enjoyable shopping experience is our reward.”
A major factor that has contributed to its popularity is its hand-curated line of home-grown products. Standing above all other e-commerce platforms, it acts as a discovery layer – a filter that weeds out all run-of-the-mill products & mass-produced items and lets in only unique & high-quality goods. From fashion to food, gifting, makeup, jewelry, pet accessories, event-planning, and more; if you want new christmas gift ideas for tech savvy boyfriend, HappyShappy provides everything to satisfy the Indian consumer’s needs.
And if that wasn’t enough, the platform also has 5,00,000+ ideas worth free content – ideas, inspiration, trends, daily horoscope readings, fashion styles, gifting guides, and more – all of which is again handpicked, in the pursuit of a rich browsing experience.
This, the Soods admit, is an unpredicted but fortunate turn of events that has helped convert non-consumers into shoppers and expand the consumer base. Apurva Deka, a Guwahati-based home-maker and an ardent user of the HappyShappy app, states that for her the primary motivator was the availability of hand-made products and home decor ideas. “It was only when I was browsing around for Rakshabandhan gift ideas that I found it to be a quick & hassle-free way of shopping online.”
But no matter how different this marketplace claims itself to be, being a one-stop-shop, it’ll soon find pitted against Choice Overload – a user-related predicament faced by many e-commerce platforms. Also, to stay ahead of its competitors, it will have to keep offering the same high-quality service. Whether or not this start-up’s universal cart will ameliorate such future problems, remains to be seen. But for now, the appeal of its shopping experience seems enough to outweigh any possible downside.
HappyShappy recently crossed its target of 20,000 shoppers.
