Google extended its mega event, Great Online Shopping Festival (GSOF) by a day after getting a huge response from shoppers with over a million users visiting the site in the first 24 hours.
The second edition of India’s GOSF, which started Wednesday, will now go on till Saturday instead of Friday.
“GOSF is getting an overwhelming response from shoppers, despite a minor glitch we faced on the websiteyesterday and to keep up the tempo and give more time to shoppers, we are extending GOSF by a day and will now run till December 14,” Google India Industry Director e-commerce Nitin Bawankule said.
GOSF’s first edition last year witnessed over a million people visiting the site, but this time that number has already been surpassed, he added.
“The popularity can be gauged by the fact that Tata Value Homes sold 22 flats (housing units) and 3 cars have also been sold,” Bawankule said.
GOSF’s website faced issues on the launch day yesterday as the homepage of the website failed to redirect users to the intended pages.
“We’re so sorry for the delay in the #GOSF launch. The site will be up soon and you can shop through the deals being offered until 13th Dec (sic),” Google India said in a tweet yesterday.
Despite the initials hiccups, e-commerce firms said that they are experiencing huge response from shoppers. Over 200 partners (e-commerce firms) are participating in the event.
“GOSF 2013 has started off with a blast on Snapdeal. We have seen 10x increase in sales as compared to last year,” Snapdeal.Com VP (Marketing) Sandeep Komaravelly said.
Similarly, Jabong Co-founder Manu K Jain said from the first day Jabong is seeing a phenomenal increase in traffic and sales.
“Revenue has increased 4-5 times more than a usual day. Coping up with the increasing traffic our IT team is working very hard to keep the website from crashing,” he added.
Myntra CEO Vikas Ahuja said: “we are seeing very positive results so far on Day 1. Our traffic has grown approximately 2 times, and revenue growth is 3.5 times, versus the preceding few days.”
EBay India eCommerce Evangelist Deepa Thomas said that last year the site witnessed a significant jump in first time buyers during the online shopping fest, which is eBay’s key expectation this year too.
However, some of the e-commerce players said the initial problems faced by GOSF site did affect shopper’s interest.
ShopClues Co-Founder Sanjay Sethi said: “So far, we’ve got a very good response from our existing customers, but the new visitor turnout has been lower than expected. While we continue to get high traffic on our site, we’re hoping it will grow beyond 40 percent we are currently witnessing during GOSF.”
He, however added while, the number of orders was only marginally higher than average, the basket size spiked by nearly 50 percent.
“Going by reports from last year’s GOSF and our performance so far, we expect to exit GOSF 2013 with traffic and sales up by 4-5 times over our usual numbers,” he said.
Fashionandyou CEO Aasheesh Mediratta said their website experienced a spurt in traffic but with GOSF site down they had overall less than expected traffic. The traffic just got double against expectations of 300-400 percent jump.
“Our Conversions and overall sales jumped as we are offering great offers like additional 25 percent off on sales, which are already at up to 80 percent off, hence we had 300-400 percent jump in sales with majority of the sales coming from our registered user base/direct traffic,” he said.
Lenskart CEO Peyush Bansal said: “We expected a much higher number of visits from GOSF’s site but. Unfortunately the site was down practically for the whole day.”
However, consumers were actively looking for discounts and Lenskart still registered almost 30 percent jump in the number of visits on the website, leading to 20 percent increase in revenue,” he added.
+ There are no comments
Add yours