The Winners

The most visible part of

e-commerce–business to consumer–has started becoming visible in this

country. In fact, we ended up covering more e-com sites than we’d planned.

We covered about 66 Websites, and had to leave some out due to time

constraints. Even as we were finalizing the winners, new sites were sending

in mail, stating that they’d like to participate in this shootout.

We’ve covered Websites

under three broad categories. Sites that deliver merchandise anywhere across

the country, regional ones that delivered in certain areas only, and sites

that weren’t selling anything online, but were providing useful buying

information or other e-com related services..

For the shootout, we

considered only the first category with a total of 21 Websites. We split

these sites into two categories–supermarkets with a whole range of

products, and stores that were selling one or two product categories

only(apparel, for example).

We took into account five

broad parameters. We checked out each site for its overall features, quality

of service, product delivery, customer support, and security. All these

parameters are equally important for an online shop, so we gave them all

equal weightage.

First, features. The site

should have good product variety. Along with that, it should offer a good

search facility, making it easy for a customer to find a particular product.

Site customizability and any extra features like loyalty points for frequent

buyers and other special schemes were also considered.

In quality of service, we

considered whether or not a site actually delivers a product as claimed. A

site that accepts more modes of payments–credit cards, cash on delivery,

demand draft, and checks got more points. A site with a good return policy–where

it would refund the money or replace the product–got higher points than

one that didn’t have one. Ability ot track the product was another

important factor.

Delivery–An online store

should deliver all over the country, if not the world. Sites that did this

got higher points. Sites giving free delivery were obviously better choices

than those that charged for it. Currency is another important criterion. If

it’s an Indian site, then it must accept Indian rupee credit cards. There

were some sites that accepted only dollar credit cards. Sites where the

person placing an order could be different from the person receiving it are

better off.

Customer support comes next.

A site must respond quickly to all customer queries. So, sites that replied

to our queries within 12 hours got higher marks than those that replied

later. Sites that didn’t reply at all didn’t get any points.

Security is a major issue

when it comes to online shopping. All sites must have a secure server

whether they’re accepting credit cards, or asking a customer to fill in

their profile or have them enter their login name and password. It’s

unsafe to shop on sites that don’t have a secure server.