In an exclusive interaction with IMAGES Retail, Suchi Mukherjee, CEO & Co Founder, LimeRoad.com, unveils that how they have managed to click with customers and how the ecommerce industry is constantly evolving keeping all the stakeholders on their toes.
1. Is m-commerce an integral part of your business? How much of business comes through it and what does it say about the future of your business?
About 60% of women name their mobile phones as the most important devices in their lives, v/s men at 43%. While men game, women spend approximately 1.5 hours a day socialising and shopping on their phones. LimeRoad forayed into the mobile space in July 2014, we launched our mobile app on Android and thereafter on iOS platform. We saw very good metrics from the app space, as over past 5-6 months LimeRoad’s growth trajectory jumped to 4X with regards to revenue generation. In terms of traffic we are at 5X of what we were in 6 months back, thus 80% of our total traffic is contributed by mobile app. What is the most fascinating is that 75% of total order comes the mobile app itself.
Exhibiting a non-parallel in class engagement and retention rate, LimeRoad’s mobile app has an 80% organic traffic of users who download this app 30 days prior and do not remove it.
2. Please elaborate on the level of personalisation / customisation followed in your business model and has it added to revenue?
The LimeRoad Mobile App is an endeavour where the smartest creative and technical forces joined hands to transform the mobile shopping experience of the savvy style consumer of today. With every other brand providing a mobile retail feature as an e-commerce solution, LimeRoad’s primary and distinguished focus through this application has been to create a super-active discovery platform of over 75,00,000 exclusive products and looks that keeps up with everything that is au courant in fashion and lifestyle.
It’s an extension of LimeRoad’s social shopping model where users discover gorgeous exclusive products and scrapbook looks in a fabulous window shopping experience, delivered through the convenience of a hand held device.
LimeRoad provides the promises of convenience and immediacy by being the lightest ecommerce application taking up a memory space of only 2.7 MB as opposed to the 3.0+MB that has been de rigueur as per the Indian mobile app subtext till now. The technology input in it is seamless and the interface more magnetic than ever with style updates every 30 seconds. It is literally like experiencing a virtual mall with a tap on your phone.
3. Social shopping is gathering momentum. Is it changing the basic ways of selling on the websites? How active are you on social media? Can you share some milestones?
Social media is the nerve of LimeRoad’s mobile app growth story. FaceBook allows us to have a more focused approach towards ‘Target Group’, and our intensive social media engagement has allowed for 70% of our mobile growth. In 2016, it is predicted that 40-50mn women will have smart phones-we want to target each of these women, and get them addicted to LimeRoad.
4. Technology in cornerstone of your business. But how do you push constant innovation?
LimeRoad is essentially a technology based social shopping platform. We use a lot of big data and analytics tools and this helps us stay ahead of the curve. Not only does this data help in acquiring more customers, it also helps in optimising product and marketing communication for existing customers. Eg; it helps us calculate the likelihood of a user purchasing product ‘B’ after showing interest in product ‘A’. If data is used in such a format, it results in creating a ‘wow’ for consumers every time the visit the site.
There are various ways in which data can be analysed – looking into step wise user funnel or buying behaviour of a user, how does this change for different segments of users, is critical for our understanding.
The biggest challenge in implementing data analytics solution is to derive the data in the best possible format. What is the best metric that should be looked at? This varies with each user segment that we dealing with, platform being studied (desktop or mobile). For other players, it will vary even with the ecommerce category being looked at (electronics/fashion etc.) and so on.
The future is inclined towards predictive analytics. In case of ecommerce, data analysts are able to capture each and every move by a user from day 1. With this data being available for millions of users, it opens the door to use this data and predict the behaviour of a new user. Eg: which product a user is most likely to buy after 7 days of interaction with multiple products. We should be able to see that level of innovation in ecommerce soon.
5. How do the logistics pan out for a retailer like yourself?
LimeRoad has partnered with all the leading transporters such as Bluedart, Aramex, Ecom Express, Delhivery and even the Indian Postal Service, which caters to the Tier I, II and III cities.
We have built a transporter priority system internally to optimise the strengths of various transporters in different regions of the country. The data is reviewed on a daily basis which is in line with our deliverable metrics. If Courier A has great service in North India, we direct our shipments accordingly, irrespective of the origin of the packet. It is challenging but we have created a highly scalable process in the backend which helps us in optimizing our services.
The goal is to ensure that the orders reach the customers on time and without any damage, with a perfectly hospitable service thus creating a delightful experience for the customer.
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