siliconindia | | June 20198With more than 11 years of experience Soumajit has served some of the largest brands and companies to create an integrated marketing and brand building platform across offline and online mediaBy Soumajit Bhowmik, Director - Capillary Accelerate, Capillary Technologies-Commerce is growing in the country ­ at more than expected rate, much to the excitement of online marketplaces and brand e-stores. If we look at e-Commerce search volumes, there has been a 139 per-cent growth this year (January, February and March) com-pared to similar time last year.Along with e-Commerce business, the other thing on a steady increase is smartphone usage. Indians have made smartphones their always-on and ubiquitous companion. While mobile phone users in India is slated to increased from 670 to 892 million (2016 to 2021), smartphone users will increase from 359 to 781 million. An average user spends almost 4.5 hours daily browsing internet on smart-phones, while women spend more time than men and are more engaged shoppers. The growth of app downloads have triggered further reliance on smartphones for shopping or communicat-ing. The top two categories of apps downloaded by users are shopping/retail (32 percent) and travel (26 percent), followed by others in single digit share of overall app downloads. Let us restrict this discussion to e-Commerce and mobile phone trends in the online purchase funnel of users.Out of the overall 139 percent growth in search que-ries, 49 percent growth came from mobile devices, while 224 percent came from desktops. Mobile devices have been considered as a discovery platform for a long time, and are considered to assist in conversions, but some of the recent trends suggest a change. Usage of smartphones during prime time (8pm to 12pm) far surpasses desktop and tablet. If we now look at the shopping trends of an Indian consumer, most purchases through the week tend to peak during the night, with maximum sales happening between 10pm and 12pm. Hence, it becomes extreme-ly important to cash in on mobile conversions during these hours.For e-Commerce, due to larger mobile traffic and in-herent user experience issues, a majority of mobile con-version rate has always been lowest among desktop, mo-EE-COMMERCE & MOBILE DEVICESIN MY OPINION
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