Customer Ratings to Play a Larger Role in Sellers’ Sales on Snapdeal

Snapdeal - India’s leading value-focused online marketplace – is using data analytics to link the business prospects of sellers on its platform with the way buyers rates the products sold by the sellers.

Each buyer on Snapdeal can rate their purchases, rating them between 1-5 stars. The rating for each product, along with the number of users who have rated the product is displayed to all users on the marketplace.

Sellers with products that are highly rated by the consumers are more likely to have greater visibility in the search results, which mostly leads to more sales for such sellers vis-à-vis other sellers.

The platform systemically reduces the visibility of the sellers selling products with poor ratings and removes the sellers from the platform on account of repeated performance issues and violations of platform terms and conditions.

Commenting on the move, Snapdeal said, “The ratings and reviews by millions of Snapdeal buyers is the most powerful and authentic way of guiding users on the marketplace platform. Such ratings help buyers browse, assess and decide between various product-price options available on the platform. A direct linkage between current performance and future business prospects aligns the interests of buyers, sellers and the platform."

To prevent any misuse of the rating process, only buyers who have purchased a product can do a rating and only one rating is permitted per purchase.

Since the rating process also captures the number of buyers who have rated the product, it also serves as a valuable guide towards the bestsellers, which is useful for new buyers and is an important reference point in the purchase of unbranded goods.

Nearly 12 million listings on Snapdeal received customer ratings in the last 8 months. With this data-driven exercise, Snapdeal is looking at highlighting high-quality sellers and is also based on customer ratings, looking at weeding out low-quality sellers, including those who misuse the platform to sell counterfeit goods.

Snapdeal is among India’s top 3 largest e-commerce marketplace. More than 70 million users visit Snapdeal every month to browse and buy from amongst the 200 million listings by more than 5,00,000 registered sellers on the marketplace. Snapdeal’s focus on the unbranded segment has vastly expanded the options for both the buyers and sellers. Customers get a deep choice of affordable goods online, better than the choices available offline. The sellers also gain immensely by selling to a much larger nationwide audience, which is beyond the reach of their physical bazaars.

Flipkart Simplifies On-Boarding Process for New Sellers

Walmart-owned Flipkart Monday said it has revamped its seller onboarding process to ease and improve the first-time e-commerce experience for small businesses in the country.

To ensure easy access, the company has also stationed 13 regional teams across the country to help onboard sellers in person, by meeting with them at their premises, Flipkart said in a statement.

These changes to the onboarding process will make it easier for small sellers, who may not have prior digital expertise, to list their products on the platform and access Flipkart's pan-India base of over 150 million customers, it added.

"As a homegrown company, we know that the future of e-commerce lies in bringing more MSMEs and smaller businesses online, which in turn will generate employment and investment, and will meaningfully contribute toward the country's socio-economic development," Flipkart head of marketplace business Nishant Gupta said.

Some of the key changes that Flipkart has implemented include reducing required documentation down to GST number, cancelled cheque, and a signature; a single-step verification with the GST number; and improved dashboard interface that guides sellers on the progress of their profile completion, pin code serviceability, etc. PTI SR

Snapdeal Refreshes Seller Policies, Makes It Simpler to Sell Online

Snapdeal, Indian online marketplace today announced an update to its policies for the sellers on its platform. The changes have been incorporated basis feedback received from sellers and will be effective from 14 July 2016.

Reduction in marketing fees: As part of the policy update, Snapdeal has reduced the marketing fees for 120+ sub categories, including for digital products, electronics, women’s fashion, FMCG products, sports and fitness goods, fashion jewelry, kitchen appliances, automotive accessories etc. Post this change, Snapdeal will have the lowest marketing fee, for ~300 sub-categories out of the total approx. 600 sub-categories, across all leading marketplaces. The marketing fee for nearly 30 sub categories has been increased marginally. While the reduction in fee ranges from 0.2 - 18%, the increase ranges from 0.5 to 5.5%.

From penalties to awareness: Building on the success of its self-serve platform for sellers, Snapdeal has unveiled a simpler framework of do’s and don’ts for its sellers. The self-serve platform helps sellers resolve their queries easily and together with the simplified policies, this is expected to enable the sellers to avoid the imposition of penalties due to ignorance or complexity.

Sharing the cost of returns and exchanges: To share the cost of returns, Snapdeal will bear the cost for reverse pickup and payment collection, while packaging and shipping will be borne by sellers. In case of replacement/exchange also, reverse pick up costs will be borne by Snapdeal.

Talking about the policy changes, Vishal Chadha, Senior Vice President, Market Development, Snapdeal, said “We believe reduction in marketing fees will foster growth for our sellers. We have worked closely with our sellers and basis their feedback, we have made these policy changes to make them in-line with ecommerce industry best practices. Reducing returns from the market by ensuring best in class logistics and technology advances is a key focus area for Snapdeal. While we share costs with our sellers in case of return; we will continue to forego marketing fees to reduce the costs for sellers. These policy changes will help us in our continuous aim to build a fair, transparent and competitive marketplace.”

The policy refresh is a part of Snapdeal’s initiatives to make the seller journey more transparent and frictionless. It closely follows the upgrade of the seller panel, seller app and sellers ad platforms. Detailed policies have been communicated to sellers to help them prepare for the changes.