Despite growing number of
e-commerce success stories, plenty of e-commerce Web sites do not live up to
their potential. Most Web sites offer a truncated e-commerce model, meaning
that they do not give Web users the capability to complete an entire sales cycle
from initial inquiry to purchase. As analyzed by Forrester Research, the consumer
sales cycle has four stages. First(stage
1), consumers ask questions about what
they want to buy. Second(stage 2), they collect and compare answers. Third(stage 3), the user makes a decision
about the purchase. If the purchase is made, the fourth phase(stage 4) is order payment and fulfilment (delivery of the goods or services). The problem
is that many Web sites do not provide enough information or options for all
four phases. For example, a site may provide answers about a product, but not
answers to the questions that the consumer has in mind. In other cases, the
consumer gets to the point where he or she wants to make a purchase, but is not
given an adequate variety of payment options to place the actual order.
http://www.buywithexpert.com portal has
realized the challenges and gaps mentioned above and made an attempt to enable all
4 stages of full consumer sales cycle ,that too from single website
instead of hopping to multiple sites.
They intend to provide most comprehensive experience for ecommerce consumers by
visiting single website buywithexpert.com . Specifically this portal is trying to bridge the big gap
that exists between stage 1 , stage 2 and stage 3 mentioned above.
Based on consumer's
search criteria , buywithexpert.com provides recommended list of products using
its recommendation engine(algorithm) which is based on complex analysis of multidimensional
aggregated data for each product being searched. Along with aggregated data of
price comparison, they also provide aggregated data of expert review ratings
& consumer review ratings most popular eCommerce portal(flipkart,amazon.in,snapdeal.com
etc) and expert review sites (cnet.com,engadget.com,pcmag.com,expertreviews.com
etc).
Aggregated expert review
ratings & consumer review ratings info helps consumer to decide what to
buy. Besides they also provide price comparison along with product expert
review and consumer review so that in single view one has multiple
dimensions(expert review rating ,consumer rating and price) available. For
enabling stage 3 above(decision making), buywithexpert uses their custom recommendation
engine(algorithm) which uses the analytics on the existing data to pick the
best choice of products based on best expert review ratings from most well
known expert review websites and consumer reviews & best price offered by
best e-commerce portals. Consumer has the option to consider their suggestion
based on expert & consumer review ratings and price and then take self
decision by using the filters available on left side of the page.
Once decision of what
and where to buy is made ,one can click on buy button to checkout which
redirects request automatically to corresponding ecommerce portal where one can
finish the process of order and payment. These are most well known ecommerce
portals with whom they have partnership to fulfil the orders directed by buywithexpert.
This overall experience
is a win-win case for both consumer and eCommerce shops. Consumer gets the
comprehensive experience of doing all stages of online buying from single site without need to go and search or compare anywhere else. Consumer is given best
option of products and prices offered online by anyone. They help consumer to
have affinity to his/her own interest than affinity to any particular online
shop. Consumer gets the best possible product at best possible price offered at
that time from anyone in just few clicks. It saves hours of time spent in
trying it find what product to buy to get features desired and where to buy to
get the cheapest price. buywithexpert.com facilitates all this at single website in just
few clicks. It makes every person virtual expert for getting best product at
best price.
There are multiple price
comparison online portals which compare prices offered by different online
e-retailers for any consumer product. But other than price ,they don't include
any other parameter to compare product expert reviews. They only suggest where
to buy based on price difference, they don't suggest what to buy. Using price
comparison portals works ok for those who know what they have to buy and only
need to find the best deal before they order. However it doesn't work for those
who don't have enough knowledge to understand and decide which product suits
their personal need. To get help on this they need to go to separate websites
like cnet.com which provides product review. These websites help to know and
understand what to buy based on personal need of a consumer , by comparing
actual performance, by comparing features etc
of the products.
Also price comparison
portals have a gap that they don't share their own recommendation as well, they
just show price comparison of listed products from multiple online stores. This
is the gap they want to fill in for consumers in the e-retail space. They want
to enable customers more by providing decision making tool and not just price
comparison tool. They plan to share their own recommendation based on expert
review rating of products, comparison of price and consumer review of
product(wherever possible from credible sources). This way not only they plan
to add multiple parameters to compare like review ratings besides online price
but also use their analytics to suggest smart decision on what to buy and where
to buy.
Such portal would save
lot of effort and time of consumer and will remove the need of hopping multiple
product review portals to decide what to buy and then using price comparison
tool to compare prices and again go back and forth among them to re-consider
decision to buy for different products, different models and different price
range etc. From their portal consumer has not only the luxury to do all this at
single portal but also seek help from their unique decision making algorithm
which would provide recommendation based on different choices suggested by
consumer, product reviews, consumer reviews and price comparison.
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