Internet shoppers looking for bargains: ViziSense

India's online audience and ad measurement platform, ViziSense has revealed some interesting insights and trends around the dynamic online shopping habits of Indian consumers. The data reveals a sporadic growth in the number of shoppers who prefer new-age ecommerce formats during September. Fashionandyou.com and bagittoday.com have displayed great popularity over the past few months, attracting more than 10 lakh users each in September. With this surge in traffic, both these sites have quickly moved into the ViziSense top 200 Indian websites.

The consistent growth in traffic on these new e-commerce formats (collective buying, group discounts, private clubs) indicate consumer preference over conventional e-commerce juggernauts like ebay and amazon and the local ecommerce giant infibeam, which continue to show a consistent pattern of jumps and dips indicating seasonality and other related trends over the past few months.

Interestingly, these new sites have smartly gained considerable traction by leveraging the social media sites effectively. One can see these sites creating a great buzz on sites like Facebook and Orkut by way of unique campaigns or trial-inducing applications.

"Group buying sites, invitation-only buying clubs have become a rage in mature online markets across the world. It's great to see these new formats making great in-roads within the Indian e-commerce market. This is an indication that the Indian consumer behavior is finding these formats extremely interesting, engaging and beneficial and the upward shift in buying and transactions on these sites is clearly visible. The findings from ViziSense showcases formation of new-age communities on these sites that understand the value of group buying and word-of-mouth recommendations within the community that leads to volume discounts and great deals for everyone." said Amit Bhartiya, VP &GM - ViziSense.

Interestingly, the highest adoption of these sites has been from the West (Maharashtra) and South (Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) as compared to the North, which definitely takes the lead when it comes to offline shopping. The report also reveals that these sites see favorable adoption by youth (between 15 ' 24 years) and with an income of less than Rs 2 lacs.