E Magus

Are there any stats on online shopping by women in India?

I see that now-a-days a lot of e-com companies are focussing on women wear & accessories, and other items that would interest women. Is there any stats available on, the number of women users (specific to e-com), the spends they do, the stuff they buy, and the future potential…
Thanks in advance

Cheers

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1 month ago

This should totally be a thing everywhere!

Post by Kavya Guddehithulu Nagesh:

This should totally be a thing everywhere!

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1 month ago

Ancient Archetypes in Modern Media

Today is the age of personal media ownership. According to a recent news release from Twitter (http://blog.twitter.com/2011/03/numbers.html) on an average around 4 Billion tweets are sent out every month. From individual point of views, re-tweets, status updates, what’s happening?, and direct messages….Twitter has become the favourite platform for self-expression for many

Every Twitter account can be measured on the following parameters –

Popularity – The number of people following a twitter profilePursuit – The number of people whom a twitter profile is following..either for information or interactionPublishing – The volume of tweets (original) and re-tweets being done by the profile

Basis the above 3 P’s mentioned, we can organize the twitter users into different groups…and each group fit into the classical Archetype.

The Twitter grouping:

Twitter Table

Twitter Archetype Grid

On the X- axis is broadly the values of Popularity/Pursuit (for ease of grouping have grouped into 3 categories – less than 1, equal to 1, and greater than 1)Y-axis represents the volume of tweets – High and Low

Creator: These are people who create something unique and have value. Since they have huge following they can influence a huge number of people by what they say. Usually, the publications, media houses, are the ideal examples that fall into this type of archetype. @nytimes, @cnnbrk, @bbcnews

Ruler/Sage: These are people who exert a lot of control. They are usually successful in their sphere of activity. CEO’s of companies, Thought leaders, Movie Stars, Celebrities are ideal examples that fall into this type of archetype. LadyGaga,@justinbieber, @BarackObama, @KimKardashian @kanyewest, etc

Caregiver: These are people who would love to help others. Either by way of retweeting, or tweeting relevant information they often try and help other achieve their goals. While the active caregiver goes ahead and spreads his network by following more number of people (and expect reciprocal following) the inactive caregiver is happy with the small universe he follows or being followed. Each of us would have our own caregivers archetypes in our twitter network. The ideal profile in my network is @Unseenntmktg

Regular: All he wants is to ‘fit in’. Being connected to others is his prime driving force. He also loves to see that others also connect to him. Most of the people here have reciprocal connections – You follow me, I follow you. A bulk of the people you find on Twitter would fall in this category

Explorer: An Explorer archetype is a person who keeps following people. What drives him is journeying the world by following others. While he mostly re-tweets about others experiences, He also shares the happenings around him. But he mainly wants to enrich himself by the experience of others

Outlaw: He believes in himself, and has a will to transform this world. While he follows a lot number of people, the number of people following him is usually low. The reason attributed to the same is that many would not like to be associated with a rebel in a public platform. However, there are some Outlaw archetypes who achieve cult status and thus would fall in the Ruler/Sage archetype mentioned earlier.The reason for understanding the twitter archetypes is that it can give you some insight into specific characteristics of a specific twitter group…through which one can understand the motivations and behavior. While most of the archetype might resonate, there could be exceptions..

So which archetype are you??

Santosh

1 month ago

Which 5 brands would you like to be in your life?

and Why?

If you were to choose just 5 brands for rest of your life, what will those be and why?

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2 months ago

Edit Online trends in India 2013

I’m not sure why am I even writing about this. It is mid-March and there would be 1000’s of articles forecasting what will happen this year. Do I need to add more pixels to the ones that are already there? Well, maybe…or maybe not.

Having worked in the digital marketing for so long, I’ve realized that we tend to forecast the same thing over and over again like - the mobile story, online video, the King content, etc - and guess what, most of the time this holds true - like statement written on stone :). The following are what I’d want to add on to what other Digital Marketing pundits have predicted:

Digital story-retelling: For long brands in India have looked at online as a place to create and publish content. Most social media activities too are loosely based on content distribution and ‘engagement’ (from contests to customer service to games). The most popular stories are children’s story or mythology - and the reason for their popularity is that it is simple and easily re-told. It is time for brands to have a story that can be re-told again and again by different people. The recent example is of Harlem Shake… it is a story that has been re-told in various ways by various people… For brands, this means it is going to be the rise of memes and they need to be part of the story if not the orginator of the story
Online sale to Offline experience: Seen the latest Yebhi Ad.. Or the Myntra ad? It talks about buying and trying out an apparel at home and if not satisfied return it back with no questions asked policy. This model of marrying online and offline features would be the way forward for most e-commerce companies. As product differentiation between e-com portals blur, the only differentiation would be experience. And especially in shopping, experience is not virtual (UI) but for real. Extreme steps would be setting up offline shops (In fact, Firstcry have already started their retail outlets).
Brands to App the ante: The newest man talk are - “Hey, Let me show you my new app”, “Have you heard or seen this app before?” “That’s an awesome app” It is App-arent that the today Apps are to men, what trading cards were to kids earlier. Brands have a huge opportunity in this space. From utility based apps, brands will evolve to create apps that will connect with their customers on a higher level. An interesting example is the Cleartrip - Passbook (http://blog.cleartrip.com/2013/01/10/cleartrip-for-passbook/ ). Brands will be getting innovative with work arounds and how they can simplify and strengthen brand connect. Brands might even explore the newer technology like 3D printing
Big Data: Collating the data and building the big picture would be a key highlight for companies that are already active in the digital marketing space. Analysis, would come from not just single data source, but finding co-relation amongst various smaller data source, and then spotting the business trends and opportunities. For ad agencies specializing in digital marketing, having a research specialization would be critical for delivering client success
Mergers & Acquisitions in Ecom space: This is already happening. Driven by common investors in various ecommerce companies, and to increase the scale (as the market is still driven by low margin and high volume) M&A in the ecom space is inevitable. Also, there would be a lot of players who will bail out by selling to bigger players, unable to sustain high overheads and low margins
Performance marketing in a weak economy: Yes, sale does matter. This would mean that you’ll hear more about CPL deals. Hybrid affiliate marketing programs, responsive marketing, low ad inventory costs, more of search marketing, etc.

Website refresh is something I feel that might happen. But, considering that this year the market would be tough, not sure of companies investing monies in redesigning their existing online presence to something more responsive and using bleeding technology.

Cheers,

Santosh

2 months ago

Earth hotter today than ever in the past 11,300 years | Business Standard

Now I understand why we lose our cool so fast

2 months ago

We are like this Onlyne

Internet is many instance is the only source of information… From students to researchers, all of us just collate and analyse the information that we get from the Net. Here’s my glimpse on how India would look through the Internet.

Politics:

There are only 2 parties in India - BJP & Congress
NaMo, a.k.a Narendra Modi, is the biggest politician in India
Rahul Gandhi is unmarried and PM-in-waiting
Everyone in the Parliament is a crook

Economy:

One of the fastest growing economy in the world
Huge consuming middle class
Mukesh Ambani
The single biggest culprit for wasting time is IRCTC website

Demographic:

Young
All are working in BPO, or IT

Culture:

We love hindi movies
The two fameous celebrities are: Salman Khan and Poonam Pandey
We hate Chetan Bhagat, and any other English writer of Indian origin
Sachin is God
All Indian men are desperate

Sports:

We love cricket, and hate our players
EPL is the most fav sport after cricket

I’m sure there are many more… these are just starters, please add on :)

Cheers,

2 months ago

Social Media and rise of conspiracy theories

With great power comes great responsibility, said Voltaire. Well you can also attribute its popularity to Spiderman’s uncle too :) When Technology gave us, the general public, the great power of Social Media, we didn’t become more responsible, only more frivolous

The aftermath of the Hyderabad bomb blasts which took place on Feb 21st saw a slew of Facebook updates and Tweets in my network ranging from benign to malicious. More dangerous were the purportedly expert opinions without proper basis. The same could be seen on popular blogs/websites too which treads on conspiracy theories. This lead me to think, why do people create such conspiracy theories and why it is popular among social media

The crux of conspiracy theories lies in the 2 primal human traits - Fear and Greed. Fear helped us survive and greed helped us to evolve as human beings. Most conspiracy theories are based on Greed - Money or Power, and the culprits are usually, Corporate, Political, or Military… or Fear - Unknown, Safety, Culture and the culprits are usually Religious, Cults, or even Extra Terrestrial.

We also want to believe that most events in life are controllable. This makes us decipher events so that are easily understandable to us. Thus we join the dots to create a picture that we already have in our minds. Most of the events, like the Hyderabad bomb blasts or even 9/11, that happen are then interpreted through confirmation bias or hindsight bias

Confirmation bias, is a tendency for people to favour information that confirms to their beliefs. Each event is then seen as an incident that strengthen’s their belief. For example, for a marketing guy like me, everything that happens would have a marketing purpose attached to it… Similarly, any events that happen would trigger reactions (especially conspiracy theories) from users on social media that would be an opportunity to propagate their belief. (Read more about Confirmation bias at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias )

Hindsight bias, on the other hand is trying to bring predictability to an event that has happened. This is one of the main reason for the rise of conspiracy theories in the social media space. Since, hindsight bias is all about explanation of what already happened, and by its very nature, Internet offers fertile ground to create, place and join the dots to resemble the final picture. The Internet as a repository of information, and Search Engines like Google as a pipe to access the information helps people in creating and placing the dots. And since the final picture is already there (the event that has occurred , overlaying it over the dots you get to join it easily.. (Read more about Hindsight bias at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias )

In the days of limited media reach, the information that gets published in the mainstream media gets curated by lot of experienced people before the general public consumes the information. Since ‘different’ people go through the information at various stages, what comes out is a non-partisan, researched information; And propagating the conspiracy theory that would arise out of such information would be limited to the individual’s immediate sphere of influence. However, with the rise of Internet and social media specifically, any active user on social media platform has the potential to reach out to millions of users (within couple of degrees separation …and since groups or communities formed on social media platforms based on some common ground, it acts as an ideal launchpad for any conspiracy theory to take off. Also Internet have become the source of information or research for most media coverage now-a-days..thus the opportunity for any fringe theory to gain prominence through mainstream media has increased manifold…

Since most of the stuff put on the Net remains there - Internet never forgets- and as the reach of social media spreads, it becomes necessary for all the content creators on social media to think about the power in their hands and act responsibly

Time for Newspaper websites to upgrade their design

Newspaper websites designs are defined by 2 key features - Order and Regularity (of content updates)

Since most of the newspaper websites are dead ringer of their offline version..it comes with a baggage of having the same design/mastheads, editorial, colour schema, culture, language, etc. Order is built into the website design to replicate the above features..Thus like an actual newspaper content spread, you have sections built - Home page, International section, National section, Sports section, etc… Added to it, large quantity of content updates on a regular - if not realtime basis… Looking at the above points, it would seem, on the face of it, that technological impact on newspaper website design would be minimal.

While it is challenging to re-look at design of newspaper website; with the technological advancement and the change in the user behaviour of consuming content online, there are things that can be done without compromising on the publication’s overall vision and user experience.

From business point of view - a newspaper website objectives would be garnering more readers and making them spend more time on their website; and monetisation of the website…

A) Getting more readers:

There would be 3 types of people who would visit a newspaper website:

Existing readers of the print version
Online only readers, and
New readers who are seeking a particular information

For the readers who fall in the first category - it would generally be to get an update on the news they have read earlier in the day (or) to read a news that they had skipped reading earlier. Customization of access to news is the best way to keep these readers coming back. By customization, an user can choose which news he wants to follow, the topics of interest.

For online only readers, customization along-with intuitive design would be ideal. By intuitive design, it would also mean that tracking his news reading habits and highlighting similar news that would be of interest to him/her. For example, if at the time of customization, the user does not choose - Entertainment section… but tracking their web usage, we understand that they have been visiting the entertainment section frequently, then it website should be in a position to analyze the usage pattern and maybe display more entertainment related news in some specific section like “News that might interest you”

New readers are predominantly driven either through search engine results or through getting friends update… Hence the website should have high search and social quotient embedded into the design of the page. Social quotient need not just limit to SNS sharing buttons, but also activity updates on the readers social profile (could have privacy issues hence need to tread carefully)

B) Spending more time on the website

Keeping the readers engaged is a hard task. As users gets to do more and more activities online, the points of exit increases. One simple activity to keep the users on the website is to offer more things for them to do…but this could dilute the core purpose of the newspaper website and soon the website would look like a general interest website. The other thing that can be done is media convergence. Say for example, the newspaper website also offers an online radio that would run in the background. In an non-intrusive way, the user is also listening to music & or a sports commentary while reading the news. This is replicating the offline scenario of a radio playing in the backdrop while you continue with your routine. Also adding on video format of the news could be helpful in keeping the user engaged on the page

Monetisation

While the traditional ways of monetisation is key - advertisement and in some instances subscription… It would be a good idea for the newspaper to explore other avenues of monetisation. Maybe, having ad spots on the online radio mentioned above could be one source, packaging subscription in smaller packages - like 2 bucks for 100 ads free news articles. Since, getting readers to the website is also a type of promotion, sharing revenue with the existing user to bring more readers on the website would be a great way of getting new readers and hence more ad revenue. The model could work similar to Google Adsense… but more in terms of bringing readers through the links that the user would share on his/her social network.

Change is something that newspaper folks are averse to. But the very nature of technology is being adoptive and dynamic…and if any newspaper want to survive for the next 100 years; they need to embrace it and implement it