Product Review: Flipkart — Product Discovery, Improvement — Part 3
In the previous two part review articles about Flipkart app, we discussed about the app’s design, search performance, brand trust, menu structure, glitches and more.
In this part three (final) article, lets discuss about the product discovery in Flipkart and possible improvements to the app.
Product discovery
Using Search or Menu option, a user can arrive at a category listing page. Once a user is here, how does the product discovery happen that will lead to checkout. Lets discuss.
In below screen, the user is in “Video Games” category page. The entire page is segmented into multiple logical grouping of cards. This is good. At the bottom of the page, there is a horizontally scrollable filter component to nail down products. By placing this filter component at the end of the page for all categories, perhaps Flipkart wants users to browse (from top to bottom) through all well-thought card collections (inspiration) and then still if user is not finding what s/he wants, then the filter component at the bottom of the page can be utilised.
Once user applies the filter and sees a list of products, there is another filter page with a completely new design (refer screen below). Ideally both the usecases can be handled with a single filter design page.
There was a collection called “Suggested Mobiles”, but when I clicked on it, there were 61 mobile products displayed. Naturally, I was searching for the filter component to arrive at shortlist products, but there was no filter component here. If a user is looking for mobiles with dual-sim, optical image stabilisation, and a 4GB RAM as the critical parameter to arrive at a shortlist, then its going to take a lot of time for the user to do this.
The collections in each of the categories were impressive and well thought through. Flipkart has done an excellent mapping of data. For example, under “Literature & Fiction” books category, there were collections such as Editor’s Pick, Books on the Go, Essential Reads, etc.
There were ad creatives, when you click on it, a detailed landing page opens up. The best part is, its a clickable landing page. Meaning — you will be able to click on the “Under 599”, “Under 899” boxes, and the app will take you to saree listing page with filter applied for Rs 599 or Rs 899. This is sounding familiar? This is exactly how Myntra ad creatives are!
In below page, Laptop category page is loaded. Under the “Must have accessories on laptop” collection, the ordering of the products seemed a bit odd. Once you buy a laptop, will you buy a printer? I mean, “PRINTER”? Shouldn’t the first product to display be a laptop bag?
Yet another useful collections. Things like these sets Flipkart way apart from horizontal ecommerce players like Paytm. Flipkart has really gone deep into each of its categories.
In below screen, the Lens category page is loaded. Again, the collections are great. Here, products are grouped by its factual data or characteristic. But, how to take collections a step further? How about displaying collections by the end usage of the category product? For example, in Lens category page, there can be collections such as “Wildlife Photography”, “Insect Photography”, “Portrait Photography”, etc. Because, the lens used for each of these three collections are different. Under “Wildlife Photography” collection, all telephoto / high zoom lens can be displayed.
Now, how do we take the collection experience even higher? How about talking to experts and getting their view on the type of lens to choose for every occasion? The problem this approach will solve is — for newbies or people with less experience on a particular product category, it will help them to make a choice.
For example, renowned wildlife photographers Kalyan Varma, Giri Cavale, etc can speak about the type of lens to choose.
This can be seen as an inspiration blog that’s broken into multiple small segments and inserted into every collection of all categories.
In below screen, for Camera Lens product, I’ve selected the filter parameter of “250 mm & Above”.
Since I’ve selected 250 mm & above lens, the other filter parameter “Suitable For” automatically greys out all filter options except Wildlife. Impressive implementation.
For the “250 mm & above” lens filter I selected, another filter parameter called “Compatible Cameras” dynamically displays all cameras that can support the “250 mm & above” lens. This is sheer genius. Again, it shows the depth of domain understanding.
In the home screen, products are recommended to the user based on the browsing history. This is a first step towards personalisation.
Improvement
Lets look at the possible product enhancements for Flipkart. In my home page, LeMax2 mobile was listed as the suggested mobile for me. But, when I clicked on it, the product was not in stock. Perhaps, a similar mobile model that’s in stock can be displayed in the home screen.
In above screen, the critical data about the phone is its specifications. Especially, most of the time, only about 4 to 5 data points are critical to shortlist a product. But, the specification section (“Highlights”) is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Flipkart can do an A/B testing by placing this “Highlights” section at the top of the screen to see the impact on conversion.
I was trying (read: testing) to buy a mobile phone worth Rs 30,000. I chose Net Banking payment option, selected ICICI bank, went to the login page, didn’t enter anything and came back to Flipkart app. In the next 5 minutes, I got a SMS from Flipkart as shown in below screen. At first, the SMS content gave a shock that Flipkart is trying to “confirm my payment” which I haven’t made at all. Looks like this SMS is sent in both “failure” and “cancellation” payment usecases. If a user has cancelled the payment, the SMS message can be different (from a failure payment).
Below screen is the last order confirmation page for “Flipkart First” subscription. But, Flipkart is treating the subscription as a product and it looks like it has used the common product checkout screen for this subscription. Quantity field is greyed out, it says “Free Delivery by Today” (there is no product), Seller is Flipkart, it has got a “Flipkart Assured” tag, and Delivery is FREE. None of these are applicable for subscribing to Flipkart First.
Below screen is the T&C of Flipkart First. The devil is in details. This page has information that are customer-friendly, and conversion-impacting. Here is the deal — Flipkart First subscription can be called at anytime (no cancellation fee), and the charge will be on pro rata basis. Details like this should ideally be displayed on the Flipkart First description page and not buried under a lengthy T&C page.
This brings us to the end of the final part of this review series. The previous two part review articles can be read here —
