Product Review: Flipkart — Search, Glitches — Part 2
In this part two review article about Flipkart mobile app, lets focus on its Search feature and some of the glitches found while reviewing.
Search
As mentioned in the part 1 article, Search and Menu structuring plays a huge role in product discovery. So, lets deep dive into the search feature in Flipkart app.
I was in the “Literature & Fiction” books section in the app. There were so many sub-sections under this main topic — I need to click on each of the sub topic in below screen to see the books under them.
So, I was trying to quickly search for “Romance” collections. Below is the search result screen. The app is searching for perfume, et all. Applying the context of the user (in this case, I was in Literature & Fiction section), the app could have shown me first the results for “Romance” in the Books section, followed by any other sections.
This was on a lighter vein. Though the app auto suggests “amazon mobile in Mobiles”, clicking on it just displays all mobile models in a new page.
In below screen, the usage of “filter” is amazing. The UX of this particular usecase is great. I searched for “fan” and the app displayed the top possible filters with a horizontal scroll — “table”, “ceiling”, “exhaust”, etc. It’s very practical, and adds value to end user. The ordering of the filter values are also appreciable.
Then, I clicked on “table” filter and instantly the app displayed all table fans. The response time was quick! Must be a great backend architecture with microservices implementation. Once I selected the “table” filter, the list of filters changed. Now, all the brands of table fan are displayed as filter values. Breaking the age old monotonous long list of filter into contextual, small pockets, and relevant sections is a brilliant implementation.
I clicked on “bajaj”, and I was presented with table fans by Bajaj. This usecase might look simple to crack on desktop, but on a mobile phone where the display real estate is a constraint, this search filter implementation is just brilliant.
Lets take a look at the semantic search intelligence of Flipkart app.
I searched for “black shirt” and below screen was displayed.
Then, I included “checked” in between the search words, and the app listed black shirts that have a checked design pattern. Its perfect upto this point. But, the result also displayed black checked shirts for women.
So, I appended the word “mens” to the search term. Now, the app displays black shirts that have checked design, and they are for men.
Next, I appended the budget condition to the search value — “under Rs 500”. At this point, the search broke, it displays shirts of all design pattern across price range. From my testing, it looks like the app can search upto three levels.
One more example of a semantic search condition. It worked.
Spelling mistakes in search terms were handled well by the search engine.
This is an interesting one. I was trying to search for possible gifts that can be given to women for anniversary. Below were the auto suggests and I clicked on Silver Rings section.
The list of silver rings were displayed. But, the strange thing was — (approx) for every scroll I did on the app, there was an ad slot of silver ring. In below screen, the first item is an ad.
One more scroll, I again see an ad.
One more scroll, and one more ad slot again. Did you notice the similarity in all three screens (two above and one below)? Take a look at them again. Got it? Here it is — the ad products are the ONLY products to have a review and rating. Is this by design? or pure coincidence? In both cases, the brand trust takes a hit, for sure.
For the same search term of women anniversary gift, I clicked on the Cloth section. Below is the search result. I would leave it to the readers to judge the relevancy of results.
Glitches
There were not many (visible) bugs on the app. Some of the bugs I noticed are highlighted below.
I went to “My Orders” page, selected a product and submitted five star rating for the USB product I purchased, refer below screen.
Now, when I went back to My Orders listing page, the rating is not captured. Only when I goto some other page in the app and come back again to order listing page, the rating was shown. Also, by mistake I gave a 1 star rating for the coffee-cup-speaker product below. Now, there is no way for me to change the rating, I actually wanted to give a 5 star rating for this amazing product.
I did a search and below screen was displayed. This is not displayed always, but rarely it does occur.
My PhonePe account was already active on Flipkart app. Still I got below push notification.
For the Moto X product, I clicked on “Pick Up Stores” to see the list of pickup stores in my pin code region.
I entered a pin code (560100) and the app displayed one store called Instakart where the Moto X could be delivered. I clicked on this pickup store. (side note: Notice the NULL in address)
Then, finally the app says it cannot deliver the phone to this pickup store in 560100 pincode. Its like a passenger asking a bus driver whether the bus will goto stop XYZ, the driver says yes, passenger gets into the bus, and then the driver says the bus will NOT goto the stop XYZ.
I tried multiple times to submit a review for a product I purchased, the app kept on processing the submission and finally I had to kill the app forcefully. The review was also not submitted.
Quick context: I bought a product in Flipkart for which there was Rs 3,000 cashback. I placed an order for Rs 3,000 using the cashback money in Flipkart Money (now, PhonePe wallet).
Now, under my “Transactions” page, the app displays below screen. There is no useful information a customer will get from this screen. What is “Others”? How do I see the full list of orders I placed for Rs 3,000? Where are the other card payments I have made? What’s my balance now?
This brings us to the end of part two review of Flipkart app. The other two review articles can be read here —
