AllIndiaDeals - Indian version of BensBargains / FatWallet
Shopping discount / coupon aggregators have thrived in the US market for quite some time now. Fatwallet, Bensbargains, deals2buy are some of the major movers and shakers in this area in the US market. The business model is simple - Aggregate deals on consumer products - ranging from electronics to apparel and make revenues from advertising or CPC referrals. There is a huge fan following for all these sites in the US. Traffic to these sites during the holiday sales (especially Thanksgiving and Christmas) is pretty significant.
With the rise of shopping portals in India, it doesnt come as a surprise that similar sites are emerging for the Indian audience. AllIndiaDeals, DiscountsIndia are a couple of entrants to this arena. They are basically Fatwallet redux - albeit for the Indian audience. They aggregate shopping deals for products ranging from apparels, books to electronics and home furnishings.
DiscountsIndia has several major usability issues:
1) Their site is not tested on Firefox - the layout is all messed up on Firefox
2) To submit a deal, you have to Register & Sign In — a H-U-G-E no-no for a site that partly relies on user submissions
3) They have a lot of spam-look-alike link referral type of content on the left section of the main page
4) There is no clear way of contacting them for help or support. There is a small ‘inform us’ link that occurs in the footer and which can be missed very easily
On the contrary, AllIndiaDeals does a great job at execution when it comes to this extremely nascent area in the Indian market. At this time, they seem to update the deals daily using a combination of merchant feeds and manually handpicking the deals. They also have the provision for users to submit deals to the site. A very useful feature for the end user is to view deals by day of the week. Having frequently used similar sites, I know how much of an impact this small feature has on the usability of the site. They seem to have a good amount of listings across the various categories. I’m sure that with time and increased adoption by the Indian audience, these listings will continue to grow.
At this time, AllIndiaDeals comprises of two founders - Praveen and Nidhi and are looking for qualified people to join their team.
I do have a few suggestions for them:
1) For some of the listings, the description looks very cluttered at times. You can probably retain and list the five - six most important features or seek an alternative approach to reduce the clutter
2) Make the site more viral by providing a ‘Email to Friend’ feature for the deals
3) Provide an ‘expiry time’ (or something similar). As an end user, I would be confused whether only the current weekday’s deals are valid or if I can click on any previous weekday and those deals are still valid.
Overall, I think AllIndiaDeals does a great job in executing. Of course, with time, their popularity will only increase as the Indian audience joins the deal-mania-bandwagon. And if AllIndiaDeals keeps playing their cards right, they would have a huge headstart.
I wish them good luck with their endeavors.
February 1st, 2007 at 4:54 am
Dear Pranav,
Thanks for sparing time to put forth your thoughts. Your suggestions are well taken and soon we will add the suggested feature to allindiadeals.com.
Regarding the ‘expiry time’ for deals, its hard to find real ‘deals’ which are available for very limited time period. Instead most of the online store carry discount for until the product lasts. So we have removed the “expiry date” feature for a while. However we constantly check all the deals and remove stale deals if any.
CPC based model and referral marketing is still in the nascent stage in India, hence we need to educate the online merchants about the benefits of this based model and the amount of traffic/sales we can drive to their business.
e-retailing is still to pick up in India but it going to explode in a year or so. Great opportunities for merchant and consumer are about to unfold. Anyone who wants to play this game should buckle their shoes now!
Thanks,
Nidhi Modi
http://www.allindiadeals.com
February 1st, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Hi Pranav,
Thanks for your valuable feedback. We are currently in the process of revamping our site to comeup with various usability features. This would enhance the look and feel of the site. We have taken all your suggestions in to account and would be coming up with changes very soon.
Thanks
Srini
http://www.discountsindia.com
February 2nd, 2007 at 12:32 am
@Nidhi - I agree - in the near future this market will only shoot upwards
@Srini - Just so that you do not misinterpret my feedback - consider it constructive criticism.
-pranav.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:42 am
..you guys need to be original…make new ideas..
allindiadeals really looks like a website built by a kid..please revamp
March 14th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Hi,
There seems to be another player in this shopping DEALS area and also includes comparison shopping. The name of the singdeals (http://www.singdeals.com)
Regards
April 17th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
i have heard http://www.sastaSauda.com is coming up with desi deals. Currently they are focused in US market only. And their site is amazing, even more features then deals2buy or other US sites. Not sure if they have some big VC backing.
looks like you got serious competition.
May 29th, 2007 at 1:31 am
Adding the this is http://www.dealmaadi.com - a user-rated approach to help shoppers find both online and offline deals in India.
Regards,
Rajiv
June 14th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I like http://www.discountsindia.com
February 13th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Soon http://www.elivedeals.com is comming up with deals in INDIA.
February 16th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
No Spamming Saurbh Mehta of sastasauda.com
You are the notorious spammer who needs to stop SPAMMING ?
Does your employer VERIZON knows that you runing this site and illigally spamming the web with it ?
Do you know on H1B VISA you cant start the business ? Also spamming is not allowed for any one ?
STOP SPAMMING
March 14th, 2008 at 6:18 am
I am inspired by reading this article and want to start a similar website of my own. Deos anyone know which software websites like http://www.unodeals.com use to aggregate deals?
July 25th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Nice article. Another site worth visiting for content relevant to India http://www.shopsmart.in