Google is continuing to release new projects aimed at the mobile market. They previously released Google Shopper which helps users find local deals and online prices for popular products. Now, they have brought the experience of catalog shopping to the iPad. Their newest product is called Google Catalogs, and it’s exactly what it sounds like it is.

This app brings digital versions of many popular catalogs to tablets. They cover the categories including fashion and apparel, beauty, jewelry, home, kids and gifts. They have hooked up with many top brands including Crate and Barrel, L.L. Bean, Lands’ End, Macy’s, and Sephora.

These digital versions bring a number of unique features to catalog shoppings. You gain the ability to zoom, tap on tags to get more information, or even look at cool pictures or videos. You can then look up products in nearby stores or find it to purchase it online. You can then share your favorite products and catalogs with your friends via email.

Another really cool feature of Google Catalogs is the ability to create your own catalog to share. You can collect your favorite products and pages from various catalogs and compile them into one set. Then, you can send that catalog to family or friends. I see this being a great way to establish a  gift list for loved ones to shop from.

If you want to check out Google Catalogs, it is available for the iPad now. Google promises that an Android version of the application is coming soon. Check it out and let us know what you think. Leave us a comment to have your voice heard.

One of the best things about the Internet is that it’s a great equalizer, enabling just about anyone to have a voice. The most potent demonstration of this egalitarianism is the review culture that the Web has spawned.

Now, with the Internet, just about any product or service can be reviewed by the people that matter most in the production and consumption cycle, the user. Criticism is no longer only within the purview of critics, and, as such, no matter who you are, you can submit a review so that others can read when they’re looking to purchase an item or patronize any business.

The best part about the reviewing culture on the Web is that it spawns a community feeling and brings people closer together, especially when it comes to reviewing local establishments. Here are a few sites to check out if you want to voice your opinion about a specific place, or you want to find out what are the most acclaimed spots to visit in any given location.

1. Yelp
Yelp is perhaps one of the most visible and well-known user review sites out on the Web today. Members can rate and review restaurants, businesses, entertainment venues, as well as other establishments like schools, museums, and more. Yelp is unique in that it also functions as a social networking tool, and has built a cohesive community following over the years.

2. Citysearch
Citysearch is another very popular review site whose main competitor is Yelp. Along with providing details about local business and enabling a platform for user reviews, Citysearch also periodically publishes its “Best of” rankings. Editors suggest categories and users can vote on the best business for a particular category.

3. Angie’s List
Unlike most local business review sites, Angie’s List focuses on services instead of hotels, bars, and restaurants. Angie’s List specialties include contractors for home fix-its and health care professionals. This site does require members to subscribe for a fee, but according to the company, the fees makes the information supplied on the site more reliable. Members can also inquire about services via fax or phone, as well as receive its monthly award-winning magazine with consumer tips and more.

4. Insider Pages
Like Angie’s List, the focus of Insider Pages is more on services than on eating and drinking establishments, although it does have a sampling of everything. Insider Pages is now owned by City Search although the two operate on different sites.
These are just a few user review sites that enable you to find the best that your local area has to offer. They are also useful if you are traveling in an unfamiliar city. For business owners, visiting these websites is a great way to assess how you can improve your business based on honest customer feedback.

Continuing their strong efforts to promote online shopping, eBay India now supports 27 new net-banking options in addition to the three options which were provided earlier – ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and Citibank. This is in addition to the Credit Card/Debit Card/Cash Card options. The complete list of supported banks is given below (in alphabetical order):

Axis Bank

Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait

Bank of Baroda

Bank of India

Bank of Maharashtra

Central Bank of India

Citibank

City Union Bank

Corporation Bank

Deutsche Bank

Development Credit Bank

Federal Bank

HDFC Bank

ICICI Bank

IDBI Bank

Indian Bank

Indian Overseas Bank

IndusInd Bank

Karnataka Bank Ltd

Karur Vysya Bank

Kotak Bank

Lakshmi Vilas Bank

Oriental Bank of Commerce

Punjab National Bank

Shamrao Vitthal Co-operative Bank

South Indian Bank

State Bank of India

Union Bank of India

Vijaya Bank

Yes Bank Ltd.

Addition of more net-banking options was always requested by the eBay.in community. In a country with 40+ banks (excluding co-operative banks), providing net-banking option for just 3 of them was something really serious to be taken care of. And now, it’s done.

Picture credit: Cheon Fong Liew

The buzz today everywhere is about harnessing the marketing power of social media to suit business needs. One of the more intriguing trends in Social media marketing is that of Social Shopping. Social shopping in simple terms is a hybrid of online shopping and Social networking.

Leveraging the power of social networking sites like facebook twitter is important in the context of e-commerce. This is because as more and more people take to online shopping for their shopping needs, and many of them are also tending towards online recommendations via social media. A Nielsen survey done in 2008 suggests that the internet has opened up a new world of shopping for a lot of customers. One of the important findings from the survey is that most of the customers, in fact, over 25% of them rely on recommendations when it comes to deciding where to buy from. Thus, recommendations play a heavy role in the decision making process. The below extract from Nielsen global consumer report of June 2010 clearly shows the power of recommendations when it comes to online shopping. Evidently, recommendations and reviews online are very important for a lot of purchase decisions.

The power of word-of-mouth is further made clear from the survey done by Harris interactive in April 2010 among 2000+ US adults.71% claim reviews from family members or friends exert a “great deal” or “fair amount” of influence. It’s not just about whatpeople are sharing about themselves through social media; it’s why they are sharing. Nearly 38% say they aim to influence others when expressing their preferences online and almost half 46% feel they can be brutally honest on the Internet.

This however, is nothing new when looked at from the larger perspective. Word-of-mouth has been one of the most powerful recommendation systems from a long time. It is the space and mode of transmission of word-of-mouth that has changed. The power of social media is very unique in this aspect. This is exactly where websites like ShopSocially , Kaboodle, Swipely that are based on the idea of recommendation based social shopping come into picture. Such websites exploit the power of recommendation based social shopping and provide a win-win model for both the customers and the sellers/online retailers.

Unlike the other recommendation based systems in the market there is something unique about the model used by ShopSocially and other websites like it. It is built on how friends help friends shop.

It gives a social twist to the shopping experience. Social shopping essentially is about gathering people friends or strangers alike into one place and let them exchange or swap their shopping experiences. When you want to shop for a product on internet and websites like ShopSocially offer a plethora of information. You would immediately get to know answer to questions like has any friend of mine brought this product?, how much did they buy it for?, where did they buy it from?etc. Apart from the assurance that someone you know has already brought the product, what this helps you in is that it builds credibility on the retailer in your mind. Also you may get to know about deals or offers at a retailer. The best part is that you can rely on the recommendation, unlike, a myriad of others that are available on internet where you may or may not know the credentials of the person who recommends.

Another aspect of social shopping is it makes it easy for you to go public about your shopping experiences. You can proudly show your purchase across to the world and get instant feedback on your purchases from your near and dear. For the retailers this offers tremendous opportunity as they get a lot of traffic back from such websites and a lot of this traffic can be converted into a new purchase.

The opportunity in this space for firms like ShopSocially in emerging countries like India is also steadily growing. According to Nielsen online shopping report 2010 Half the Indian consumers (50%) use social media sites to help them make online purchase decisions. This percentage is particularly high for the Asia Pacific region at 60% who use social media sites to help them make purchase decisions (compared to 43 % globally). According to the Nielsen report, 71% Indians trust recommendations from family when making an online purchase decision, followed by recommendations from friends at 64% and online product reviews at 29%. What is particularly interesting in the context of opportunity for websites like ShopSocially is that half the Indian consumers (50%) use social media sites to help them make online purchase decisions.

The quote below in a press release from a Nielsen director captures the scale of opportunity in this space :   There is a bit of a silent social media revolution going on in India at the moment and it is largely mistaken for just social networking. The truth is that discussion boards, forums and review sites are seeing high growth in terms of conversations and this is where many shopping decisions are being made.

Some of the social commerce statistics provided on Bazaarvoice provide fascinating insights into this space. According to the website 53% of people on Twitter recommend companies and/or products in their Tweets, with 48% of them delivering on their intention to buy the product. 81% of respondents said they’d received advice from friends and followers relating to a product purchase through a social site; 74 % of those who received such advice found it to be influential in their decision.
Clearly recommendation based social shopping is not just another variant of social networking. Its business value goes much beyond that. The power of conversation based shopping is huge and what the world is seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. As more and more people take to the internet for shopping needs the scale of these conversations is all set to increase. Websites like Shopsocially are thus eyeing a huge opportunity and have the potential to change the way we think about online shopping.

Image Credits: Dilbert, Nielson

Good news, shopaholics. Google has added a shopping tool to the Indian edition of its search engine. Now, you can compare product prices and hunt down the best bargain without having to navigate away from Google Search. The new shopping options can be accessed from the left sidebar, which appears when you click on the “Show Options” button.

The shopping tool aggregates data from more than 30 thousand Indian websites and automatically serves relevant product information and prices. It also provides you the flexibility of restricting your search to a certain price range. Take a look at the screenshot below to get an idea about the tool:

“Google’s shopping tool is another step toward our goal of making the web search results page more relevant for the specific type of information you are looking for”, said Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Product Manager at Google India.

The Shopping Tool works quite well and offers relevant results for a wide range of products. Unfortunately, it is tucked away in an obscure location and chances are that most users won’t even notice it. In my opinion, something as handy as this definitely deserves its special one box (at least during the initial launch period).

With Windows 7, Microsoft unveiled a newly designed online store to complement their brick and mortar stores. The website design is simple, elegant and offers a wide range of products. For quite some time Microsoft India has had an online store at BuyOriginalMS.com, the URL indicated Microsoft’s intentions behind the website — help consumers buy original Microsoft products. Recently, Microsoft India released an updated store at MicrosoftStore.co.in which now sports  the same design as the global website. If one was to visit BuyOriginalMS now, they would be redirected to the new website. My first visit to the new website made me cringe. There were three reasons for this:

• the logo placeholder has wrong dimensions. And this in my opinion is a horrendous blunder on the web designer’s part.
• the website has no favicon.
• some pages don’t have proper titles.

The range of products offered is limited and some products haven’t been added yet eg: Xbox 360. The website seems to be a work-in-progress which makes me wonder as to why would they decide to redirect their visitors to an incomplete website. Having said that, I am pleased and excited that Microsoft has localized the global store website for India and is even offering books for purchase. The website lists ‘Computers’ indicating that Microsoft plans to offer crap-ware free OEM PCs in India as well as Windows phones via the website.

One can shop using Mastercard or Visa card. The prices mentioned on the website are exclusive of taxes and delivery charges, products have varying Delivery charges and taxes.