Top 10 Indian E-Commerce Sites Traffic Comparison & More

Nice information with graphics - http://trak.in/tags/business/2014/06/04/top-10-indian-e-commerce-sites-comparison/

One of the graphic copied here for reference -

Shopping 2.0: a small glimpse (part 2)

In case you missed the part 1, here is the link.

Interesting techie things continued -

4. Amazon Fire phone is yet to be released Amazon phone that besides giving you smartphone capabilities helps you get into Amazon eco-system aimed at increasing sales.

Fire introduces a feature called Firefly that takes advantage of the smartphone’s camera to identify things like movies, books, games, CDs, food and more just by pointing camera at them. Any identified product can be added to Wish List or ordered on Amazon straight from Fire phone. Firefly can also identify songs you’re listening to, and it can even listen to a show, and then let you access that specific scene on Amazon.


5. WineGlass app helps you choose the perfect Wine bottle by providing information about any wine. The user can just take a picture of a wine list at a bar or restaurant. WineGlass will instantly scan the image and give you an interactive version on your

This kind of scanning and exploratory capability can be extended to any app.
iPhone. WineGlass shows you ratings, reviews, price information and food pairings for each wine, helping you make smart choices for your own taste and budget.

Measuring sports sponsorship (McK article)

With Football WorldCup rounds the corner, there is a nice article from McKinsey on how to measure Sports Sponsorship. Here are salient points -

• Articulate a clear sponsorship strategy—the overall objective of their portfolio, the target demographic, and which stages of the consumer decision journey (awareness, consideration, purchase, loyalty) sponsorships can support
• Find Cost per reach and optimize according to that. Favor exposure to the target demographic over total numbers.
• Increase Unaided awareness per reach - Besides acquiring sponsorship rights,its important to spend on activation—that is, marketing activities such as promotional booths and merchandise to promote the sponsorship.
• Measure Sales/margin per dollar spent - Track data on spending and reach (among a host of other media variables) over an extended period to establish links between sponsorships and sales, and then isolate the impact of sponsorships from other marketing and sales activities. 
• All sponsorship activities should enforce consistent brand image so that Long-term brand attributes are enhanced

Shopping 2.0: a small glimpse (part 1)

Here are some interesting (techie) things happening on shopping front -

1. Amazon Dash is a small hardware that helps capture any shippable item into a 'Dash' via scanning that product's bar code or saying the product name to the device, which can then be viewed as a list on Desktop or mobile device.
The beauty of this device is that you don't have to remember and keep recording your emptying groceries. Just use this device and capture it.





2. Hiku is a similar device as Amazon Dash just that while Amazon Dash ties itself to Amazon Fresh, Hiku has no such association to any marketplace yet.

3. Tesco's virtual store as the name suggests is a virtual store wherein large images of life-size store shelves filled with goods are pasted onto walls and doors. Each good has a small barcode which shoppers can use to take pictures and thus create a goods cart.

"You place an order when you go to work in the morning and can see the items delivered at home when you come home at night," said a spokeswoman for Homeplus.


Read part 2 for more techie updates.

How Web Design Is Changing: Trends & Technology and Bootstrap

Here is a nice article on changing web trends.  The article talks about responsive web design, grid layout on designing front and story-telling and infographics on content authoring front.

For the former, Bootstrap is a nice framework that can be used. The next version of my website WebinarBucket will have the bootstrapped design. 

Good to great Product Manager

A friend of mine recently asked me about what makes a good product manager. There is vast material available on internet around this (see this, this and this), so I will not delve into those details. Instead, based on my own experience working as Product Manager, here are three important things that would probably make you from good to great!

• Work on 80-20 prioritization - Figure out those 20% things from feature backlog that would get 80% value to customers. Use whatever aids in that 20% selection, from number crunching around customer value, to using customer prioritization models, to 100 dollar tests, to market analysis, to competitor analysis, etc. but don’t underestimate your intuition value. Navigating your way through various quantitative models and deciding on final prioritization is an art that is mastered over time!

 

• Knack for a sharp user experience- Take a cue from Apple products aka Steve Jobs factory! No matter how good the back-end system is, the product user interface has to look sleek to be able to sell. Although most companies will have a team of Usability Designers to design your product, having an acumen for usability is an important aspect of product management skillset. 

 

 
 

• Ability to influence  All- Successful PdMs are great negotiators and influencers. Make friends with all, including key customers, engineers on the product, and internal stakeholders. You should be able to convince and motivate your team about what they need to build and in the time asked for! Internal stakeholders have to be sold of the idea at each level and battling politics even before its sold to customers .

 

Photo Credits
http://hardcourtlessons.blogspot.in/2010/10/influence-is-like-flowers-and-candy.html
http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/should-apple-make-a-macbook-ipad-hybrid
http://simplify360.com/blog/listen-and-say-80-20-rule-of-social-media/

Book Review- Halo Effect

Halo Effect

By Phil Rosenzweig

The book talks about how different management gurus point to high financial performance of a successful company and then EXTRAPOLATE it to believe high on other counts – strategy, values, people and leadership. The author points out that our study of the successful companies is deluded based on HALO EFFECT. The author pokes fun at bad science of the management world and believes there is no publicly available secret to a successful company. In the preface the author writes “Most management books try to answer the first order question: What leads to high performance? This book sets out to answer- Why is it so hard to understand high performance?” Towards the end the book sets out to give some principles which are not guaranteed source of high performance but leads to a more thoughtful approach.

The book in multiple chapters take case studies of multiple companies whose policies were lauded when they were successful and then ridiculed for poor performance when they started showing losses - Lego (Danish toy company), Cisco, ABB, Intel to name a few.

So what exactly is Halo Effect – it is a tendency to make inferences about specific traits on the basis of general impression. As author explains in one of this example- George Bush’s rating rose after Sep 11 attack as country stood by their President which is ok. However, on a question related to handling of economy his rating increased from 47% to 60% as well. Now whether his handling of economy suddenly became better in weeks after Sep 11 is a question mark. The American public conferred a Halo on their President and made all favorable attributions to him. In business there are HALOS every where – in people, in leaders, surveys. When a company's sales and profits are up, people often conclude that it has a brilliant strategy, a visionary leader, capable employees, and a superb corporate culture. When performance falters, they conclude that the strategy was wrong, the leader became arrogant, the people were complacent, and the culture was stagnant. In fact, little may have changed -- company performance creates a Halo that shapes the way we perceive strategy, leadership, people, culture, and more.

In the appendix of this book there are tables showing the performance of the companies studied in "In Search of Excellence" and "Built to Last", two great management books of their time. It is interesting to note the difference in performance in the years before and after these studies.

Overall, highly recommended!