With fashion in focus, women the main target of ecom firms

During its early days, ecommerce firms paid little attention to women shoppers. If a firm initiated talks to raise funds for a woman-centric start-up, investors laughed them off. Time has taken a full circle now. Today, fashion is considered to be among the high margin categories and every online retailer wants to cater to women shoppers.

New strategies to target women shoppers

Experts point out that in the last two to three years, there has been a tremendous change in the attitude of ecommerce ventures, and they are willing to invest setting up exclusive set of customers. With rise in urbanisation, number of working women, internet penetration in smaller towns and easy availability of smartphones, growth in the number of women shoppers has been astonishing. Several ventures now only cater to only women female consumers.

As per industry estimates, there are 28 million active internet users in India in the 18-44 age group in SEC A and B cities alone and another 28-30 million in SEC B and C towns, and these exclusive firms are focusing on the vast opportunity available in these fast growing markets.

Exclusive women-centric online portals such as Limeroad and leading marketplace models like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon et al have their eyes set on this growth category. While most get around a third of their business from women, they are assured that these numbers can easily cross more than 50 percent soon. The best part about shopping online is availability of any style, brand or product from any corner of the country, which can be ordered sitting in the comfort of one’s home and also get delivered.

Women-centric brands reap benefits

Buying lingerie was never an easy task for women, who often made a hurried decision at offline stores. Ecommerce ventures like Zivame have now made their lives simple by not only offering a wide variety and brands across lingerie, sleepwear and shapewear categories but by also helping them with a perfect fit with the help of modern technology.

The gimmicks behind their success believe experts, is easy to manage workforce, focus on technology and effortless customer service, better shopping experience, wide reach, and reaching out to experienced female e-shopper looking for more. As a part of their mission to growth, these women-centric platforms offer tailor-made services like video catalogues, interactive product displays and a loyalty programmes apart from trial-at-home, alteration as per required size, same-day delivery, and instant exchange in case of premium products and so on.

Exclusive styles, lucrative offers, global as well as domestic brands and fashion labels, easy returns and payment options including cash on delivery are some of the featured that have lured women to get hooked onto shopping online. While fashion ecommerce app Myntra picks up return orders the next day with no questions asked, Snapdeal's Shopo unit lets buyers and sellers interact directly on its platform.