We are the online shopping assistant for customers: Vaibhav Lall, founder, Khojdeal

Founded in 2016 by Vaibhav Lall and his wife Vanya Gambhir as a deal discovery platform for the best Indian and international brands, Khojdeal has evolved to become an e-commerce enabler that is helping brands drive sales and augment their digital footprint. “How we do this is not just by curating all the best deals from more than 1500 online stores in one place, but also by offering customers proper insights on products they are looking for,” Lall tells Banasree Purkayastha in a recent interview. Excerpts:

At a time, when even the online marketplace is getting crowded, how does Khojdeal enable one to find the best deal?

Khojdeal aims to add value to the user’s shopping experience in ways beyond what a coupon website usually does. We intend to become a one-stop destination for consumers to stay updated not just about the active deals or cashback but also as an informative portal that acts as an online shopping assistant for them. We indulge in the specifics and even the smallest details and make it available for our consumers.

Our YouTube channel and blog are committed towards this belief and have been consistently churning out product reviews and informational videos, with an unbiased need to help our consumers.

How has the pandemic affected Khojdeal’s revenues? What were the challenges/ opportunities and how did you overcome/capitalise on these?

Sailing through the first few months post the pandemic was tough for us since the advertisers were calculating the extent of damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many paused their affiliate campaigns and it had a direct impact on us. However, it started settling gradually and we were back on track by September 2020.

Our team up-skilled with online courses during the lockdown to become more agile in this data-driven era and come out as more resilient for a post-Covid world.

What are the important trends in the deals discovery segment? How relevant are deal discovery platforms today?

Even though users still search for online shopping deals, the pandemic has drastically changed user behaviour. More and more people are turning to video to get more information about a product before they purchase it.

Khojdeal’s YouTube channel is a good place to go to for unfiltered opinions. Our reviewers test every product they talk about and explain whether those products are worth the costs, which helps you save money by avoiding them. The ability to compare prices ranks high on the list of why consumers prefer to shop online. Our videos make it easy for customers to compare prices and purchase products that fit their budgets.

How do you offer the customer a seamless journey from deal discovery to actually converting it to the final purchase?

Poor user experience leads customers to abandon your site and in fact, 88% of users are less likely to return to a site after a bad user experience. But if you provide a great user experience, you will earn customer loyalty, increase conversion rate, and encourage customers to spend more money on your products.

We try to provide a seamless user experience by making an optimised mobile website, improving page load speed, upgrading website design, and curating product reviews on our blog and YouTube channel. It is important to ensure that the design and structure of the app and website focuses on addressing consumers’ needs and supporting them throughout their shopping experiences. To do so, it is important to understand and analyze how users interact with your website, i.e., how they are searching for products, navigating, exploring a product page, and completing a purchase upon checkout.

There will be multiple points in the process when consumers get frustrated. It is essential to recognise these pain points and see what can be done to address them.