Team-BHP - The Online Shopping Thread

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Originally Posted by SideView (Post 4918108)

Have you ever thought Amazon/Flipkart might be messing with the search on purpose.

The more time we spend on website browsing through random stuff more likely we are to buy things just like real life window shopping in supermarket.:)

Of course they are !! I know that. The problem I have is with totally unrelated or related but dissimilar search results.
For example searching for office chairs and Amazon showing sports shoes in the results or searching for office chairs and seeing armchairs in the results.
That too when I haven't otherwise been searching for or discussing these items. These are just examples.

@S : In the past I have rarely used categories and managed to find stuff. This habit was due to the early Indian e-commerce days (mostly ebay which I still miss) when lazy or stupid sellers often didn't select the correct category or put the item in multiple categories and such stuff which often meant that using a categorised search resulted in a product not showing up even though I knew that it was available.
Also on Amazon even searching for the exact item sometimes doesn't show results immediately, also with minor syntax errors.

For example searching for Castrol Magnatec 5w30 engine oil instead of 5w30 engine oil. It might show me Castrol 5w40 and other brands on the first page and the actual product will be at the bottom or on the second page when I'm sure you agree my keywords were correct.

Or suppose I don't put a "-" in between 5w30 which is present in the listing. Then too the actual product might show up several pages deep or not at all whereas the early results might be other engine oils or maybe even table lamps and dishwasher soap all for a lousy "-"

These are the little things that annoy me

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 4918131)

Why should its search not be as powerful and accurate as google? Some sort of commercial advantage to making it sloppy?

That is quite possible; but it might have dawned on them by now that allowing you to zero in on the right product quickly is far more advantageous in the long run than artificially erecting barriers (not to mention regulatory scrutiny etc.). So it could also be due to lesser investment made in search technology, don't you think?

Amazon is a tech company and Google is a tech company; but there ends the similarity. Google's raison d'être is search. Amazon's is e-commerce. So it is also possible that Google only has the structure in place to make your searches return exactly what you want, and Amazon only has the infrastructure in place to deliver your product to you as quickly as possible.

To me this only means that if the two companies were to work together, it would be a fantastic experience for us shoppers. Say Google-powered search of Amazon's inventory and Amazon inventory available from Google's search results wherever they appear.

Quote:

Originally Posted by binand (Post 4918152)

Amazon is a tech company and Google is a tech company; but there ends the similarity. Google's raison d'être is search. Amazon's is e-commerce. So it is also possible that Google only has the structure in place to make your searches return exactly what you want, and Amazon only has the infrastructure in place to deliver your product to you as quickly as possible.

Delivery is one thing. They are a retail company: without selling, all the delivery infrastructure in the world is useless.

It is one reason I prefer Amazon to Flipkart. The site experience, whilst far from perfect, is superior. At times, Flipkart's site is not even stable. Amazon just-about-never tells me the oops-something-went-wrong rubbish that I see on Flipkart.

It is a shame. As many of us would have been, before Amazon came here, I was an established Flipkart customer. Flipkart lost my custom.

One of the biggest bloopers that Flipkart dropped was their stupid ‘app-only’ experiment. I was a regular with flipkart until then. Through their mobile website. Never tried amazon till then. As a person who doesn’t want to install app for every damn thing in the world (and also due to small storages on my phones), I shifted to amazon, which was fine with my phone’s web browser. Though one of my initial orders wasn’t delivered quite to my satisfaction, but they made up offering to return the product quite hassle free. Though I didn’t return it but that hassle free return was quite unheard of.

In my opinion and experience, flipkart lost quite some shoppers due to that 2015 stupidity. Though I still order from flipkart but the ratio to amazon is like 25:1!

Meanwhile Flipkart continues to beat Amazon in gross sales.

"Walmart-owned Flipkart seems to have beaten Amazon fair and square in the first week of the festive sale between October 16-21. A report by market tracker RedSeer Consulting claimed that Flipkart is estimated to have posted a little over double the sales of closest rival Amazon."

https://inc42.com/buzz/flipkart-topp...-festive-sale/

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Originally Posted by civic-sense (Post 4918371)

Not surprised. Flipkart had better sale items with more options. Even after being a Amazon Prime member 90% of my sale shopping was from Flipkart. Amazon simply doesn't have great deals in sale on most items. Also, Flipkart app is easier to navigate and find stuff than the Amazon app.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 4918131)

If google search results were as bad as Amazon, they'd be a small, irrelevant company today.

Bottom line is that Amazon is a tech company. And a huge one. And it only has to search one set of data which is its own. Why should its search not be as powerful and accurate as google?

Don't praise Google too soon. Its search is not that perfect. Unless you use modifiers and wade through dozens of search results, you don't find the result you are looking for. Search Engine Optimization people have been gaming the results for a long time. Google has about 200 factors in its algorithm to rank pages.
And it constantly churns the algos every few weeks. There was a time it was good. But to combat the gaming people did with SEO, they threw the baby along with the bath water.
The AI they use is good in the sense it can suss out the intention of the searchers in a better manner.
I will give an example here: If you search for the word - 'buy' , the AI will give the following words closely associated with your search word:
sell
purchase
bought
buying
acquire
buys
selling
sale
acquire
buys
selling
sale
offer
offering
sold
customers
pay

PS: The company I work for has been in the field of AI for a long time - long before the term AI became a buzz word. They are using AI to deliver health/medical content since 2004.

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Originally Posted by harry10 (Post 4918525)

Exactly. The greatest deals I have got during sale events are from Flipkart. I got my TV, AC, latex bed, laptop, washing machine etc from Flipkart. And I like the Flipkart app better than Amazon. They list all great deals in the home screen itself, while in Amazon you have to hunt for them.

It is easier to find the right product in Flipkart than Amazon. Flipkart has more product filters than Amazon. I was searching for a monitor, and in Flipkart they had filters by panel type (IPS/VA/TN), speaker, connectivity, curved/flat etc while Amazon tops at screen resolution. And it is true with all categories.

But during regular days prices in Amazon are lower than Flipkart, and that's why my regular shopping happens at Amazon. But during the sale days I always end up buying big ticket items from Flipkart.

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Originally Posted by harry10 (Post 4918525)

A completely different experience for me on this festive sale. Did most of my shopping from Amazon. Got better deals, delivery time was less and items got delivered on or before time.

Flipkart had much longer delivery time yet almost every item arrived late. Have not received a couple of items which were due on 21st. But the best one- ordered a pair of UCB Trouser and got a shirt from the same brand. Perhaps due to the bumper sale, Flipkart is still processing the return request. I will also lose the SBI card discounts since the cart value of that order is now less than 5K.

Since the lockdown, most products in Flipkart are either unavailable, not-deliverable or have longer delivery time/ crazy price at my area (Gurgaon).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 4918131)

...
Some sort of commercial advantage to making it sloppy

Yes, that's the reason search results are never accurate on e-commerce sites. It is done deliberately to (mis) lead you to sponsored products and show you many more products than you want. Sometimes, I use advanced search operators on Google image search (for products on Amazon) to narrow down to the most appropriate products and then use the Google provided link to open the correct page on Amazon.

Something like this would get me the right pictures:

Quote:

site:www.amazon.in plug electrical "3-pin" -"2-pin" UK -USA

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Originally Posted by Prowler (Post 4918534)

Don't praise Google too soon. Its search is not that perfect.

Sure. And one of the worst things about it is that if I am googling an object, I first have to wade through all the e-commerce pages that sell that object.

On another occasion, of course, that might be what I wanted, so this is a tough annoyance to deal with. Most often, though, it is not. I can go to Amazon et al direct. If adblockers can block the actual advertising in google results, they ought to be able to block the "advert" e-commerce listings too. Yes? or no?