Problem Statement

Improving Customer Experience and Catalogue Hygiene

Approach
The entire program was subdivided into 3 major projects as mentioned below:
1. Brand Gap Analysis
2. Catalogue Cleaning
3. Category Cleaning and Consolidation
Brand Gap Analysis
The idea behind this task was to come up with a list of brands that ShopClues needed to on-board at the
earliest based on a study carried out on the competition. The task was carried out separately for the
Watches and the Jewellery Category.
1. The products were divided into 3 segments based on their price range.
a. Mass Segment PIDs with price above Rs. 0 and below Rs. 499/b. Mid Segment PIDs with price between Rs. 500/- and Rs. 999/c. Premium Segment PIDs with price between Rs. 500/- and Rs. 999/d. Niche Segment PIDs with price above Rs. 5000/2. Then the competitors websites were studied to extract a list of brands that were available with all
the major competitors but ShopClues. The websites studied were Amazon, Flipkart and Jabong.
3. The Priority Lists, as they were called, were then considered for on-boarding the brands which were
unavailable till then.
Catalogue Cleaning
A lot of the active PIDs available on the portal do not have sufficient information displayed. Sometimes
in terms of the number of pictures uploaded or the picture quality or even at times the features and
descriptions. This results in a bad customer experience. Moreover, ShopClues doesnt have a dedicated
content team available for this very purpose. Thus, as a part of the catalogue cleaning process:
1. The list of top 1000 selling PIDs were identified for the month of March2016 and the PIDs for
Jewelry and Watches category were extracted from that list.
2. A total of 159 PIDs thus found were then used for the cleaning process.
3. As One or more than one of the below changes were executed on those PIDs:
a. Incorrect features were corrected, example an Analog watch listed as a Digital one
b. Missing features were added
c. Product Descriptions were edited to give more and correct information about the product
d. More images were uploaded for the product
4. The number of orders placed and conversion for those PIDs were monitored to see the impact of the
changes.

Category Cleaning and Consolidation

Merchants in ShopClues have the liberty to upload their products through the Product Feed Tool (PFT).
The existing PFT had minimal restrictions attached to it, be it the number of Mandatory Items for
products or the checks built in the tool. This resulted in one or several of the below problems:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

Incorrect tagging of the products

Incorrect description of the products
No standardized naming convention of the products
Incorrect features being listed
A lot of missing features

Now, to deal with the above or at least some of the above problems the below activities were carried
out:
1. Existing Data For the existing 487,984 PIDs of the Jewellery Category the below changes were
carried out
a. Items tagged under Jewellery and Jewelry were to be merged with Jewellery
b. New Sub-Categories like Religious Jewellery and Precious Gift & Articles were introduced
c. New Leaf Categories under Mens Jewellery
d. Consolidation of the Leaf Categories
e. Renaming of sub/leaf categories
2. Future Data Such that the future data has less number such issues the below changes were made
to the Product Feed Tool
a. More mandatory fields were added
b. The values of the mandatory fields were revised
The above changes were done post carrying out a detailed study on the competitors websites and
discussions with the team.

Solution
For all the aforementioned tasks the suggestions were actually implemented rather just being on paper.

1. Brand Gap Analysis

The analysis needs to be carried out regularly to keep the list of brands updated
2. Catalogue Cleaning
Either a dedicated team needs to be created or even the existing Catalogue team needs to
take care of what and how is being displayed to customers
3. Category Cleaning and Consolidation
a. Better checks needs to be in place
b. More mandatory features to be uploaded
c. Merchants to be educated about the importance of the correct information being displayed
on the portal