Social Media Comparative Analysis of Key Ecommerce Brands

The social media study carried out by Konnect Social aims to do a comparative analysis of the top 5 key Indian Ecommerce brands. The monitoring of these brands, spread across 12th July to 26th July, covers all the major social media platforms and the Web as well.

Here's the report -

Ecommerce brands are doing a decent job on social media when compared to other industries, primarily because they find their roots in the digital media itself. But what about when we compare them with each other? How do they fare w.r.t to each other?

Read the analysis -

Twitter

For Ecommerce brands, Twitter is primarily a consumer redressal forum. A big chunk of the mentions they received are complaints or queries from their users. With most of them asking for delivery status.

In the selected period Flipkart received maximum mentions and Fashion and You received least mentions. For Flipkart, which received maximum mentions, the week 15 Jul - 21 Jul was the most active where it received 880 mentions which accounts to 48.89 of the total mentions in this period. In the same week, Fashion and You received 224 mentions which accounts to 64.55% of their total mentions.

Flipkart's customer support queries were handled very well by it’s dedicated customer support handle, @flipkartsupport. Of the rest, Myntra was the most responsive. The study period did see ups and downs with mentions but most of them were on the days when the brand held any contest.

If you look at the reach of these brands amongst influencers, Flipkart again pips everyone else. Not only is it followed by the most number of people, but also has a wider effective reach by virtue of its influencer network. Myntra is also doing better but HomeShop18 and FashionAndYou need to pull up their socks.

Facebook

Looking at the size, there is not a marked difference amongst the brands. Yes, Flipkart has the biggest community but a paid push from its competitors can plug the gap. The difference, however, is palpable when you look at the engagement rate. Snapdeal managed to get maximum engagement at 4.3% while Myntra's was the lowest, less than 1%. Maybe Snapdeal boosted their posts, but hey, no one's stopping others from doing the same.

In the selected period, Snapdeal had 22 Jul - 26 Jul as the most popular week which accounted for 18% (8851 post interactions) of their total engagement. In the same week fashionandyou.com generated 10392 post interactions, flipkart generated 2079 post interactions, HomeShop18 generated 10705 post interactions while Myntra.com generated 2038 post interactions.

Consistency is what seems to be lacking here. For all the brands. But Flipkart seems to be the worst offender here with a wildly fluctuating engagement rate over time. Their inability to sustain a consistent engagement rate even after being online for so long is a surprise to me. They need to devise a content strategy that gets them regular engagement.

YouTube

For Flipkart, short videos have garnered the most eyeballs. These short videos are nothing but their catchy TVCs which have been received very well by the audience. Snapdeal and FashionAndYou disappointed me with their inactivity while HomeShop18 is busy pushing long form ads.

Content-wise, Myntra has start creating some really good content that not only provides value to their consumers, but is also a nice branding activity.

But people's love for Flipkart's content is evident. Its videos receive 17 'thumbs-up' for every 'thumbs-down'. The closest any one comes is Myntra which bags 8 likes to every dislike.

Web

Konnect Social also monitors conversations from around the web and the studied period found that ecommerce brands received most mentions from deal sites/blogs. Even here Flipkart received the maximum mentions. Snapdeal also got a good response by bagging mentions from deal sites. But online consumer forums did register several negative conversations about these brands from people who have been disappointed by their service.

They need to be active in resolving such complaints as soon as possible. The swiftness with which they address complaints on Twitter must be exhibited here as well.

In the 15 day period, Flipkart was reported several times by news portals owing to its $200mn funding.

Conclusion

Looking at the study, I am happy that Ecommerce brands are making good use of social media. Contests, campaigns and customer service, they are doing a fairly good job.

But they need to be more consistent with it. Blow hot, blow cold is not how they should be approaching social media. Also, they need to take inspiration from Myntra and come up with catchy YouTube content. Yes, you can come up with funny TVCs like Flipkart, but providing value add content should be your core focus.

As far as the web is concerned, may be they need to push their PR team to stay in the news most of the times. The more you're in the news, the better for your brand.

Download the full report here: