Live commerce to virtual try on: Flipkart revamps app to woo customers

Introduces Image Search, Live Commerce, and Virtual try-ons for a better discovery experience for customers

Flipkart is introducing a host of new features through design changes on its app to serve different sets of customers that explore e-commerce this festive season. The aim is to provide shoppers with an improved and enhanced customer experience on the Flipkart app. 

The completely revamped experience is focused on visual design, ease of navigation, easy discoverability of deals and products, and an immersive and interactive experience with live commerce.  Flipkart is also undertaking significant design changes on its mobile app, including the introduction of a grocery tab to enhance the user experience to make it more intuitive and simple to navigate.

“The first 100 million online customers came from the metros and the next 500 million will come from tier-2 cities and beyond. And this is where a lot of our innovation lies in essentially making the app seamlessly work for a very diverse country,” said Bharath Ram, senior vice-president, user activation and retention at Flipkart, in an interview. “People here speak various languages and have different expectations about how the app should work for them.”

Ahead of the festive season, e-commerce firms such as Amazon, Flipkart and others are scaling up facilities across India and coming up with new innovations. Flipkart is also gearing up for its flagship The Big Billion Days (TBBD) sale event and Amazon would be hosting its flagship event The Great Indian Festival (TGIF). 

E-commerce retailers led by Amazon and Flipkart are expected to garner sales worth $11.8 billion this festive season, comfortably more than double the pre-pandemic figure of $5 billion in 2019, according to a report by consulting firm Redseer.

“Last TBBD we had 700 million (customer) visits and we are hoping this time it would be our largest TBBD ever,” said Ram of Flipkart. “This would allow us to showcase some of our innovations to the consumers. We want their experiences to be as smooth as possible.”

Ram said the firm has introduced a number of changes in Flipkart’s mobile app to provide easy access, particularly to the new-to-e-commerce customers across the host of categories along with multiple other benefits. 

For instance, building on customer research and indicative preferences, Flipkart has rolled out various design changes. These include upgrades in typography, iconography, layouts, animation and navigation, and colours to reduce visual clutter and improve the overall readability of the content.

Flipkart has also introduced several new capabilities that include ‘Brand Mall’ mode, aimed to offer a premium experience to customers and ‘image search’ to simplify and narrow down the product discovery journey for customers. These also include ‘live commerce’ to provide an interactive shopping experience, and ‘video cataloguing’ to enable customers to get dynamic information about the products such as fit, and fabric, to overcome vernacular and linguistic barriers.

Shoppers looking for branded products and a more premium shopping experience can now switch the experience to the ‘Brand Mall’. It is an easy way to discover products from famous brands. The regular mode will continue to offer value and deals for shoppers looking for an affordable selection.

As millions of new shoppers explore e-commerce they want to find out what their favourite celebrity wore recently and buy similar, trending products. Image search makes that happen with ease. All they need to do is take a screenshot of the outfit or item they are looking for and upload the same on the app by clicking on the ‘Camera’ icon. The search engine will then look for either exact or similar products to it.

Live commerce has been introduced to enable users to discover new products and learn about them in detail through influencer-led interactive video content on the platform. Across categories, millions of shoppers will now be able to watch live video content for make-up tutorials, curated fashion looks and even new phone and electronic launches. Features like 'chat and buy' will further allow shoppers to bargain just like they do when they shop at their local shops.

Customers can also find the ‘Try On’ feature on the product page of Flipkart. The users can opt for a ‘Live’ Try-On or by uploading a selfie to see how a product would look on them virtually. It enables users to virtually try on beauty products such as lipstick and foundation, and eyeshadow from brands such as Lakmé, Maybelline, Blue Heaven, Faces Canada, and L'Oréal Paris.