Mega sales in e-commerce sites pushes affiliate sites traffic

Portals eying 30 % jump in revenue as festival sales extended and conversion rates almost doubled

The mega festival sales, which started this week, by major e-commerce sites has increased affiliate sites traffic. These sites allows users to compare price, features and styles of the products. Traffic has already rose by 40-50%, while conversion ratio also increased by 2.5-3%, which means more revenue for these sites.

The factors helped these sites including extended sales days (compared to one day, now almost a week), more modes/ avenues and products etc.,

There are so many e-commerce companies giving discount at the same time, so it becomes difficult for a consumer to choose from one particular portal. These affiliate sites help the users to compare three key things - price, features and styles - and they charge a certain percentage as commission from the e-commerce websites.

Abhinav Choudhary, founder of smartprix.com, which claims that it gets highest customers directly (not through search engines), said that the site has seen 40 percent increase in visits due to festival times on day one, when Flipkart started Big Billion Days, Snap Deal started Diwali Sale and Amazon started Great Indian Festive Sale.

He added, the new-age internet users looking for relevant information around local and personalised discoveries on their mobile, companies are still confused that from which portal is giving best price product. So companies like smartprix.com and other portals are helping consumer choose the right product from various portals.

Choudhary claims that on an average his site gets around 4-4.5 lakh comparisons and conversion rate, people who not only compare but buy after doing comparison, has increased by 200%, which in turn increased the revenue by about 100%.

Suresh Sharma, founder, ispyprice.com, another website which allows users to do comparison echoed his peers' view adding that he expects company's revenue will increase by around 30% from the current around Rs 1.5 crore due to the ongoing festival sales by the e-commerce website.

His team of around 20 people, allows users to compare prices, which changes almost every 50 seconds, through their website and apps instantly. Traffic rose by 40% to 25,000 every day now from around 18,000 before the festival sales. He added, conversion rate earlier was around 1.5%, currently it is around 3-3.5%

While these portals don't charge the users, they makes money by collecting a portion of the value of sale from the e-commerce companies. The commission ranges from 1-10%.

According to these websites, most compared was electronic items, mainly mobile phones, where the commission ranges from 1-4% and it contributes nearly 70% of the traffic, followed by tablets, home appliances and garments.

While industry average (commission for electronics) is around 2-4%, Amazon pay highest at 4%. For fashion and books, industry commission ranges around 6-10%.