E-commerce websites comparative analysis.

Market Leader - Amazon

Competitor - Flipkart
Market Laggard – Snapdeal
Niche Player- E-bay

Target Market:
In all the 4 companies case the target market ranges from anyone over 5 who can use a
smartphone or website. This forms the audience and visitors of the websites. To be more
specific anyone who can purchase or can influence a purchase.
Home Page:
When we talk about homepage since all the E-commerce websites have multiple verticals
like a video-on demand service, recharge, bill payments etc. All the Homepages contains
hyperlinks and ads leading to various different businesses of the Company. The home page
also includes the deals of the day along with different categories under which different
products are offered by the company. Let’s understand this by having a look at the home
page of the amazon.

As we can see in the picture above the homepage of Amazon contains the following:

 Top deals
 Sign in
 Categories of products
 Links to it’s sub brands like Prime Amazon pay etc.
 Cart
Flipkart:

Similarly, like amazon the content on Flipkart website is on the lines of amazon and contains
the following:

 Top deals
 Sign in
 Categories of products
 Links to its sub brands like Prime Amazon pay etc.
 Cart
One difference that we notice is of the option of becoming a seller on Flipkart which amazon
doesn’t have on their website.

About us:
The about us section varies for all these different companies.
Amazon – In the image below we can see that when we visit the about us section of their
website, we see that it straightaway redirects us to their newsletter where we find different
articles about the company containing the top stories it gives you an option to subscribe to
their newsletter and there are different sections which leads to the page containing the
information of the company like what they do etc.
Flipkart- The about us section of flipkart is very different from that of amazon. If one visits
the about us section of the website. The first thing we notice is how they have visualised
their entire journey from where they began along with timeline of major events in the
company. Since these visuals tells us about the company, we can say that their approach is
more direct compared to amazon.

Snapdeal: In this case their approach is even more direct than that of flipkart as the about us
page of the website contains a simple text along with a picture. The text tells us about the
founders and how the company came into existence.
E-bay- The about us page of E-bay is the most comprehensive one in the list. It contains a lot
of images which gives us info about the company while a good amount of text is also used
which mentions the various different aspects of the company like the founders , it’s global
scale and reach etc.

Products and Services:

While all the four E-commerce websites offer different products under different categories.
The number of products offered by each website is so huge that it makes it difficult to
compare. While the categories offered are more or less the same. The products offered vary
based on the company’s tie up with the brands who sell their products on their respective
platforms.
For example Oneplus has a an exclusive tie-up with amazon to sell their products in India.
Hence one cannot find oneplus products on the rival website. Same is the case of Realme
smartphones and flipkart. Most of the handsets offered by realme is not available on the
rival websites.
Since Snapdeal and E-bay are laggard and niche in the country they don’t really have brands
selling their products exclusively on their platforms.
The number of products offered on Snapdeal and E-bay are very less compared to Amazon
and flipkart that dominate the E-commerce space in India.
When we talk about services Flipkart has some additional services to offer like flight tickets
booking. While Amazon has an inhouse video on demand service which is a part of the deal
for customers who pay for prime membership where they get the benefit of free and one
day delivery among others.
Amazon also has their payment service know as amazon pay and it is found on the home-
page of the website .

Pricing Range:
In all the three company’s case except E-bay the prices for products start from as low as
Rs10 and goes upwards of 20 lakhs.
Since E-bay doesn’t sell its products in India directly and all the products are directly
imported from the USA the pricing on E-bay is dollars.

Blog:
Every company’s treatment of their blog section is very different:
Amazon: the company’s page contains a main article which is highlighted along with the
top stories section which contains the latest and most read articles.
Flipkart: the company has less content compared to amazon. The page contains more
images compared to amazon. The amount of content available on the page is comparatively
less than that of amazon.
Snapdeal- Surprisingly this laggard has the best blog section compared to it’s competitor.
The blog page is divided into three sections with one section containing the latest blogspots
posted in the company. The middle section contains the highlighted stories and the third
section contains the latest happenings at the company and the life at snapdeal.
E-bay- As of 16th October 2022 blogs have been discontinued on E-bay and if one lands up
on their blog page they will see the text mentioned in the screenshot below.

Contact Us:
While all the websites require you to login to connect to the customer care executive. The
treatment of contacts is different in each of the company’s case.
Amazon:
Flipkart – the design of the page is extremely user friendly as every section is precisely
marked and the page has different sections which covers the commonly faced issues by the
users directly. The different sections help with the navigability aspect of the website.
Snapdeal- It has a very simple contacts us section where the page starts with FAQ’s and
contains the solutions to the frequently asked questions. And if that is not enough and one
scrolls down the web page they will find a section which allows them to connect to
customer care executive and talk/chat with them directly.
E-bay- It is very straightforward in the case of e-bay as just like snapdeal it contains the
FAq’s and a sections where you need to log in to talk to a customer care executive.
Navigability:
Since all the websites are owned and backed by big colgomanates the quality of the website
and all it’s features are industry leading if not the best hence navigability is never really an
issue when it comes to browsing the website and using the features provided by the
website.
Navigability can be defined as the degree to which how easy it is to find information on the
website.
If I had to rank the websites on the basis of their navigability it would be:
1. Flipkart
2. Amazon
3. Snapdeal
4. E-bay
The reason for this marking is a digital marketing student I personally found Flipkart’s
categories and sections better marked than amazon which improved the navigability aspect
of flipkart compared to amazon.
While Amazon no doubt has a brilliant website and navigability isn’t really an issue , but the
website is of Flipkart is just superior and better when it comes to navigability aspect.
Snapdeal being a small player in the market has a brilliant website for it’s size but obviously
given the people behind flipkart and amazon the website of snapdeal is no match for
Amazon and flipkart.
E-bay is a neiche player and has a perfectly usable website containing all the basic important
features and is also easy to navigate.
Content Style and presentation:
This part of the assignment can be divided into two parallels.
Amazon and E-bay adopt a similar strategy when it comes to content style while flipkart’s
and snapdeal design philosophy is very similar.
Amazon and E-bay use very muted colours like white in their website. While E-bay’s website
is mostly white and use of colours is very limited. Amazon on the top portions asnd different
parts of the webpages uses a light green colour.
Flipkart and snapdeal use colour in a more extensive way for example snapdeal uses to red
colour in different sections of their website with the combination of white. Flipkart uses
combination of blue and yellow . Though white is used in the background for product listings
and other details. But the use of blue and yellow elements is very prominent. While the use
of red by snapdeal is very subtle in nature.
While Amazon and E-bay use little visual tools for content and focus more on text instead
one example can be used to explain the same is the about us page of Amazon as we had
previously mentioned Flipkart and snapdeal were much more visual in their approach to talk
about themselves. Amazon and E-bay had a much more muted approach using text
containing the necessary information.

Website Responsiveness:
Since all these websites are E-commerce websites hence the can’t compromise on the
websites responsiveness part but obviously one is better than the other which can be
attrituded to multiple reasons like funding, market share etc. The ranking based on my
personal experience while surfing the respective websites are as follows:
1. Amazon
2. Flipkart
3. Snapdeal
4. E-bay
Amazon and Flipkart closely match each other when it comes to websites responsiveness.
But Amazon requires lower bandwidth than flipkart to access it webpages hence in a
country like India where the intenet speed varies meter by meter. Amazon gets an upper
hand when it comes to websites responsiveness.
Snapdeal comes a distant third because of it’s lower profile and market share compared to
flipkart and amazon. While the website in itself is highly responsive and is better than the
wesbites of other companies operating in different domains.
E-bay also has a good responsiveness but obviously can’t match the responsiveness of the
amazon and flipkart’s of the world.
Ease of use:
When it comes to ease of use here we have a clear choice and the ranking of the same
based on my personal experience is as follows:
1. Flipkart
2. Amazon
3. Snapdeal
4. E-bay
Flipkart has the best user interface and is the easiest to use.
Amazon user interface is not as good as flipkart or Snapdeal . but I still place it at the 2 nd
position because of better navigability and responsiveness.
Snapdeal has a better user interface than amazon but is not as good as Flipkart. The sections
are better segregated on Snapdeal but it loses out to amazon because of navigability and
responsiveness aspects.
E-bay being the neiche player ranks the lowest but I wouldn’t really deny the fact that the
company has a very serviceable website which works for multiple reasons,.
Overall Appeal:
When we are strictly talking about the overall appeal the ranking changes in the following
ways:
1. Flipkart
2. Snapdeal
3. Amazon
4. E-bay
Flipkart hands down has the best overall experience. The things that works for Flipkart are
as follows:
1. Use of colours
2. Visual appealing compared to other websites
3. Incorporation of visual images and design compared to text.
4. Better categories marked
5. Easier to use .
Snapdeal comes at 2nd and in my personal opinion is better than amazon for the following
reasons:
1. More brighter and appealing colours used
2. Easier to use compared to Amazon
3. Has sections and categories better placed than amazon.
Amazon has a good website but it comes third for the following reasons:
1. Use of muted colours. And too much white colour is used
2. Categories and sections could have been better marked.
3. Navigability is not good as Flipkart
E-bay has serviceable user experience but obviously there is a lot of room for improvement.
The changes suggested by me to all the websites are as follows:
Amazon:
1. Use of more colours in the website
2. Use of more visual tools
3. Better category segmentation
4. Improve the ease of use
5. Improve content Style and presentation

Flipkart:
1. Improve website responsiveness
2. Introduce a dark mode which can come in handy for colour blind people.
3. Cut down on Duplicate listings.
 4. Improve customer support.
5. Improve the home-page which can challenge amazon’s homepage
Snapdeal:
1. Improve websites navigability aspect.
2. Reach out to brands for exclusive products.
3. Avoid selling fake or unoriginal products on the website.
4. Try to improve market share through a website redesign which brings it at
par with it’s rivals.
5. Improve customer support.