Summer Internship Project Report

On

Identifying, adding and streamlining various digital marketing mediums on

their amiability: focusing on Reach, Engagement and ROI.

At

Triveni Ethnics

In Partial Fulfillment Of

PGDM Batch XXV

Submitted To

Prof. Subir Verma

By

Avik Bal

Roll No. 251147

FORE School of Management, New Delhi-16

June 2017
DECLARATION

I am, Mr. Avik Bal, Roll No. 251147, have completed my summer internship at Triveni

Ethnics, 1018-1025, 1st Floor, Anupam Textile Market, Ring Road, Surat -, Gujarat -

395002, and have submitted this project report entitled Identifying, adding and

streamlining various digital marketing mediums on their amiability: focusing on

Reach, Engagement and ROI. towards partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

award of the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (FMG 25) 2016-18.

This report is the result of my own work, no part of it has earlier been comprised in any

other report, monograph, dissertation or book.

Avik Bal

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CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Mr. Avik Bal, Roll No. 251147, has completed his summer

internship at Triveni Ethnics, 1018-1025, 1st Floor, Anupam Textile Market, Ring

Road, Surat - Gujarat - 395002, and has submitted this project report entitled

Identifying, adding and streamlining various digital marketing mediums on their

amiability: focusing on Reach, Engagement and ROI towards partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the award of the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (FMG

25) 2016-18.

This report is the result of his own work and to the best of my knowledge, no part of it

has earlier comprised any other report, monograph, dissertation or book. This project

was carried out under my overall supervision.

Date:

Place:

Internal Faculty Guide

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I sincerely thank FORE School of Management & Triveni Ethnics for giving me this

opportunity to carry out a Project with an ethnic wear brand and get exposed to the

ecommerce industry, e-tailing segment, textile category. It has been a privilege to work

with Triveni Ethnics and I sincerely thank them for allowing me the privilege to work

on their online marketing mediums. During the course of this project I have been

involved in identifying the various online marketing communication channels, the

industry norms and trends, the ecommerce industry as a whole and most importantly,

the consumer behavioral attributes in online purchasing.

I also thank Prof. Subir Verma who supervised me throughout this project. Without his

esteemed help the project would not have been such a success. His coordinated

suggestions has aided me in overcoming the barriers I faced while working on the

project.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Arvind Saraf, Director, Triveni

Ethnics, who was my mentor in the company for the project. His constant monitoring

and guidance has been an essential ingredient of my project. The way he gave me

the opportunity and confidence to go ahead in the project was truly encouraging. I

would also like to extend my gratitude and humble regard to Miss Vitika Mehta,

Marketing Manager, Triveni Ethnics for being a constant guide cum mentor in assisting

me with her valuable inputs, not only about the digital marketing channels but also

enlightening me about the textile industry and marketing outreach activities in

ecommerce industry as a whole.

I have learned a lot of valuable lessons from the industry experts. Working with them

has been an immensely enriching experience which I believe, would help me a lot in

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my career prospects. The company as a whole has helped me morph my nascent

thoughts to a matured marketing knowledge base which I am confident to be able to

put into valuable endeavors in future.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Topic Page
Number

Declaration .. i

Certificate . ii

Acknowledgement iii

Table of Content . v

List of Figures vi

Executive Summary 1

1 Introduction .. 3

1.1 Organization Background 3

1.2 Relevance 7

1.3 Literature Review . 8

1.4 Project Objective .. 14

2 Methodology 15

2.1 Project Design . 15

2.2 Data Collection and Sampling . 16

2.2.1 Web Data Analytics .. 16

2.2.2 Web Performance Audit .. 18

2.2.3 SEO Audit .. 21

2.2.4 Social Media KPIs . 26

3 Results and Discussion 31

4 Conclusions and Recommendations 36

5 Further Scope of Studies 39

6 Annexure 40

Research Papers Reference. 40

Web Sources Reference . 42

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 LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Indian Textile and Apparel Industry

Figure 2: India's Apparel Exports

Figure 3: E-tail and Retail Market Share Breakup

Figure 4: Percentage Share of E-tail across world markets.

Figure 5: Category Split of E-Commerce in India, *Includes footwear, Bags, Belts,

Wallet, Watches etc.

Figure 6: Percentage Contribution of Men, Women and Kids category in Apparel

and lifestyle E-tail.

Figure 7: Web Traffic Sources (or channels) in a Day. Traffic Data for 24 April 2017

Figure 8: Performance summary for website www.triveniethnics.com as retrieved

from pingdom.com web analysis tool.

Figure 9: Content Size and Requests by content type for website

www.triveniethnics.com as retrieved from pingdom.com web analysis tool.

Figure 10: Facebook Insights Page showing the times of the day when the fan base

is mostly active.

Figure 11: Engagement levels during Bahubali and Mother's day facebook contest.

Figure 12: Engagement levels of Facebook Page as measured from the Reactions,

Comments, Shares and Likes Metrics.

Figure 13: Facebook Share of posts and sentiments during the Mother's Day

Campaign.

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Figure 14: Traffic sources and demographics during the Mother's Day Campaign.

Figure 14: Web Data Summary for triveniethnics.com for April 2017, retrieved from

Google Analytics

Figure 15: Web Data Summary for triveniethnics.com for May 2017, retrieved from

Google Analytics

Figure 17: User Demographics - Gender and Age Group

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

My project in Triveni Ethnics started with a brief introduction ot the textile industry,

sales and marketing aspects in ecommerce space, a short stint in cold visits in Surat

localities with a goal to generate leads, build a corporate relationship and prospecting

for ethnic wear day celebration in collaboration with Triveni Ethnics.

The technical activities involved aiding changes in website user interface design,

modifying the user interaction appeals, monitoring web traffic volume, their sources,

mediums and behaviors on triveniethnics.com website. During the project, I was also

assigned to develop a website for their corporate partnership program called Officially

Ethnic.

The design activities involved planning, composing and designing email newsletters,

graphic designs for advertisements that went live on website, online mediums like

social media and paid media channels.

The writing activities involved composing the Wikipedia page. During the tenure of the

project, I was responsible for composing and creating the Wikipedia page for Triveni

Ethnics. Additional writing activities involved creating content for blog posts, social

media posts and email newsletters.

The digital marketing activities comprised of auditing the website, Search Engine

Optimization (improving the webpage ranking), Keyword Research for Adwords,

Backlink Building (listing Triveni in different directories), Affiliate Marketing, Social

Media Marketing, Email Marketing, SMS Marketing, Whats App broadcasting, and

Online Reputation Management. Analytics has been a major aid in all these activities

to decide on the ROI of different channels and managing the online advertisements

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expense and consumer front communication levels accordingly. Based on the

performance data, we have planned the various marketing activities scheduling like

the frequency of promotional mails, WhatsApp and SMS broadcasts and social

posting.

The marketing outreach activities involved identifying different online portals (Video

bloggers, Fashion writers, Fashion Show Organizers and industry influencers), select

them on their relevancy and value proposition in order to collaborate or partner with

Triveni in barter terms.

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 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Triveni Ethnics is a like a microcosmic India a long lived system, blended in with new

elements, now being thrust through a culture of change.

Triveni was established in 1985 by Mr Giridhar Saraf in Surat, the rapidly growing

textile hub of India. He started with a manufacturing facility Sakambari Silk Mills

which produces synthetic sarees under the brand name Triveni.

TriveniSarees.com (now triveniethnics.com) was setup in 2011 to take the fabulous

Triveni collection worldwide, online. 'Iness' took our learnings with designer wears with

the aim of creating a viable online market for them, and 'Hues & Vibes' is Triveni's

foray in home & kitchen linen. Wish Book was setup in 2015 to share Triveni's

learnings about technology innovation for SMEs & e-Commerce to a wider audience.

Vision: (We envision) A world where grace, dignity and identity are expressed through

the vibrancy of ethnic apparel.

Mission: To enable & inspire every individual to experience, understand, respect and

explore cultures through personal experiences of ethnic apparels.

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Marketing Outreach Activities: Institutional

Triveni extends its activities in various educational institute campuses with an aim to

create brand awareness, boost the employer branding factor and select brilliant talents

for job offer. The target institutes primarily includes the Design Schools and

Management colleges. The various programs are listed below.

I. Campus Live Projects & Contests

II. u-Design Contest @ Triveni

III. u-Design Contest 2016

IV. Triveni Case Challenge

V. Triveni @ Campus

Relationship Marketing Initiatives

Triveni aims to partner, collaborate and/or sponsor with various external influencers

and valuable stakeholders through their various Engagement Programs. The

programs they are currently having are listed below.

I. Marketing Partners: Tapping coupon sharing websites to list Triveni

products. They are mostly partnered in pay per conversion basis.

II. Vendor Program: Onboarding new vendors to sell their products in Triveni

portal. The Triveni Ethnics Ecommerce website lists products of multiple

other renowned vendors along with Trivenis sarees so as to offer more

varieties and range of selection for consumers flocking to Triveni website.

III. Affiliate Program: Creating a network of affiliates incentivizing with sales

based commission.

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 IV. International Partnership: Triveni Brand Ambassador in international

borders. They are similar to affiliates, who act as an intermediary between

Triveni and its international customer base.

V. Corporate Partnership: Collaborating with corporate houses to celebrate

Ethnic Wear Day where Triveni act as a gifting partner and power sponsor

supporting the event.

VI. International Distributor: This is similar to international partnership

program, except that in this case, textile dealers, wholesalers and agents

from international borders are added in the Triveni Distribution network.

Potential distributors are contacted telephonically and proposed to become

an agent or whole seller with Triveni in their country of residence.

VII. Triveni Vivah: This is one of the new initiatives from Triveni where the

wedding sarees are offered at offer prices and customized designs.

Interested bride and grooms are suggested with wedding wardrobe, a

collection of wedding glamour.

VIII. Wholesale Buyer Program: This is aimed to attract wholesalers from

across the country to join the Triveni distribution network.

IX. Campus Ambassador Program: This is Trivenis initiative to reach out to

campuses, especially design schools like NIFT and NID. A student from a

campus represents trivenis products, creates a buzz around the new

designs and fashion trends. They receive free gifts, merchandises and

commissions on the sales occurring through their network.

X. Get Ethnicized: This is an initiative to tap bloggers and fashion trend

setters. Triveni gifts them new designs which they put in their reviews and

recommendations.

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XI. Writers Ahoy: Fashion Writers, Design Critics, Celebrity bloggers are

invited to write on Trivenis blog or include Triveni in their personal portals.

They are also provided with Trivenis products for free as per their choice

with a condition that they will feature the product in their social networks.

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1.2 Relevance

Triveni Ethinics brand name is backed by a 32 year experienced textile

manufacturer Sakambari Silk Mills Ltd. Owing to manufacturing as its core

competency coupled with a string distribution network and market reputation,

the firm aimed to foray in to the ecommerce space in 2011 to make its products

accessible to international markets. This initiative is further strengthened by its

subsidiary Wishbook Application which is a B2B networking application

facilitating communication between retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers.

This subsidiaries of the business are supported by a accumulative sales

network and marketing outreach activities. Three popular brand names and

multiple micro websites like Hues and Vibes (featuring Home Dcor), Silpakala

(Featuring new Artisans and their work) and inness (featuring new designs in

textile industry) together make the overall brand presence in the online space

highly noticeable.

Being successfully operating the online sales through its ecommerce

marketplace triveniethnics.com and being present in 8 other ecommerce

websites, the online sales network has grown to huge figure. Growing step by

step with online sales is the online reputation, user engagement and digital

branding via its social networking channels and blogging network of influencers.

This makes Triveni Ethnics highly in the forefront of the need to create a brand

value proposition online and redefine the online purchase criteria.

Online marketing communication channels play a preeminent role in influencing

consumers buying behavior.

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1.3 Literature review

India is worlds second largest textile fibre producer, the largest cotton and jute

producer. FY 2015-2016 witnessed a staggering nine million tonnes of fibre

production. Currently India also possesses the second largest textile

manufacturing capacity in the world. India accounts for 18% of world's spindles

and 9% of world's rotor. India owns a 5% share in global textiles and apparel

trade. More than 50% of Denim production in the world is from Asia. India has

the second largest number of Denim mills after China in the world.

Figure 1: Indian Textile and Apparel Industry

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Textile is one of the oldest industries in India. Although mostly unorganized and

run by family promoted business, the textile sector contributes around 5 per

cent to India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and 14 per cent to overall Index

of Industrial Production (IIP). The Indian textiles industry, currently estimated at

around US$ 108 billion, is expected to reach US$ 223 billion by 2021.

A revolutionary change has been brought up in textile consumption and export

with the advent of online retailing. Textile brands today have more visibility,

buzz and engagement in the online space. With the foray of fashion focused

apparel ecommerce portals like Voonik, Myntra, Jabong, Limeroad, the

accessibility and visibility of brands increased tremendously. Medium and large

retailers in the textile business followed the suit with them stepping into the

ecommerce apparel selling spreading into both B2B and B2C.

Figure 2: India's Apparel Exports

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The next revolution in the textile industry would be the shift in consumers

purchase criteria. With the introduction of fashion suggestive applications,

fashion bloggers, on web customization and clothing prediction algorithms, the

textile shopping is about to face a paradigm shift in the way consumers interact

and perceive an apparel brand.

Figure 3: E-tail and Retail Market Share Breakup

Source: TECHNOPAK ANALYSIS, www.technopak.com

The Indian fashion retail market has witnessed several significant changes in

recent years, which indicates countrys evolving fashion retail market. One of

the significant changes is advancing online retail or e-tail of fashion products

across the country. The current online retail (FY 2016) accounts to about 4

percent of total retail market.

E-tailing (or online retailing) took-off around 2007 driven by advancements in

quality of internet access, payments and computing on mobility platforms that

dramatically changed consumer behaviour towards internet consumption. This

ecosystem creation has altered the consumer behavior of a sizeable consumer

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mass (referred to as active internet user base). This active internet user base

is the key consumer of online retail.

Figure 4: Percentage Share of E-tail across world markets.

Source: TECHNOPAK ANALYSIS, www.technopak.com

The e-tailing opportunity in India is expected to unfold as per the two

Scenarios in 2020: e-tail at 4 percent of retail (USD 43 billion) or e-tail at 6

percent of retail (USD 65 Billion).

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Figure 5: Category Split of E-Commerce in India, *Includes footwear, Bags, Belts, Wallet,
Watches etc.

Figure 6: Percentage Contribution of Men, Women and Kids category in Apparel and lifestyle
E-tail.

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The e-tailing evolution started in India with books and media as a key category.

Electronics got adopted next and apparel, lifestyle gained acceptance at the

next level. The other categories that have found traction include baby care,

home and living, etc. E-tailing market at present is led by electronics category

with a share of 45 percent followed by apparel and lifestyle that contributes 30

percent of the market with the rest being captured by others. The category split

of e-tail is projected to remain same in 2020 with electronics contributing to 44

percent of the total e-tail market in India followed by apparel and lifestyle at 30

percent.

Currently, menswear dominate the fashion and lifestyle space with contribution

of 52-54 percent followed by women contributing to approximately 38-42

percent and contribution of kids ranges from 5-10 percent. However in light of

increasing women in the workforce with more financial independence, the share

of women in e-tail is expected to increase to 45-48 percent, whereas mens

segment is expected contribute 45-47 percent, with kids section remaining

constant around 5-10 percent.

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1.4 Objectives

The primary objective of my project was to study the performance of the various

components of Trivenis online presence. Analyzing the consumers journey in

Trivenis portals, the barriers to purchase decision, defining the consumers

behavior from the micro and macro activities, product listing and pricing, social

media engagement, identifying and establishing new marketing communication

channels and managing online reputation.

The ulterior goal being creating an influential brand online and boost

ecommerce sales.

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 CHAPTER 2

METHODOLOGY

2.1 Project Design

The project can be categorized in three parts.

First, auditing the current performance and proposing a digital strategy. Finding the

loopholes and suggest changes in the digital marketing initiatives.

Second, managing digital marketing communication channels which involved creating

blog posts, social media content, email newsletters, monitoring web traffic and

optimizing different web traffic sources and study user behavior, graphic design for

website banners and Paid Media Advertisements. The work also involved developing

a new website for one of the marketing campaigns named Officially Ethnic, Google

Business Map listing and creating Wikipedia Page for Triveni Ethnics.

Third, as a part of improving online presence and increasing visibility, I was

responsible for improving search engine ranking with effective Keyword Research and

Search Engine Optimization Strategy, Identifying and adding new channels of Trivenis

online presence. This initiative of adding new channels involved listing Triveni in

various business directories, connecting to influencers like fashion bloggers,

celebrities and media production house, managing online reputation on various

review-recommendation portals, cross posting in social media channels and Question

& Answer Forums, affiliate networks and price comparison engines.

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2.2 Data collection and sampling

The performance of the current digital marketing initiatives can be analyzed by

studying the different channels used. The web analytics data, the website performance

and SEO Audit data, the social media key performance indicators.

I have listed the data collected while examining the channels followed by an

explanation of the data analysis.

2.2.1 Website Data Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful tool to measure, monitor, and analyses and take

strategic decision about the web metrics and dimensions. When a user visits a

website, he undergoes a series of activities like navigating through web pages,

browsing product listings, saving to cart, sharing on other platforms etc. All these

activities are termed as micro activities and the occurrence of the ulterior goal of the

website like performing a monetary transaction or subscribing to a digital service etc.

are termed as macro activities. The accumulated metrics of a users micro and macro

activities on a website reflects broader information about the consumers behavior,

purchase pattern and user interaction and user experience level.

Google Analytics Data shows real time data like right now how many users are

browsing your website and they are on which page, the audience demographics like

Gender, Age group, Device, Browser, Location (Continent, Country, and City). One of

the major metrics is the traffic volume, bounce rate, session duration data (pages

viewed per session). The consumer acquisition dimension can be traced from the

metrics like source and mediums of the traffic, their navigation pathway tree, their

activities on the webpage, the drop off page and transactions.

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In case of Triveni Ethnics, Organic search is the major driver of web traffic followed by

direct. Which indicates the majorly users are either coming from search results or they

are already acquainted with Triveni and hence directly flocking to the website via direct

domain name search. Referrals (from affiliate websites and price comparison sites)

and social media is notoriously uneven while paid search has been a incessant

underperformer.

On studying the tree map (the users navigability), it was observed that the web

architecture is vertical in nature. The deepest of the pages are reached in as high as

7 clicks. So it was suggested to go for a horizontal web architecture, a more flattened

linking of web pages where the maximum clicks to any page is attained within 3 clicks.

This horizontal architecture also helps in SEO. The link juices are passed from one

page to other through the search engine crawlers. The deeper the page, lesser the

link juice passed, lower is the page rank.

Secondly, mobile devices has been a major source of traffic. The current website is

not mobile friendly (As per the AMP test conducted). It is suggested to create

accelerated mobile pages for the website. Search Engine Google now uses mobile

friendliness as a direct criteria to rank websites.

Figure 7: Web Traffic Sources (or channels) in a Day. Traffic Data for 24 April 2017

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I am not authorized to share direct screenshots or data figures of the web analytics

data as its an internal backend data, crucial to companys strategic decision making.

So I will be sharing only screenshots of the monthly Web Analytics summary as

retrieved from Google Analytics Console.

Further information regarding the web performance is shared in the Website

Performance analysis and SEO Audit section that follows.

2.2.2 Website Performance Audit

Web Performance is one of the key drivers of digital performance. User interaction

levels and engagement extent depends on the kind of user experience a web front

offers its users.

This two facts depicts the importance of site performance:

I. Websites with optimal loading time are crawled more thoroughly and

consistently than those which loads slow. Crawlers have a limited time allocated

for each page crawl process.

II. Every second counts. Web Visitors have attention span in milliseconds. So a

slow loading website can directly impact your conversion rate. Walmart

increased their conversion rate by as high as 2% by improving their website

performance by 1% (According to a case study by Web Performance Today,

April 2014).

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Pingdom, an online web performance auditing tool is used to get a detailed list of

response time from all the website elements and an overall website loading time.

These results help us spot exactly which elements in the website needs to be

optimized for an overall performance improvement. Performance grades greater than

50 are considered good. 1.5-2 seconds shall be your target loading time on an

average.

Google Search Engine considers the page loading time to be a prominent factor in

optimizing for search results.

The summary of pingdom website audit result is shown below.

Figure 8: Performance summary for website www.triveniethnics.com as retrieved from

pingdom.com web analysis tool.

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Figure 9: Content Size and Requests by content type for website www.triveniethnics.com as
retrieved from pingdom.com web analysis tool.

A low performance grade figure indicates the website to be of low quality in terms of

user experience, user value, navigability etc. The load time is 3.42 seconds which is

significantly higher than the optimum load time of 1.5-2 seconds. The website is faster

than 47% websites only. Images take up the maximum load time and HTTP requests.

So analyzing individual pages and URLs of the website is required to point out exactly

which images are not optimized and taking up maximum load time and find URL (or

hyperlink) errors if any. This is done using a software named Screaming Frog SEO

Spider. The results of the crawl test is elaborated in the SEO Audit section that follows.

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2.2.3 SEO Audit

Audit is the most important step in your full-blown Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

strategy, to demystify how exactly your website is performing in the battle field of

organic search rankings and garnering the click from the right customer.

The SEO Audit Analysis is broken down into five sections:

I. SEO performance Profiling.

II. Accessibility Assessment.

III. Index-ability Verification.

IV. On-Page Ranking Factors

V. Off-Page Ranking Factors

The current SEO Score of the website can be inferred from a crawl test. A crawl test

helps us understand the accessibility levels, index ability factors and find out the

individual performance of all factors encompassed in the website like the content,

images, videos, script codes, internal and external hyperlinks etc. Screaming Frog

SEO Spider software has been used to run a crawl test for the Triveni Ethnics website.

The below figures shows the list of parameters tested.

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The first and foremost analysis that we can infer from the crawl data are:

I. Are the count of internal and External Links proportionate?

Spiders crawl the first 150 links only. And more the number of links, more is the

link juice dissipation. Strike a balance. Maintain an optimal quantity of links.

II. Which links are erred? Rectify the broken Links.

III. Which are the harmful redirects? Change their redirection status.

IV. Which of your web pages are restricted from being indexed? Which images are

taking time to load and needs to be optimized?

V. Which pages have disproportionate H1, H2, H3 tags?

VI. Which Meta Description or tags are exceeding the word limit? Which ones are

cluttered with obsolete focus keywords? Replace them with the newly searched

keywords (Keyword strength changes with time and search trend).

The detailed analysis of the SEO Audit of Triveni Ethnics Website is described below:

I. Link Profiling: Out of the 488 links tested, 4 were HTTP and rest all were

secure with an HTTPS extension. The 4 HTTP linkes were SSL certified to

make the full website SEO friendly. Google prefers HHTPS over HTTP while

ranking a webpage.

II. Link Saturation: Distribution of internal and external links on webpages were

found optimal and hence no changes were made.

III. Harmful Redirects: Few links were broken and returning 3XX errors. The 302

redirects were changed to 301 redirects. Google considers 301 redirects safe

and hence indexes the page for Search Engine Results Page Ranking.

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IV. Accessibility of Webpages: Using robots.txt blocking to certain webpages we

can inform search engines to exclude certain pages from ranking and displaying

in search results. Pages like cart, sitemap, authors, and web admins etc. that

are of no use to consumers are blocked from indexing. The full list of webpages

unindexed can be seen by visiting www.triveniethnics.com/robots.txt

V. Usage of Header tags: Header tags has a significant impact in search engine

indexation. Along with letting readers know about the article (or any kind of web

content like images. GIFs, Videos, flash etc.), headers also indicate search

engines what the article is all about and against which keyword the content or

webpage shall be indexed. 122 web elements had 122 duplicate H1 tag, 2 had

no H1 tag and 4 had H1 with more than the optimal character limit of 70. These

were rectified to desire so as to make the webpages search engine friendly.

VI. Web Elements: Individual images were crawled and analyzed for their load

time, file size and hyperlinking. Since ecommerce websites have a majority

share of images, primary concern was to make the website stunning and helpful

with good quality images and at the same time keep the webpages light to load.

Images with more than 100 KB file size was sorted and crunched to sizes lower

than 100KB, the recommended file size for web images.

VII. Keywords: Non performing keywords were identified and replaced with

valuable keywords. The contents were categorized as per the buyers journey

Awareness Stage, Consideration stage, Decision Making stage. Keywords

were branded as per the consumers intent and buying journey stage, thereby

influencing their perceptions of purchase criteria.

Keywords act as an element of strategic advantage for ranking for any online

venture. So I am not authorized to share the keywords currently used.

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2.2.4 Social Media KPI
Social Media analytics helps us in identifying which and what type of campaigns are

effective in engaging consumers and drive traffic from social channels. Social media

measurement can be categorized in two types:

Ongoing Analytics Traffic involvement and activity figures over the period of

existence or for a certain duration of social media activities.

Campaign specific metrics It helps in analyzing the effectiveness, the success and

return on investment statistics of a campaign push.

I was involved in two social media campaigns Bahubali Contest and Mothers Day

Selfie Contest. These two campaigns were majorly driven on Facebook page. The

insights are shared below.

Figure 10: Facebook Insights Page showing the times of the day when the fan base is mostly
active.

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Based on this insight, we have picked two favorable times of the day and day of the

week for launching our campaign and posting major announcements. 11 AM and 9

PM were the peak times when most of the fan base were active.

Bahubali Contest: Social Media engagement was weak due to a monotony in the

content sharing and the consumption of content was poor. An analysis of the social

media fan base showed, most of them were seasonal buyers and not an active

shopper, so engaging them needed some programs that invoke a suriosity for a

surprise. Bahubali contest was designed to drive user engagement. Ten questions

related to the film was posted on consecutive days. Winners were declared and offered

free silk sarees. The campaign triggered web traffic by 3.3% and social reach by 260%.

Mothers Day Selfie Contest: The products featured were categorized for

mothers of all ages. The contest involved sharing selfie images of mother-child duo on

Trivenis Facebook page with a desired caption. The winning participant were gifted a

saree and a discount coupon for next purchase on Triveni portal.

Figure 11: Engagement levels during Bahubali and Mother's day Facebook contest.

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Figure 12: Engagement levels of Facebook Page as measured from the Reactions, Comments,
Shares and Likes Metrics.

Figure 13: Facebook Share of posts and sentiments during the Mother's Day Campaign.

Figure 14: Traffic sources and demographics during the Mother's Day Campaign.

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Suggestions:

Predetermine a social media goal. Draw your plan as per the campaigns target group.

Stick to an ultimate goal, whether its to drive brand awareness, or boost social media

engagement or drive sales through social channels.

Defining the key performance metrics according to the ultimate goal. metrics like

volume, reach, exposure, and amplification are used to measure awareness level

buzz, metrics around retweets, comments, replies, and participants depicts

engagement level, URL shares, clicks and conversions indicates the traffic driven.

Social Media is the black sheep of marketing. It has the power to build a brand as well

as destroy a brand. So a sophisticated usage of social channels is crucial.

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 CHAPTER 3
Results and Discussion

Triveni Ethnics web portal receives a monthly visit of 70 thousand users on an

average. On seasonal sales periods like October to January, the web traffic volume

almost triples on an average. The conversion rate for the month of April was 0.53%

and for May it improved to 0.56%. The unit sales value averages around 850 INR.

Bunce rate of 44.77% was concerning, which further increased to 46.60% in May. The

primary reason was the web performance and a poor quality mobile website. On

studying the bounced traffic behaviour in detail, it is found that users from organic

search had maximum bounce and the drop off occurred within 6 seconds of them

landing the webpage. The reasons could be a poor loading time as most of the traffic

from organic search were relevant (from the fact that they were organically visiting

product pages and waited for 6 seconds). Bounces that occurs within 2-3 seconds of

visit are termed as irrelevant traffic. In Trivenis case, users were looking for the page

content but was impatient to wait for the longer loading period and product scroll.

Figure 15:12 Web Data Summary for triveniethnics.com for April 2017, retrieved from
Google Analytics

31
Figure 16: Web Data Summary for triveniethnics.com for May 2017, retrieved from Google
Analytics

Figure 17: User Demographics - Gender and Age Group

32
Studying the web analytics data, the consumer behaviour reflected some concerning

factoids as discussed below.

User Demographics:

Most of the web visitors were females contributing to 69.6 % of the total sessions. The

sarees and Lehenga category received maximum web sessions and conversions. The

30.4% male traffic also hovered over female apparel pages. This indicates, Triveni as

a brand is presumed and considered by consumers mostly for women apparels

although it also sales Mens wear and Kids wear, Jewellery and Ladies bags on its

online portal. Majority of the users are from the age group 25-34.

Traffic Sources and Mediums:

Organic search traffic and direct traffic drove in 70% of usage. The geographic regions

of northern India and western India showed maximum engagement. Globally United

Kingdom and United States had maximum engagement. The traffic from international

borders were mostly referral from Trivenis ambassador programs and email marketing

newsletters. Social Media and Whatsapp broadcasting contributed the least traffic

volume.

User Behaviour:

The website macro and micro activities performed by the users are traced in the user

flow dashboard of Google Analytics in the form of a treemap.

The user navigation showed majority of the users are spending time in saree

collection category, Lehenga category and sales offer pages. The sessions are

well contained with multiple micro activities but tremendously fails to attract a macro

activity like transaction or subscription to emails. Most of them added products to cart

and dropped off.

33
As a method to understand this problem, abandoned cart list was created which

involved dropping an email to all those who left their products in the cart without

performing the purchase. The mail was shoot 24 hours after they left the cart dormant,

asking for issues they faced in an attempt to know why they dropped off without

purchasing. A coupon discount of 20% on their next purchase was also shared.

It was found that consumers are conducting a lot of research, taking considerable time

in looking for same and similar products in all likeable ecommerce portals, comparing

prices and product features. Trivenis portal has a non-refundable but replaceable

policy which acted as a serious barrier to sales. Consumers wanted more freedom

and is looking for easy going order processes and friendly lenient services.

Second, threat to sales was the product attributes. Textile industry is highly saturated

with sellers and prone to design imitation. So similarities among the products are so

huge, brand effect subdues as price sensitivity takes over in case of mid-range

apparels market.

So the sales focus was mostly revolved around personal and corporate selling

(telephonic cold calls), offline channel partners or endorsers and referral cum affiliate

networks to drive online sales.

Interestingly, Trivenis core product being saree, the other product categories are

hardly considered in buyers purchase criteria.

User Type: Around 50% of the traffic are new users and they are performing an

average of 5 sessions per visit. This indicates the search appearance is convincing,

users are finding the meta description and heading relevant to visit the website. They

are spending good amount of time in the website but majority are finally dropping off

without purchase.

34
To understand this situation, the pricing was changed by offering custom option of

stitch (you can get you blouse piece stitched while purchasing the saree with an option

to choose it by paying an additional amount). This reduced the prices of the saree as

blouse was separated. In my short tenure of 2 months, the impact of this change was

not noticeable in scale. Other policies like No refund, but replacement policies are also

impacting the purchase decision. A strategic revamp of these stringent policies are

being thought of. Pricing and return policy appeared to have the maximum impact on

sales drop.

So, I have proposed a pop up window that flashes up as the user attempts to close

the website. The pop up window would ask the users two questions.

One, trying to know consumers purchase criteria and understanding the target group

with questions like What is your price range?, What is your shopping budget?,

Which brand/design/product you mostly purchase?

Second, trying to know the reason of them leaving the website with questions like

What is one thing that you would like us to improve. Providing check boxes can help

in get more answers.

35
 CHAPTER 4

Conclusions and Recommendations

Online marketing communication channels not only bring in sales but also help in

building a brand image and project its value propositions to its customer base. Textile,

one of the traditional industries of India is gradually evolving from its unorganised form

of manufacturing and traditional sales & distribution channels to online channels to

reach out to its potential target group. Apparel brands are finding the digital platforms

to prove to be an effective medium in influencing customers buying decision. With the

advent of technology, brands are now more visible and accessible to the customers,

so is the volatility of the market rivalry. With consumers having access to wider range

of varieties, broader choices to select and more options to purchase, the competition

is fierce. Digital branding aids a company to influence its customers perception and

hence the buying decision.

Consumers are no more restricted to the traditional sales funnel. Today the focus is

more on the downstream activities like shaping consumers perception, changing

purchase criteria, building trust and harnessing the network effect to spread the online

word of the mouth.

The importance of harnessing the power of online mediums to drive sales and brand

building can be further understood by the following statistics.

90% are not certain of the brand they want to buy from. They are looking for

relevant information so as to narrow down to a particular decision. Your online

presence has the power to acquire new customers by altering their Brand Loyalty.

It all depends on the micro moment experiences you provide them in the very first

impression.

36
 82% use their phones to check on prospective in-store purchases. Mobile

searches are handy, localized and a fingertip away (ease of accessibility). Mobile

is the next big thing. Google is now separately indexing webpages for mobile

search ranking. Voice search is the new interaction behavior.

65% look for the most relevant information to their query, regardless of the

company that provides the answer. Referring to multiple sources before actually

arriving to a decision is the trend. So value proposition and user experience is the

key to consumer acquisition and retention.

51% have discovered a new company or product while searching on their phone.

Your online presence can get you a wider reach and potentially larger consumer

base to tap, with no geographical constraints.

33% have purchased from a different brand than the one they had in mind,

because of the information provided. Content Converts.

91% of smartphone users turn to their phones for ideas and solutions when they

are struck in the middle of a work. Google Search is the new 24x7 guide. With

search features like rich answer snippets (direct conversational answer boxes)

and knowledge graphs, users can now find answers directly in their search

results without actually having to visit webpages.

These data figures are sourced from Google Consumer Barometer Survey 2014/2015

which clearly indicates, you need to be fast, precise, and valuable for your users. If

you are not appearing in their relevancy (search context), urgency (delivering the

solution in least possible wait time) and immediacy (adding value with the most

relevant and helpful answer), you are nowhere in the business of generating web

traffic and conversions.

37
Users flock to a brands online platforms like website, application, blogs etc with

intentions like I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-buy, and I-want-to-do

moments, backed by a purpose, a context, and an immediacy. This parameters sets

the rules and guidelines of the online battleground of brands.

The strategy to identify, evaluate and effectively use the online communicating

channels can be defined in four steps:

Step 1: Discovering the right channel: Identifying the inbound and outbound

marketing channels that is relevant and looks promising to drive brand awareness and

sales conversions.

Step 2: Evaluate: Test the market, gauge the industry rivalry and bring in best

practices, redefine strategy and create an influencing factor to make your presence in

that particular niche.

Step 3: Measure: Analytics shall be a constantly running parallel to each and every

activity you perform, understand the audience and analyse the return on investment

to determine the effectiveness of the activity.

Step 4: Repeat the best: Sort out the proven ones, and re-run the successful

strategies. Explore and exploit the win-win channels.

38
 CHAPTER 5

FURTHER SCOPE OF STUDY

Trivenis core competency is their in-house manufacturing expertise, strong

distribution network and rich industry experience. But this alone not necessarily the

most convincing factor to influence consumers purchase decision.

The current online marketing model is limited in tapping all aspects of brand

communication. Online activities needs a collaborative support from offline marketing

activities. Both the online and offline activities shall go parallel in order to address all

the touch points in a consumers buying journey. The communication shall shift from

a push model to a pull model and encourage two way communication between the

brand and consumers. It is the age of outreach of consumers to marketers unlike the

traditional model of marketers outreach to consumers.

The online marketing front shall focus more on consumer driven marketing activities

like online reviews, online word of the mouth recommendations, past experience

sharing via blog articles etc. This shall be further aided with a sophisticated support in

the initial consideration and post purchase phases of a consumers association with

the brand.

To get more consumer centric, aligning the marketing activities with consumers

journey is crucial. Integrating all the consumer facing activities and providing

personalised targeting is the need of the hour. Shaping customers perception,

reducing their costs and risks associated, building new forms of customer value and

creating a brand differentiation factor on customers front is the key to form a loyal

customer base. Consumer loyalty is a real competitive advantage that reaps over time.

39
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