Digital Shelf Analytics

The Indian e-commerce sector is in a state of rapid transformation, with experts projecting it to hit an astonishing $400 billion+ by 2030, powered by a 19% annual growth rate, according to Inc 42 report. With this kind of momentum and each one vying for prominence on the digital shelf in a market as sprawling and diverse as India brands must dig deeper, focusing not only on top-tier cities but extending their reach into every dark store and at the pin code level to get the true picture.   The major challenge faced by brands is scaling, covering multiple platforms and categories. This requires a solution such as mFilterIt that covers more than 150 platforms globally with all pin-codes.   Brands aiming for success need to look beyond traditional ways, integrated multi-platform intelligence is needed. Competition is fierce, digital intelligence is the key to unlock brand success across platforms.   Trends Shaping Indian E-commerce Expansion Across Tier-2 and Tier-3 Cities: The growth of e-commerce extends beyond large cities, with consumers in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities embracing digital shopping. Brands aiming to grow in these areas must tailor their strategies to local preferences region-specific marketing, opening new channels for growth through personalization.  Also, with over 526 dark stores across India, Blinkit plans to double the number to 1,000 in the next one year. On the other hand, Zepto, at present, already has a network of over 340 dark stores across seven cities in India.  Market Intelligence for Real-Time Data Insights: Brands are leveraging advanced tools such as mScanIt, Digital Commerce Intelligence for real-time actionable insights. This enables dynamic pricing, hyper-targeted marketing, and timely inventory management, all of which require brands to pivot from broad strategies to tailored experiences for each consumer journey.  The Quick Commerce Boom: Quick commerce has redefined consumer expectations around delivery speed, particularly for essentials. For brands in Q-commerce, optimizing inventory and logistics down to the dark store level is crucial, ensuring products are available precisely when and where consumers need them.  Blinkit, over the years, has expanded into multiple categories including electronics, home décor and cosmetics, increasing the cart value. It delivers more than 4 lakh orders daily. Zepto, which does 5.5 lakh orders is set to raise $650 million at $3.5-billion valuation.  The Game-Changer: Digital Shelf Intelligence. Why Digital Commerce Intelligence Matters? Real-Time Pricing and Insights: Pricing directly influences purchase decisions. By accessing real-time data, brands can adjust prices in response to competitor moves and market trends, ensuring they stay attractive to customers without compromising profit margins. Availability Checks: Ensuring product availability down to the pin code level is critical. Digital shelf intelligence enables brands to verify stock at a granular level, preventing missed sales opportunities due to out-of-stock items. Competitor Analysis at Every Touchpoint: Brands must have a 360-degree view of their rivals. By monitoring competitor promotions, product launches, and consumer feedback, brands can spot gaps and respond proactively to market shifts. Product Detail Page (PDP) Optimization and Feedback Analysis: Optimizing PDPs means more than adding keywords; it’s about creating engaging, relevant content that resonates with the audience. Insightful feedback analysis allows brands to refine their messaging and offerings based on real consumer behavior. Share of Shelf Monitoring vis-a-vis competition across platforms: Monitor keyword share and brand presence on multiple marketplaces and Quick commerce platforms. Identify gaps along with opportunity to boost brand performance. Pricing & Promotions Trend monitoring with pricing intelligence: Track pricing and promotion across platforms, along with keeping tab on MAP violations and price intelligence with real-time insights.   Case Study – How a Beverage Giant Optimized Product Availability Across Q-Com Platforms  A global leader in the beverage industry, in optimizing their performance across platforms and geographies with the digital shelf tracker to monitor their products.    Product availability on platforms two major e-commerce platforms 57%, and 86%, respectively. However, after comprehensive real-time of monitoring stock availability, they were able to identify the gaps and by the end of November, it improved significantly across platforms, soaring to 100%, and 94%, respectively within a couple of months with mScanIt digital shelf tracking, which enhanced their presence across platforms and bolstered their brand reputation.  It mainly focused on enhancing its market presence by monitoring availability which includes.  Brand Availability Trends  Availability share versus competition  City-Wise Availability Trends – monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly  Platform-wise & geography-wise analysis  Heat map to identify new geography to target  Tracking Sellers performance  Maintaining Out-of-Stock product lists & real-time alerts  The Success Formula for Indian E-commerce Brands To thrive in India’s evolving e-commerce landscape, brands should prioritize:  Investment in Intelligence and Real-Time Monitoring: Market intelligence tools are essential for keeping a pulse on what’s working and addressing issues before they become major setbacks. Product Listing Optimization: High-quality images, accurate descriptions, and competitive pricing are vital. Think of each product listing as a virtual salesperson that needs to capture attention, build trust, and drive conversions. Brand Safety and Protection: Beyond counterfeit prevention, brand safety involves protecting intellectual property, monitoring potential infringements, and maintaining a positive brand reputation across digital channels.  The Final Thought The future of Indian e-commerce is fast, competitive, and brimming with potential. Brands that adapt to these trends and invest in robust e-commerce intelligence will be well-positioned for success. However, succeeding in this market demands attention to detail at every level, from digital shelves to pin codes. Brands ready to go the extra mile in visibility, pricing, and availability will lead in this dynamic, high-stakes landscape.  The future is here. Are you ready?  Get in touch to know more about digital self monitoring.

It’s almost September, and the sale season is on!   The users are eagerly waiting to buy from their favorite brands. And the brand increases their spends to ensure they are visible to their relevant set of audience.   And amidst this excitement, there are fraudsters too who are excited to see the ad spends increasing and ready to make the most out of it.   However, there are some roadblocks brands face while trying to navigate the digital landscape seamlessly. Because running an ecommerce business is not just about running sales during festivals and tracking your buy box position, it’s also about protecting your brand from any kind of potential digital threats like ad fraud, brand infringements, unsafe ad placements, and more.   All these factors, when taken care of, together contribute to a brand’s financial growth.  That is why, to build trust and transparency across the funnel, every brand needs third-party ad fraud detection and analytics tools offering festive season market intelligence to enable real-time monitoring and flag off suspicious activities harming ad campaigns during the festive season.  Let’s explore what challenges this festive season holds for brands and what they can do to safeguard their brand and optimize performance during the season and beyond.    Challenges for E-commerce Brands During Festive Season While the festive season brings unmatched opportunities for sales, it also amplifies the challenges for e-commerce brands. Brands are supposed to navigate multiple hurdles to truly make high profits during the festive season. Here are some major challenges brands face:  Protecting Your Brand from Ad Fraud Advertising campaigns peak during festive times, and ad fraud is one of the critical threats to brands. While on one side, performance marketers are all ready to utilize their budgets to the optimum, on the other end, fraudsters are also all set to siphon off budgets using manipulative web and mobile ad fraud techniques.   They use sophisticated ad fraud techniques like click injection, ad stacking, impression fraud, domain spoofing, ad stacking, etc. that go unnoticed to the human eye.   According to a report by ANA, 56.1% of ad spends do not reach the intended consumers and could be wasted due to ad fraud and other pipeline issues in terms of media purchases.  Some major consequences of ad fraud include:  Wastage of budget due to invalid traffic – Bots, click farms, and fake install activities consume ad spends, inflating metrics without adding any real value to the campaign performance.  Low quality leads in case of web campaigns – Fraudsters deploy bots to fill lead forms in bulk using fake details only to manipulate the overall campaign metrics, leading marketers to make further decisions based on irrelevant data.  Low retention rate in case of mobile campaigns – When most of the downloads are fake or incentivized, it directly impacts lifetime customer value, as users are not interested in the app, and only came in for incentives.  High competition for placements – Rise in CPCs and CPMs during the festive season makes it even harder for brands to maintain visibility without overspending, resulting in significant wastage of budget.   Lack of data-driven optimization – Campaigns that aren’t continuously monitored and optimized often miss quick-win opportunities. In a high-stakes festive environment, a few hours of inefficiency can mean thousands lost.  Monitoring the Digital Shelf Across Ecommerce Landscape Winning the digital shelf is as important as keeping a check on fraudulent activities. This requires actionable data points, ecommerce competitive analytics, and ecommerce intelligence across platforms.   However, with a range of products distributed across geographies, and the continuous growth of ecommerce businesses and new competitors emerging at a scale, brands face some major challenges like:  Discoverability on digital shelf – With hundreds of brands bidding on the same keywords, being discoverable and visible on the digital shelf is tougher. If your products don’t rank in the first few scrolls, you risk being invisible to festive shoppers.  Out of stock issues – If your product goes out of stock today and you realize it after two days, you not only lose immediate sales, but also divert customers directly to competitors offering similar alternatives.  Mismatched content across platforms – Poorly optimized product titles, descriptions, or images reduce discoverability in searches. Even if customers find your products, inconsistent content can hurt trust and conversions.  Price Undercutting and Discount Violations – Unauthorized sellers slash prices or violate MAP policies, hurting brand value and disrupting pricing strategies. If left unchecked, this not only confuses customers but also impacts ongoing campaigns. Moreover, you also risk falling behind, losing share of shelf without monitoring competitor pricing strategies.  Ensuring Brand Safety with Contextual Relevancy Festive campaigns are often run on a massive scale to gain as much visibility and reach as possible. However, when campaigns run across various platforms, publishers, and networks, brands often risk being vulnerable to unsafe or irrelevant ad placements that harm credibility and form negative perceptions among the audience. Some challenges include:  Ads get placed beside harmful content – Festive ads appearing alongside controversial, sensitive, or inappropriate content result in damaged brand reputation and distrust among customers.  Lack of visibility – Ads that don’t match the surrounding content appear irrelevant, leading to wasted impressions and poor user engagement. Brands are most of the time unaware of these situations, leading to poor decision-making.  Association with fraudulent publishers – Partnerships with shady or fraudulent publishers during peak season can harm both performance and brand trust.  Regional Sensitivity Issues – A message that works in one region might backfire in another if not aligned with cultural or religious sensitivities.   Ensuring Brand Protection Across Open Platforms Festive seasons aren’t just attractive to shoppers; they’re also the best time for fraudsters to set up fake websites or fake social media channels, using trademark assets of known brands to sell counterfeit products. This not only impacts sales of a brand but also creates confusion among consumers, harming brand integrity and reputation. Major challenges are:  Fake Websites and apps – Fraudsters create lookalike domains or unauthorized apps,

The rapid rise in eCommerce across geographies especially in countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam is experiencing rapid growth, with mobile usage and social media penetration being the highest worldwide.     Each country in the SEA region has varying levels of eCommerce penetration and the region’s potential is enormous. Customer behavior is very similar to that of China and Korea where K-pop idols create fashion trends.    SEA has approximately 400 million internet users and platforms such as Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok are leading the way providing customers with an immersive, interactive buying experience that combines social interaction with eCommerce capacity.   The e-commerce market is expected to grow by $234 billion by 2025, emphasizing the need to make data-driven decisions to navigate this battle swiftly.   Every eCommerce participant requires real-time access to actionable business intelligence to meet success metrics.  Let’s understand the common types of eCommerce across geographies and the role of eCommerce analytics in striking first and fast in the race.   Common types of eCommerce  Each of these types serves a particular market need and varies based on the product or service offered to the target audience.   There are various common types of eCommerce such as: Quick Commerce – As the name itself suggests rapid delivery of goods often within minutes or a couple of hours. It focuses on near-instant delivery of groceries, and convenience items such as household necessities. Example – Blinkit, Zepto, and GoPuff are q-commerce platforms that offer quick delivery within (10-30 minutes).  QSR Commerce– That is Quick Service restaurants serve rapid, efficient, with affordable price cuisines. Customers also can dine in, take out, or have delivery at their place.  Example –   McDonald’s serves millions of consumers daily as it is a global QSR business.  According to Statista, the worldwide QSR industry is expected to reach $1.2 trillion by 2028.    Social Commerce- It is an integration of the shopping experience into social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and others. Social commerce across social media platforms is more effective as it’s not dependent on traffic coming from searches instead consumers are already engaged on the platforms.     Marketplace Commerce – The purchase and sale of products via online marketplaces where various suppliers offer goods. The marketplace concept is gaining traction, especially in developing countries.  Example– 3rd party merchants can list their products on platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Flipkart providing buyers with a wide range of options.   The FMCG category in marketplace commerce is expected to be the fastest growing with a total market of $375.1 billion by 2025.    Are your products the top drawers? on the above-mentioned common commerce types?    If not, then there is a great need for e-commerce analytics to be incorporated into your brand.    Need for eCommerce Analysis for brands   Visibility is an important component of eCommerce business and digital shelf analytics can help with that. Monitoring a brand’s digital shelf performance such as product availability, pricing, and search rankings allows marketers to ensure that their items are easily accessible and competitive consistently across several eCommerce platforms.   Sales Growth   Improved Visibility  Increased conversion rates   Enhanced Customer Experience Competitors Insights Metrics for Customer Journey Optimizations  It is important to consider the various analytical metrics while forming a strategy to sell on various eCommerce platforms. Customers’ journey is optimized at broader three levels such as:    1.Awareness and interest – It helps brands to track visibility and ensures that the product is accurately featured throughout the marketplace boosting awareness and driving interest from potential customers. It consists   Discoverability tool Competitor analysis banner analysis  Content recommendation 2.Consideration & Evaluation –The system evaluates critical elements such as bestseller analysis to track the ranking of the products and the factors behind top sellers.   Pricing and Discounting analysis  Content Analyzer  Customer feedback analysis gathers ratings and reviews, and Q&A data to assess customer sentiments.   SKU health analysis scores based on content quality, availability discoverability.  Delivery TAT    3.Decision / Purchase – Overseas digital shelf performance by sales analysis with scorecards at brand & category level boosts bestselling products and hero products of the brand.   How eCommerce analytics helps businesses to grow – Case Analysis  Let’s understand this with a case study, a leading FMCG brand was battling to ensure consistent product availability across key geographies.   Challenges faced by the brand   Their product presence fell behind competitors, resulting in missed sales opportunities and a reduced market position both online and offline. The brand’s principal problem was to ensure product availability in numerous regions.   Recognizing the severity of the situation the brand relied on eCommerce analytics intelligence solution mScanIt for actional information.   Solution   Using the eCommerce analytics tool mScanIt through targeted inventory optimization, data-driven insights, and competitor benchmarking gained detailed product availability data from a variety of online sources. Determined which places their product was underperforming in.  Also, identifying the availability against the rivals and areas for improvement in with real-time insights to change online and offline inventory levels ensuring that products are available in the appropriate locations.   Outcome   The brand was able to close the gap against the competitors and was able to overtake a competitor by increasing its availability by 29%.  Fig 1.0 Analyzing the data on availability for the past year Aug 23 – Aug 24  The analytics and solution enabled the brand to not only improve its sales online but also offline too. The case study demonstrates the power of AI-ML data-driven decision–making in enhancing both online and offline retail performance. To sum up   Switching to e-commerce analytics can help eliminate friction in the shopping process and make it easier for customers to complete their journey of purchase, and to edge ahead of their competitors across the digital commerce ecosystem. Business intelligence must be granular to the last detail and scalable across geography and platforms.     Get in touch to learn more about E-commerce Analytics.

The UAE e-commerce is expected to reach $17 billion by 2025. Further, by 2027, it is expected that global retail e-commerce sales will cross $8 trillion indicating a 39% growth, according to a Statista Report. In such a growing market, sentiment analysis and customer feedback are essential for business success. Unlike brick and mortar where customer feedback is easier to take, in an ecommerce platform customer satisfaction is more difficult to assess. Moreover, it helps brands sell more on e-commerce platforms if it has a good volume of reviews. Building a good volume of reviews and thereby analyzing them is therefore the need of the hour.  According to the Global Statshot Report, 32.5% of customers make online purchase decisions based on customer reviews.  There is a need for every e-commerce player to have access to business intelligence in real-time and in actionable form to ensure the success benchmarks are achieved. Business intelligence needs to be granular to the last detail and scalable by geographies and platforms.     Concept of Sentiment Analysis   In online shopping, customers give reviews and ratings on different social media platforms. Customer sentiment analytic tool analyzes these to discern positive, negative, or neutral emotions. Does the customer express positive, negative, or neutral emotions?   This analysis gives insights that help in the growth of the businesses and find out what makes a product more successful and what creates dissatisfaction among the consumers, which helps to improve customer experience, and brand image, and address negative sentiments before it spread.  Sentiment Analysis Metrics that Brands Must Track:   Monitor Rating & Reviews  Customer Feedback Trend Analysis   Product sentiment tracking across categories, sub-categories, product variants, brands, and sub-brands vis-à-vis competition  Identify Q&A Sentiment themes, with real-time actionable Insights and analytics  Keywords graphically highlighted with word cloud  Identify sentiment themes that are working, gaps, or lags in terms of pricing, quality, packaging, flavor, delivery, etc.    Heat map to reflect sentiment intensity  Why Sentiment Analysis Is Important in E-commerce   Enhanced Service Outcomes and Customer Experience It brings direct insight into real-time perceptions of customers about the brand, its services, and interaction. It not only reveals the surface level of feedback but also gives an idea about the customer’s feelings and sentiments upon interaction. They can alter service strategies, product experiences, and more based on how customers react.   Comprehensive View of Customer Sentiments It gives an overview of a company’s snapshot view of total customer sentiment. It does not just analyze whether the feedback is positive, negative, or neutral, but aggregates sentiments from multiple sources to give a whole view. Whatever the customer feedback source, the sentiment analysis tools will let you decode the sentiment behind each word or comment.   Understand the Customer’s Mood, Tone, and Attitude With sentiment analysis, businesses manage to perceive customers’ moods, tone of voice, and attitude. That insight is rather important for personalized and empathetic support. It will help an organization with the right kind of emotions displayed by customers for their needs and expectations. This also helps a business organization perceive how customers will feel while interacting with your brand.    Enhance Customer Satisfaction with Data-driven Reactions Sentiment analysis will allow the business to understand where to improve based on customers’ feelings and act based on data to offer customer satisfaction. It acts like a compass for direction, guiding businesses on how to plan, focus their efforts, and appropriate resources to areas where they are most needed.   Identify Customer Pain Points Sentiment analysis gives companies insight into customer’s pain points and what usually irks them. It analyzes feedback and sentiment about aspects, features, touchpoints, or journey stages of a product or service. Companies can find out where improvements should be made. This way, they can take up all the concerns and make necessary improvements to enhance customer experiences.   Knowing the emotions underlying customer feedback lets you identify, very specifically, where things may be going awry-be it a glitch in the system, a baffling process, or even a feature that’s more frustrating than useful.    Plan Market Positioning with Informed Insights Knowing exactly where to place your product in the market holds the key to success. Making an informed decision, however, isn’t easy, and a misjudgment may sink your business. Fortunately, constant monitoring of customers’ sentiments may provide you with just what you need. You will get a better understanding of the features that customers would like to see in your products.   Sentiment Analysis in Improving Customer Experience   There are also many instances when customer sentiment analysis helps enrich the overall customer experience of organizations through tools and techniques.  Proactive Resolution of Issues Sentiment analysis is a potent tool for spotting negative sentiments in customer feedback. By sentiment analysis, a business would be well prepared to proactively address issues, resolve complaints, and avoid any potential escalations before this gets bigger and affects a large chunk of the customer base.   Once any negative sentiment is spotted, immediate and remedial action can be taken by a business to restore the situation and provide satisfaction to resolve it. This proactive approach helps in preventing further dissatisfaction among the customers and builds trust and loyalty.   Continuous Product & Service Improvement They help in identifying areas to improve, insights to develop products, and enhancements based on the sentiments of the customers.   Sentiment analysis gives ways through which organizations make continuous improvements. Businesses can review their customers’ feedback and find common themes and trends emerging from their sentiment analysis. Themes may be related to product features, customer surveys and interactions regarding the service, or overall customer satisfaction.   Efficient Resource Allocation Effective allocation of resources can be planned by prioritizing actions based on sentiments. Critical issues that require the most resources must be focused on.   Resource allocation is also an important business management process. Sentiment analysis plays a major role in this matter. It prioritizes feedback, according to urgency and importance, for businesses to optimize resource allocation. This way, they can go ahead and perform an action based on priority through customer sentiments.   Customer Journey Optimization Organizations