My wife has been complaining about changing our 3+ year old refrigerator for a couple of weeks now. Ours is a Whirlpool refrigerator (400 litres) and it has caused us quite a few problems – the compressor conked off a few weeks after we had bought it. Though Whirlpool replaced it soon enough since we had the warranty in place, it did take some time. Nobody goes around having two refrigerators (usually!) and having a brand new one at home that wasn’t working is a hell of a headache from many angles.
It has been functioning decently enough then on, though we have had problems on various fronts and all of them required some service support from time to time. In essence, this is not a peaceful purchase. It is interesting that Whirlpool is the only brand of refrigerator we have owned in our 10+ years in Bangalore – this being our third one.
But this post is not about refrigerators. This is about websites.
As we started to consider a new refrigerator, we did what anyone would do – scan newspapers more closely for fridge ads and offers, and make a quick and dirty mental shortlist worth checking out in stores. We were clear we did not want another Whirlpool, though the salesman at eZone was almost offended when we said that to him!
So, our list included LG and Samsung, besides fringe players like Panasonic, Hitachi and perhaps Godrej. I tweeted out all this and as I collected the responses, I noticed that our best bet is perhaps the first two alone.
Since visiting stores is a time consuming affair (with two kids, we are left just with the weekends to do that!), I started visiting the brands’ websites to make a better shortlist of the kind of models we need.
This is where things got interesting. In my opinion, most of these sites seem to be completely outdated in the way they were using the web as a medium. Here are some observations from my short research.
1. To start with, ours was perhaps not a mainstream Indian option – we needed a 400+ litre refrigerator and as we found out later, most white goods stores (chains or standalone stores) stocked a lot more of the sub 350 litre category and a rather limited range of 400+ varieties. What was interesting is that most of these shops also stocked the 600+ litre variety prominently at the front display…may be to showoff the kind of appliances they have!
But, between LG, Samsung, Whirlpool and Godrej, every website listing for refrigerators had almost an online brochure-like look that starts with tons and tons of jargon and a laundry list of models. Some of these jargon includes,
– Green Ion door cooling technology
– Moisture balance crisper
– Optifresh
– Airbooster system
– Freshness booster system
– Magifresh
– 6th sense electronic control
– Coolever zone plus
– Freshonizer
…and so on! In fact, I’m beginning to think that the white goods space is perhaps second only to the social media industry in coining jargon. Even the store sales people were just hurling these terms at us; when I asked what exactly does Optifresh means, a Reliance Digital store guy suddenly remembered a non-existent phone call and vanished. Another guy emphatically announced to us, as we moved off a Whirlpool model he was trying to sell, ‘But sir, this has Freshonizer!!!’…as if this was a game changer for us!
2. The display itself was mighty outdated in all/most brand websites. If you are out to search on the basis of litres (as we wanted to), you may be in trouble. Yes, Samsung and LG are considerably better as they use a reasonably easy menu to help us select models based on size, but combined with other technology jargon and options, they end up being cumbersome.
The one below is from Samsung.
For instance, in the LG website, you got to choose the size in conjunction with double door, single door or side-by-side. And there are other options like 4-way cooling, door cooling, green ion door and multi air flow. The trouble is, all these options and selection panel appears only when you go into one of the 3 door options and opt for ‘select all’! Till then, it is a brochure all the way.
Samsung seems better – you only have to choose the door style and then you are presented with the selection panel. Whirlpool and Godrej are plain 2D brochures, but, to be fair, the level of details about each model in the Whirlpool page is impressive! This did help me make my Whirlpool washing machine purchase decision faster, to give you an example.
Here’s the question then: why is there so much focus on forcing people to browse through models via the door-style category? Have these brands already made up their minds that door-styles is the first thing that we consumers will want to check out new refrigerators? Why not give us options? Is that so difficult online?
3. That ‘options’ part brings me to the next point. Take a look at the Whirlpool website. It gives us one single page with a silly looking, short refrigerator model in it and only 3 options – direct cool, frost control and frost free!
The question is, why haven’t these brands even considered a work flow of what and how to present the range of models online?
I understand that all models may not satisfy the many needs of consumers and as such, models may be lesser, forcing consumers to compromise on some of their demands. But why not at least pretend to be helpful in a medium that helps in customization?
For instance, I’d assume that people may end up starting to look at refrigerator options based on 3 criteria – number of people who need to use the refrigerator, physical specs (like dimensions to fit in a slot at home, color etc.) and perhaps the nature of food they consume (this is very Indian, I assume – vegetarian/non-vegetarian). This is my personal take…I’m sure white goods brands may have done a lot of focused group research before creating their websites – hopefully.
But, if you take people through a decision making process online, won’t they be more appreciative? For instance, why not let people input basic details like outline of physical dimensions needed, number of people that the refrigerator may serve and food type…and offer models that may suit such choices? That at least feels like making a choice based on something practical – instead of merely flipping an online brochure, that too, a poorly designed one!
You may think this is hand-holding consumers, and more advanced set of consumers may feel this is all pointless. Point! So, this is a website – give people a choice to go to a brochure style listing…simple!
I agree that people are not going to buy refrigerators or television sets online in India…at least not yet. That stage is still some time away, but why not use the interactivity offered by the medium to help people decide? There are many stores offline to go to and make a decision, but all that takes a lot of time and effort. While physical look and feel is perceived to be the best way to sell anything to Indians, why not go the extra mile online, in the website to work as a decision support system?
4. The other issue I had – most models in these websites are displayed as a tiny photo! Why not be proud of the design and help us with larger photos…or better, interactive photos which we can open and do stuff with? What exactly is stopping these brands in trying to recreate the store experience as closely as possibly…online? LG has a ‘Gallery’ for each model, but it shows yet another inconsequential photo!
Is it scale? I mean, the work that goes into adding intricate details of a new model online and the fact that new models keep coming all the time? But wouldn’t that mean consumers interacting closely with the products online and giving the brands a ton of information about which kind of models are being looked at (for how much time) more? This is something that the brands have to go with multi-brand store sale store guys’ word now!
5. Samsung has a ‘reviews’ tab!!
What do they expect? People will review a refrigerator after seeing one online in the website? Or, people actually buy the product, use it for some time and get back to the website to review it? Why? Have you ever done it? Here’s an example of a consumer review and it is bad, sentiment-wise and meaning-wise, to put it mildly. So what would a prospect think after reading this review? What purpose does this serve?
6. There is a mismatch between what we see on the website and what is in the stores – usually. We, for example, had made a list of 4 models (2 from Samsung and 2 from LG) and 3 of them were either outdated models or were not available for us to see in any store – brand store or multi-brand! That is painful, given that we had made up our minds to some extent and had to go through the research all over again. I do understand that unless there is a close connection between the manufacturer’s supply chain, web team and retail stores – sounds tough, I know!
End of rant!
The point I’m making is simple – websites can and may look dumb and 2 dimensional if we build them that way. We have come a long way in imagining a lot of interactivity using websites and the way white goods brands are putting it to use seems incredibly underwhelming. Given the amount of time and effort that someone needs to put in offline to visit store after multi-brand store, I see tremendous potential in a brand using a sensible and intelligent approach for their online website and make it actually help at least 50% of the decision making process. Right now, they perhaps help about 5-10% of that process and merely act like an online version of a print brochure! If brands refer to the time and effort that all this might take in building, I can only ask them to look at the opportunities – they can be built as a platform (to begin with) so that new models could be added as and when they are launched. The biggest opportunity is for brands to know what people are looking for if they scan the time spent in specific parts of the website!
The irony is that all this is not an utopian dream! Just take a look at the refrigerator sections of Whirlpool and LG in USA – exactly what I’m referring to above! They actually treat customers as sensible and intelligent and seem genuinely helpful!
So, what is the reason for Indian sites looking dumb? Do Indian decision makers in these brand organizations assume that this is enough for Indians? Or, is it a budget level consideration? Or, worse – is that a direct result of the number of internet users in India and the brand going, ‘Why bother man!’? I’d love to know!
Parting note! The URL for LG’s USA website listing refrigerators has the word ‘educational browsing’! That says it all!