I usually buy my annual supply of contact lens from the neighborhood optical store. Not just me, I do that for my wife too. We have been doing this for the past 10+ years.
Last week, we noticed that our supplies are over and we both need to order new annual supply for our respective eye powers. We change our monthly disposable lens in the first week of every month, so we have a fortnight left with the last, in-use lens. We had just driven back from a 4 day vacation to Coimbatore and I wasn’t keen on heading to the store on Sunday evening, last week.
I then remembered that new TV ad for lenskart. It was kinda cute, but primarily showcased spectacle frames. Still, I went to the site and noticed that they sell contact lens too.
I decided to order contact lens online for the first time in my life.
As is my usual preference, I did not login via Google or Facebook on Lenskart – I tried to create a new account, with my own unique settings, wherever I can manage.
Account creation was a nightmare! The options for adding a default address and the check box for newsletter subscription were missing, while the text existed. There was something clunky about the forms and even after trying to create the account thrice, I did not get a confirmation mail. And the site kept throwing me an odd looking error screen!
After 3 times, I lost patience and clicked on ‘Login with Google’. True enough, this was smooth – I had an account in seconds. But I then could not change my password – the old password (which I assume was my Google password- can it be? Not a privacy nightmare?) was invalid, so I wasn’t able to add a new one. Grrr.
While this was happening, even before I could get a confirmation for opening an account (via Google login), I get a confirmation for subscription of the Lenskart newsletter, to the email ID I was trying to create a new account with – not the one I logged in via Google!
Finally, I put all this aside, cribbed a bit on Twitter about how extraordinarily clunky all this is and proceeded to actually order what I was planning to – contact lens.
Why? Don’t you think all this bad experience would have dissuaded me from ordering from this site? From sheer aesthetics and operational point of view, of course, it did. But there were two reasons why I persisted.
One, fantastic pricing. I have no idea how they can manage this. Scale? Already? Not sure how! There is a running joke on Twitter about how the Indian e-commerce is a non-profit industry. I’m not sure if Lenskart is losing money on this, but Bausch & Lomb’s 3 month supply of PureVision 2 HD lens is just about Rs.1,595. Not just that – they are also running a special promo for August! The age old, ‘Buy 2 Get 1 Free’! I have never, ever encountered such a promo offline, in any store. So off I went, ordering for me and my wife, taking advantage of the offer.
Two, cash on delivery. Despite the pricing, I would have still hesistated if there was no cash on delivery and if I had make payment up front, via credit or debit card. Let me state it bluntly – I have doubts about e-commerce brands that come with a ‘kart’ in them, just to cash in on the big daddy of all karts – the original Flipkart. But you see, there is no risk in cash on delivery. Great pricing + cash on delivery is a fantastic combination!
My wife was skeptical about delivery and I was ready to head to the neighborhood optical store on Monday, but I got a despatch confirmation on Monday morning. And yesterday, the lens landed home, with a very neat and secure packing!
Despite all things like aesthetics, clunky sign up process and a messy newsletter subscription method (that I hated), Lenskart has one thing going for it – delivery. They simply delivered and that too in 2 days. For recurring buys like lens (and groceries… and vegetables), beyond all things like fast website, smooth UI and other blah, delivery is the key.
My wife did not order from Town Essentials for a very long time. She tried vegetables from Big Basket, but she wasn’t happy with them at all – they are good with groceries (wife continues to order from them), but not with fresh vegetables. She told me that Towness’ UI was a big downer and she just didn’t feel like ordering from them. One day, I persisted and forced her to do just that – again, on cash on delivery.
And guess what? She was floored with the quality of vegetables form Towness! It’s been months since we bought vegetables from an offline store – it has been Towness all the way!
The site, UI and everything is secondary to me when the risk is low. And risk is lowered entirely for customers by cash on delivery. And we have seen that they deliver – we may still not pay in advance via credit card, but if incentivized (better prices if paid in advance via card, perhaps? Or a CRM connection here?), we just may – the delivery has evoked trust more than what fancy UI/UX and snazzy web design could. In some ways, all this seems to be emulating the offline model – you have fancy lit stores that entice you to walk in and then you have your dull, boring neighborhood kirana store which you know will go out of its way to make you happy with availability of stuff and delivery.
Even if these online stores increase price eventually to match offline stores, I may still be buying online given the unbeatable convenience of it all… particularly for frequent, recurring purchases like groceries, vegetables and… contact lens!