25 hour response time
E-shopping is one of the hottest topics of the Internet era. It has not put an end to the bricks and mortar business model, but it has created its own brands and shops. We see the trend of e-shopping on the rise in all the markets where there is broadband connection. On this subject, “The top 1,200 online shops in Europe in 2012” report was published on July 25, 2012.
According to the report, in May 2012, Amazon.co.uk came ahead of Argos.co.uk and Tesco.com in the U.K, while Amazon.de was also the most successful online shop in Germany, followed by OTTO.de. Among the 10 leading competitors in Germany there were also many other mass merchants, such as Bonprix.de and Baur.de. LaRedoute.fr, Cdiscount.com and Amazon.fr took the lead in France. The Austrian market is mostly dominated by local players with Amazon.at, Universal.at and Ottoversand.at generating the highest online sales. In Russia, online supermarket Utkonos.ru (offering food and other products) generated the highest online sales in 2011 ahead of mass merchant Ozon.ru and office supplier Komus.ru. In Poland, mass merchant Allegro.pl was especially successful in online sales, followed by the computers and electronics online shops Neo24.pl and Electro.pl. In Sweden, local businesses dominated, such as house wares/home furnishings retailer Ikea.com, which was also very successful in Norway, along with mass merchant Ellos.se and apparel/accessories online retailer Hm.com. In the Turkish online shopping market, mass merchant Sahibinden.com was by far the leading competitor in terms of traffic, followed by Trendyol.com and Hepsiburada.com.
As you can see, there are many great players in all the European markets and the Turkish ones are now making it onto the lists on the top levels. There are 130 leading online shops in England that made the list, 100 in Germany and 70 in Turkey.
In order for more Turkish online shops to make the 1,200 list in 2013 there are a few measures that could be taken. I have been listening to my friends about online shopping and most were happy about the prices and the ease of shopping, but they were not satisfied with after sale services. Sikayetim.com, a complaint platform, justifies my observations with the sikayetindex (a complaint index) that they have compiled. According to the sikayetindex, the average return time to a complaint by e-shops is 25 hours. This is a very long time in the internet age. Trendyol is the best in this category at 49 minutes. Morhipo ranks the best in overall complaint management, with Markafoni in second and Trendyol in third.
In 2011 the online shopping market in Turkey was 22.8 billion Turkish Liras. There were a total of 36 million transactions.
If the e-shops want to double or triple that amount in the coming years, they really have to learn how to deal with customer complaints better. They need to get their response time down to hours, and learn how to handle customer complaints better. It is no surprise that the top three at managing customer complaints are making it onto every list revenue-wise as well.
