With new online shopping websites spawning up every week, do we need another one?
Yes, we’re in the middle of online shopping/ecommerce evolution in India. More choice promotes competition among the sellers to offer discounted products with a good shopping experience. That makes the consumer a winner (of course these companies make good profits too).
So how’s ZAPstore any different? Is it one of those websites that just sells gadgets or something more? Here’s a review.
ZAPstore has instant discounts on the listed prices through a ZAP.
When you visit a product page, you’d be shown a ‘Quick Buy’ and a ‘ZAP it’ against product. You can either quickly buy it at the list price or buy it at a discounted price with a ZAP. When you ZAP a product, the system fetches a discounted price against a zap. A ZAP is then that is deducted from your ZAP balance. You get 10 seconds to purchase the product at the new zapped price. If you wish to look at a further discounted price, you can continue to keep zapping. There are a few scenarios where the ZAPs are reverted back to your account, you can read more about how ZAPs work on their website.
You can add more ‘ZAP balance’ through ZAP packs starting from INR 30. You need not start buying ZAPs right away, the website provides you with 2 ZAPs free with a signup.
What we like about ZAPstore?
-
While discount coupons for most other websites are found on the web, changes are that most of them are either used or expired. Instead ZAPstore lists out the best prices for the products and then gives out discount on the list price. Say if you want to purchase an iPad – most websites don’t offer any discounts for this. But using a ZAP you can get yourself a valuable discount on the same.
-
They offer 100% genuine products with official warranty.
-
On a new signup, you get 2 free ZAPs to try out their service before purchasing ZAP packs.
How does the company earn money.. How do they offer these discounts?
That’s a tricky one – How can a company make money while offering 100% genuine products at a discount? Surely they don’t want to pay out of their pocket. While I leave it to the founders to clarify this, the company is probably making money in 2 ways, primary source being the ZAP packs themselves as consumers who once get a product at reduced price would be willing to ZAP more for reduced discounts. The secondary source of income would probably be from the reduced cost from bulk purchased gadgets. It makes sense to only have the most purchased products in the Inventory.
What could be improved.. There’s gotto be something right?
-
The concept of a ZAP is different from a normal discount coupon, the page that explains how to zap could’ve been dynamic and interactive content (something like a not-so-annoying M$ Clippy). For now it’s a non-interactive huge image explaining how a ZAP can be used to order. Huge images are slower to download and display.
-
Most people are used to a lighter white background on shopping websites. That thing might not be so bad for ZAPstore.
Oh also, There’s a special 18% discount for our readers till June 30th for ZAP packs. Enter the discount coupon ‘zapwoikr18’ while purchasing a ZAP pack to avail the offer.
Let us know your experience shopping at ZAPstore. We’ll do more reviews on the shopping websites.
