India has over 300M internet users, the second largest in the world, yet less than 15% of users shop online. While there are several contributing factors for this, one key reason is that the process and experience of shopping online is still hard and not intuitive for a majority of users. Users often have trouble finding the right place to start their online shopping process or the right questions to ask to get the most out of their online experience. In contrast, offline shopping offers the benefit of being able to talk to an individual to help through the process but is limited in terms of reach, scale and choice to end users.
Founders at ShopInSync, feel that they can achieve the best of both worlds, by using the right combination of technologies and user experience. This enables users to go about their shopping experiences in a truly natural ways, like they do in the offline world while getting the best of convenience, choice, pricing and other factors that online shopping offers.
There are two aspects driving this – One is the adoption and usage of messaging applications. Messaging apps are the most used apps and have an average of 5 times of the engagement compared to other apps. Shopping is inherently conversational – be it talking to a shopkeeper, or a friend or family. Second is the evolution of technologies like natural language processing, search and machine learning. that allows us to create experiences that mimics near human-like interactions and conversations at scale.
Today, ShopInSync is releasing the beta version of its shopping assistant. The shopping Assistant is designed to simplify the online shopping process by making it conversational, intuitive, natural and fun.
Imagine you are looking to buy a mobile phone (or a laptop or a tablet), but not sure where to start. the assistant can guide through the process just like an expert and help you arrive at the right choice. Just ask the assistant in a natural manner, like you’d talk to a shopkeeper. The assistant helps you find best prices, one tap access to product features, facets to expand or narrow your search, complex search and compare products side by side.
You can ask things like:
“I am looking for a phone for my mom”
“Show me phones with Bluetooth, wifi, dual sim and fingerprint sensor under 30000”
“Compare Gionee S6s to nexus 5x”
“Show me lowest prices for iPhone 6s”
“Best selling HP laptops with touchscreen under 40000”
“How’s the camera on an iPhone 6s” or “How’s the battery on a Samsung S7”
When looking at a product, you can ask for things like “Hows the battery”, “hows the camera”, “Warranty” etc
To use the assistant, go to Facebook Messenger and message “ShopInSync” or at https://www.messenger.com/t/ShopInSync if you are using a web browser on a laptop or desktop computer.
The assistant is always available, responds instantly, is context-aware and is trained to handle a wide range of questions to communicate and respond like a well trained the human assistant to help you make better purchase decisions. The assistant is adding new skills and capabilities every day, so expect the assistant to become smarter across categories and types of requests.
Key features:
1: Natural Language Understanding: Just tell the assistant in your own words and the assistant will understand and respond back.
2: Facets: Facets help users to get ideas on what to look for when looking for a product and also allows to make choices without typing.
3: Deep context understanding: Our assistant understands context deeply, which means that it can keep track of the conversation and respond accordingly. For example, if you were looking for a Gionee S6s, and then asked, “hows the camera” without specifying Gionee S6s, the assistant understands what you are referring to and shows you camera details for Gionee S6s.
4: One tap to key product features: When looking at a product, we often want to know more details on “hows the camera”, “customer ratings”, “how’s the warranty”, “memory” and other aspects. This information is typically buried and hard to find. Using this feature, you can get to these in one tap.
5: Powerful Search: You can ask our assistant complex questions like “Show me android phones with Bluetooth, wifi, dual sim and fingerprint sensor for 30000”
6: Side by side product comparisons: Users often need the ability to compare two products side by side. It’s especially hard when you are on a mobile device. Well, now you can. For tablets and mobiles, simply say “Compare product A and product B” and voila!
To use the assistant, go to Facebook Messenger (iOS or Android apps) and message “ShopInSync” or at https://www.messenger.com/t/ShopInSync if you are using a web browser on a laptop or desktop computer. Our assistant is currently trained for mobiles, tablets and laptops and we are adding more categories and expertise soon. Try it and let us know your feedback @ support@shopinsync.com
