Flipkart Lite - A Review of Flipkart's Mobile Product

I just love what Flipkart has done in the online retail space. The breadth of their catalogue is great. Their pricing is transparent. Their shipping is free. And their delivery times are phenomenal. I don't remember buying a book from anywhere other than Flipkart in the past year.

They have a mobile optimised site too - one of the very few in the Indian market. Flipkart Lite allows you to search & order all product lines available on the desktop site, i.e. books, mobiles, movies, music, games, cameras, & computers. However, the only payment option available is cash-on-delivery (COD). Given that they're in a business that doesn't need immediate fulfillment, like flight tickets, it's makes sense to avoid the payment challenge on mobile.

The transaction process is fairly straightforward, barring a minor glitch here or there. The experience seems to be optimised for small-screen devices as is clear from how they're treating the search box & search results.

Getting to Flipkart Lite

Visiting www.flipkart.com from my mobile browser (native browser on Nokia E63) I'm automatically redirected to the mobile site. However, I have to explicitly type m.flipkart.com on Opera Mini to get to the mobile site. It's a small bug that needs to be fixed, unless they've explicitly decided that Opera Minis are capable enough for the desktop version of the site.

The Home Page

On the home page it isn't completely obvious what to put in the search box. For quite some time I kept thinking one could search only for books. The only text hinting at the availability of multiple product categories is "below the scroll" and seems more like marketing gobbledygook, best ignored.

The Search Experience

Ambiguous search terms, which return results from multiple product categories are handled pretty well. The search results page for such terms defaults to the product category which is most popular. It would be interesting to know how Flipkart determines popularity on a keyword basis. Searches for "Udaan" & "Dev D" returned the music listings first, whereas searches for "Kaminey" & "Dabangg" return the movie listings.

I feel the search results page, while functional, can use a better visual treatment.

The Product Details Page

Clicking on the product title leads you to the product details page. Apart from reviews and other product recommendations, it lists all the details that the desktop site carries. Again, the visual treatment could use some serious work. Especially the specs section of phone product pages. (View screenshot »)

The Transaction Process

Clicking "Buy this now" takes you to a form which asks for your PIN code, phone number & email ID.

Hitting the "Verify" button takes you to a form which asks your name & address. Surprisingly, the name & address are NOT pre-filled from the user's profile info. Typing out a complete address on the phone is pretty painful - especially if you're not on a QWERTY devidce. This is a major usability glitch adding to some friction in the transaction process. There could've been some privacy concerns around misuse of this feature (get anyone's home/office address if you know their phone number & email), but nothing that a cleverly worded & placed OPTIONAL password field could not solve.

An order review screen, followed by an order confirmation screen upon hitting the "Place order" button.

The Good

• All product categories available
• Almost all product information that is available on desktop site is also available on mobile site
• Easy to use cash-on-delivery payment option
• Fairly well optimized for small-screen/mobile devices

The Bad

• Friction in the checkout flow caused by not pre-filling the user's shipping address.
• While site is pretty usable on mobile devices, the layouts could use a better visual treatment
• Minor-bug in detecting the browser type (mobile or desktop)

Go ahead - give it a spin. Visit m.flipkart.com now and let me know your feedback in the comments section below. Overall it's a very well executed mobile product. Any other mobile optimized websites in the Indian market that you know about?