For the love of books

It has been over two and a half months since we launched, and from day one itself  we’ve been getting requests for ‘Gifting’ options. In fact, we ourselves have longed for such a service for some time now but could never really find a reliable one. Many a times, I have personally wanted to surprise a friend/cousin but there was nothing useful unless I wanted to send flowers through Ferns and Petals.

So to us the idea of enabling a gift option on our store always held a lot of appeal but what hastened our decision was a simple market research. Further, has anyone really tried to find out how many people search for the following terms on Google?

‘Send Gifts India’

‘Gift a Book’

‘Send Books’

Many do!! So here we are – formally announcing our new Gift Wrap options for sending books to anywhere within India.

Some of you, who have been regular visitors to our site, might be wondering what’s this all about when this option has already existed for a while now. Yes, the option was there but it was in the initial testing phase where we tried out various measures to ensure that the nice gift-wrapped packets don’t get damaged during transit. We wanted to ensure that the wrapping remained intact and the whole package appealed aesthetically to the recipients so as to bring a smile on their face.

And now we can claim with confidence that it will!

Here’s how we gift wrap the books for your special ones :

The book is first bubble-wrapped and put in a nice strong cardboard box – like every regular order of ours. We then gift-wrap the box and tie a red ribbon onto it. See the image. This gift-pack is then protected by two layers of bubble-wrap so as to prevent the paper from tearing. The address label is then put on the bubble-wrap and finally sealed in a transparent plastic bag. Phew!

A gift, nicely wrapped, can really make a person smile!!

How many of us tear through the wrapping paper whenever we receive a gift because we cannot bear to wait any longer? Or we un-layer it slowly and methodically, all the time heightening our anticipation of what the gift might be and who it might be that sent it to us?

Did we tell you that the recipient is given no clues whatsoever to indicate who has sent the gift until the packet is opened and out pops a personal note from within the book?

Here’s how ‘you’ go about sending the gift:

Select the book you want to gift and add it to your cart. In the cart, check box the Gift-Wrap option and proceed to complete the order. Once you have received the order confirmation email just reply back with the text for the note that you wish to be included. Or you may send a mail to orders@lebooks.in quoting your order number.

The note can be as small as a few lines or a complete letter, which can fit onto a double-sided white-A4 sheet with normal margins.

We realize that mailing the note back to us is not the smoothest way of doing it, and ideally a text-box for the note or an option to upload a text file should be implemented, which we soon will.

Ohh, did we mention that there is a small charge for this? Yep, there is. We have kept it reasonably low at Rs 30 per packet while still offering our discounts and free shipping.

We do hope that you like our offering. If you have any ideas that can help us improve your experience and make this service more valuable to you then do share them and leave your comments below.

Chandler: Hey, I just came across this really cool site LeBooks.in, which offers great discounts on books and also free shipping!

Ross: I also know of this other site, some Indie… Wait did you say FREE shipping??

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Consumers love free shipping, we all do. In fact who doesn’t?

Consider this:- Site A offers free shipping on all orders worth more than Rs. 150 while site B charges Rs. 10 per book and yet another site C charges a flat Rs. 30 per order. Which of the three sites do you think would be more popular?

My bet is site A. Simply because despite different discount structures, there is one thing constant, which Ross will always remember and that is site A ships for free. Site A has created a great marketing tool. Besides, by offering free shipping, site A is telling Ross upfront how much a book will cost even before he adds it to the cart and this enriches his customer experience. He need not undergo the hassle of adding a book to the cart and checking out till the end to know the final amount!! So even if Site A is at times not matching the discount by Site B or site C, the former is still expected to fare better, ceteris paribus.

In the Indian context, there is another factor. For some reason, as much as we Indians love free shipping we also hate paying for it. Better give us lower discounts but don’t ask us to pay for shipping. Why is it so?

Maybe it’s because we have been conditioned to think so from the early heydeys of e-commerce in India when ebay.in was still Baazee.

I remember sellers luring buyers by offering outrageous discounts and then in turn outraging them by levying ludicrous shipping charges to cover their costs.

In the West it is a well-established practice to pay for shipping. Even Amazon, which any Indian swears e-commerce by, charges for shipping unless the order amount is more than $25. In our case it would have translated to orders worth more than Rs. 750. Free shipping over there is used to incentivize the customers to buy in bulk; in fact there is a free shipping day. So why do we not also follow their practice rather than make a habit out of it here?

I would someday really like to explore this psychology of ours because when we were contemplating our own shipping policy for LeBooks.in, I myself was vociferous that we not charge anything!