GOSF 2014 a 'Roaring Success' on Small City, Mobile Traffic: Google

Google's Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) has been a "roaring success" with strong participation from smaller cities like Ranchi, Guntur and Hubli and people using mobile phones to shop.

The three-day event, which closed on Friday, saw participation from over 450 partners across categories.

"GOSF 2014 was a roaring success, with all partners seeing great engagements across product categories. We got 80 lakh visits to the site during the three-day festival. And a total of over 1.4 crore visits to the site including promotion period," Google India Industry Director eCommerce Nitin Bawankule said.

Compared to last year, the user engagement is up by seven times from 20 lakh visits, he added.

"People from 220 cities in India participated in the festival. We saw huge consumer involvement and participation from smaller cities like Ranchi, Guntur, Hubli, Bareilly, Firozpur etc," Bawankule said.

(Also See: Google Says GOSF 2014 Is a Success. What Are Others Saying?)

He added that a lot of first time buyers shopped in the 'Rs. 299 Corner' and some of smaller partners reported growth of 5 to 7 times in their daily conversions.

About 40 percent of the users accessed via mobile, he said.

Categories that saw maximum engagement and sales were electronics, lifestyle, home and kitchen among others.

Many unique and high value products were also sold and booked at the GOSF 2014.

Over 500 houses were booked across all real estate partners, while more than 50 cars and 100 bikes were booked.

Sundeep Malhotra, Founder and CEO, HomeShop18.com said this year's GOSF has kept up to the momentum of last year.

"We have recorded a 4X increase in sales, across HomeShop18 platforms. We also saw a doubling of call flow and a jump in average order value by 32 percent during GOSF," he added.

CashKaro.com, a cashback and coupons site, saw traffic growing by 450 percent and 350 percent increase in revenues during GOSF.

"The average order value also doubled as compared to normal days. With the success of GOSF this year, the stakes for next year are set to be even higher," CashKaro.com co-founder Rohan Bhargava said.