Fake Daraz Sale: Daraz 11 11 was all about Fake Publicity
Single’s Day 11.11 Daraz Sale and their website and the app got crashed…. IN LIKE 15 MINS. It was a ONE day SALE, which means every single second counted. Psychology comes to play, first bad experience and you’re gone! So like thousands of people waiting to just barge into it were like - what the c*&#! I think Daraz must have expected this as they were not having an auto scaling server architecture. Nine (9) hours recovery time is like shooting right in your face. When you say you are disrupting - you gotta focus on SPEED and EFFICIENCY - you can disrupt by being slow, out of focus and in the recovery mode while you announce to have the biggest sale ever! Trends always follows to Steep Down. It has to happen as you advertise yourself and didn’t manage the servers.
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Even in 2016, when their event lasted 1 week their website crashed like crazy and this is supposed to be a One Day mega sale event. This happens when you don’t hire Webmasters rather spend all budget on just marketing. According to Moz report, their user of web is decreasing dramatically as compared to the last year.
Prices that had to reduce up to 90% were not reduced at all
Just yesterday, while I was at the TCS office near Lalik Jan Chowk, the entries guy was claiming of thousands of returns by LUMS students in record time. Yes, SIX TIMES BIGGER THAN BLACK FRIDAY on returns. To some, it was a mere hype around Daraz 11.11 much like Daraz.pk sale Black Friday, while all the things were being sold for the same price. But regarding prices all websites do the same thing. Use internet wayback machine to see price of the same item on daraz pages BEFORE the sale… and continue laughing on the “sale”. Biggest sale of the world, 85% off on Daraz on a pack of boxers.
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Another merchant (Daraz Seth) said:
I have witnessed the most flop sales on Daraz as seller since 4 years of selling. I am working wirh daraz since 4 years, discounts were really amazing in many products as an importer, some products were lower than my cost price.
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99% of the sale products out there on 11.11 are fake
Some would say that they increased prices by 2x and then gave 50% discount. First of all they would let you select only three products to exhibit. I am a merchant myself and they disallowed increase in price before a set date or new product enlistment so it’s just heresay. Despite that, it’s a flopped campaign. Played our emotions. A lot of cunning merchance would have increased Product cost upto 20 % higher than market price and offer 20% save on that Product and that cost almost same in the market. Created hype and utilize budget in marketing to recall the customer and bring it to huge traffic on portal like they did on Daraz Independence Sale.
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Not only Daraz, but all international websites do same thing on big sale. Daraz is also following international standard on this case. But the issue with Daraz is limited stocks of products, which is not an issue on international websites. It’s all about scaling! Even in big Pakistani brands sales are actually same, end of season sales of Khaadi and other brands is prime example where the place a new price tag with increased rate on previous tag and then give discount on increased prices.
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All of e-commerce stores are selling the lie including Fake Daraz
- If everyone else in the world of e-commerce is cheating; that still does not mean that Pakistani companies should cheat,
- Nobody should sell on a loss, but what is the price paid by a seller to keep holding on to a product which is not selling at the price quoted,
- If you have run out of a product, then don’t let people buy it. Confirming an order places an obligation on both sides, so cancelling should not be an option.
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I don’t think if marketing strategy was the real problem with Daraz pk online shopping portal. Their biggest source of order is Fb ads which resulted last year with 74% traffic from Facebook and this year there remained just 3.5% of total traffic from Facebook. They thought they can get order by running TV Commercials, but it’s not a bubble gum, chocolate or diaper, internet customers comes from internet tools.
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To an optimist, Mr. Qamar Zahoor (who recently started dispatching training on how to start a Daraz merchant shop):
New system… things are changed … they approved very selective products … Alibaba implemented new system for Daraz. Now, a lot of automation is in process and new algorithms are in implementation which have affected sales. Nowadays, main target is to get customers and increase customer base. But as in have observed lot of sellers get good sales.
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So much so, just by having an affiliate link, I myself created around 50$ for diverging few of the trusted traffic onto Daraz.pk sale mobile, Daraz pk sale makeup, Daraz.pk sale shoes, Daraz pk sale watches. Here’s a glimpse of a humble dashboard.
The Single’s Day fake Daraz 11.11 sale was advertised purely on the percentage that was offered, which was 91%. I did expect this beforehand because Daraz’s ‘mega sales’ in previous years consisted of the same subject; wide yet false marketing. Commercially, I admit that offering such a blunt amount is not only inviting but equally difficult to implement, but NEVER ADVERTISE WHAT YOU CAN’T SELL. No need to blame Daraz pk sale 2018 or any other portal or vendor… it is us the customers that go there! E-commerce is not charity. It’s a business model where they use the same tactics as the ones in traditional retail. However, the faking strategy doesn’t work now! We’re all conscious buyers and we follow things we want to buy. Now, when you say flash SALE and ONE DAY SALE, you have to BOOM IN AT ANY COST, AliExpress made a sale in 3 BiLLION in just 2 MINS on 11/11.
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Disclaimer: Verbatims and Excerpts adopted from a LinkedIn thread by Madiha Yusuf (due credit).