Today, SearchTap was lucky to have a sit-down with Navin Joshua, Founder & Director of GreenHonchos. They develop scalable eCommerce solutions that deliver higher returns on your investment in Tech.

From startup Brands who need a one-stop-shop cart to large established Brands of International repute who target record sales - they run effortlessly on GreenHonchos technology.

We’re looking forward to diving into detail about not GreenHonchos’ growth story but also examine how they have helped other companies grow their online revenue. Let’s take a look.

Let’s start by getting a bit of background about GreenHonchos. When did it start and what was your aim when you set up?

GreenHonchos was established in 2012 as a boutique eCommerce Solutions company with strong expertise in Technology and Marketing. eCommerce was a new domain in India back then. There were a few online Marketplaces like - Flipkart and Snapdeal that introduced the buzz and potential of selling online.

But the technology solutions were limited. Integration of all essential third-party solutions for a successful Online store required deep Technology expertise. It used to take longer to integrate Payment Gateways, Logistics Partners, Email & SMS Solutions. This deep technology know-how was limiting Brands to try online sales channels. This is where GreenHonchos bridged the gap for them. We were able to grow their Online Sales channels and make it a significant percentage of their overall Revenue.

We helped make many online-only Brands as well, like Fashos.com who became a quick success story. We later leveraged the Technology know-how to help other Brands too to grow their eCommerce line of business.

You must have faced your fair share of challenges when eCommerce was emerging in India. How did you persuade brands to focus on online retail?

When we started in 2012, the eCommerce domain was at a very nascent stage in India. It was evolving. And the Brands were still not convinced if Consumers will adopt to online purchase any time soon.

So with each client, we had to make a success story which used to convince the other prospects about this eCommerce potential. Also since our model was to directly impact the Topline & Bottomline of the Brands, we were at the Front-end of the business, we took initiatives to build a good ecosystem of third-party systems (PGs, 3PL, etc.) so that our clients can benefit from it.

We were so convinced about the sustainability & profitability of eCommerce that we went ahead with Revenue-Share Models too with many Brands which wasn’t risk-averse then.

When working on these brands, what insights did you pick up about the eCommerce industry?

eCommerce is not limited to being a Shopping Cart. There is more to it. Sales is a ‘​lag indicator’​. It results in good numbers only when the other parameters like - lower Bounce Rate, super-fast TTFB (Time to First Byte), intuitive Checkout Flow, faster Payments, fast Delivery, Customer Notifications, easy Customer Feedback mechanism, etc. are in place. So focus on the other key parameters first, they are the ​‘lead indicators’​. You need to make the Product discovery, and the Sales Funnel effortlessly easy, better than your competitors so that customers come back to you more often.

Tell us, how are you making a difference to a brand that signs up with you. What advice do you give a prospective customer?

Technology is a huge leverage in eCommerce. It enhances the Customer Experience. It also supports your Marketing initiatives. With the right Technology, your Cost of Sales reduces significantly, which directly improves your Bottomline.

The right technology improves Conversion Rate in your Sales Funnel. It can reduce the Drop at the payment page. Product deliveries can be streamlined, with right notifications to the Customer which improves NPS.

All of this while reducing the COGS & TCO. Therefore it is a huge differentiator when used correctly.

Now that you’ve worked with some of India’s leading brands, what client particularly stands out in your mind?

One of our favorite success stories is TCNS. They own two of the most successful Women Wear Brands in India - W and Aurelia.

They approached GreenHonchos in Q3 of 2018.

Their Online Sales platform was built on Magento. But they experienced some major performance issues there. The Sales were limited on the website. They wanted to grow it many-fold but the website was not keeping up with the huge marketing campaigns they wanted to run.

We started with a Performance Audit and found many issues that needed an immediate fix. For example, the website was so slow that a huge chunk of their customers were dropping off their purchase journey. The checkout portal at their website was able to handle a very limited number of concurrent users.

We first fixed the immediate issues of website slowness. Next, we built a Headless & Service-oriented Architecture for their Online Sales platform.

Instead of having one monolithic Application that was handling both the Front-end and Backend of the website, we developed a suite of 6 decoupled Applications so that the Customer Experience at the Front-end is totally isolated and protected from the activities at the Backend.

Further, the Front-end website was developed as an in-Browser Application that leveraged the concepts of PWA and Serverless.

In the end, the results were:

• More than 400% (4x) improvement in Conversion
• More than 2000% (20x) improvement in Revenue
• Nearly 200% (2x) improvement in Bounce Rate
• Nearly 75% (1/4) reduction in TTFB
• More than 500% (5x) improvement in Customer Satisfaction (NPS)
• We were able to achieve this while reducing the Hosting costs by nearly 60%

And we have replicated this success story to a number of Brands. We leverage Technology to make Online Sales a significant Revenue channel for the Brands.

That’s fantastic work! But tracking these metrics can be hard for stores. What guidance do you have for them? And once you start to track, how do you use this data?

First of all, every store should measure key Business Metrics. For startups, it could be as simple as tracking your site metrics in Google Analytics.

Once you track, only then you can identify where your customers are dropping off from the website. Maybe your site TTFB is so high that you are not getting every visitor you pay for to Facebook. Or maybe the Cart & Checkout pages are so slow that customers abandon it. Or maybe the Checkout flow is not intuitive.

The idea is to track the Customer Journey, and ROI parameters so that you can identify the opportunities to leverage. Your ​investment​ in Technology should fix these issues, instead of becoming a liability in itself.

GreenHonchos helps you find these bottlenecks and enables solutions to spur your business into the next phase of growth.

Lastly, we have collaborated on many projects and our teams have also built up a good connection. I wanted to ask what drove you to work with SearchTap?

SearchTap delivers on the same premise that we do - investment in Technology should self-liquidate ​quickly​.

We are a very data-driven company that measures every investment in Tech to the ROI it brings.

SearchTap brings an ROI that makes the investment totally free! And the best part is - it is very easy to measure it right within Google Analytics, so no more questions on the investment made here.

Customers who search tend to convert higher. So it just makes sense to help the Customers who are desperate to find the right products for them quickly. If we give them a fast and intuitive experience, it will help close more sales. SearchTap does that.