Rediff.com is one of the premier worldwide online providers of news, information, communication, entertainment and shopping services for Indians.
Known for being one of the first with news and providing accurate and trustworthy information, Rediff.com provides an ideal platform for Indians worldwide to connect with one another online fast. Rediff.com is committed to offering a personalized and a secure surfing and shopping environment.
Rediff.com additionally offers the Indian American community one of the oldest and largest Indian weekly newspaper, India Abroad.
Founded in 1996, Rediff.com is headquartered in Mumbai, India with offices in New Delhi and New York, USA
Rediff.com is the leading online network targeting India and Indians worldwide. They provide original and third-party branded content through interest-specific channels, extensive Web-based community features such as free e-mail, chat, personal home pages and an India adapted search engine, and the largest e-commerce platform in India.
They have designed their Web-site offerings by keeping the slow access speed available to most Indian Internet users in mind. Rediff believes that it has created the online network of choice for Indian Internet users, as well as created a highly desirable advertising and e-commerce platform for advertisers and merchants respectively.
They believe that their success to date is attributable to the following key success factors:
1. Focus on India & Indians Worldwide: They serve the online needs for Indian Internet users and people of Indian origin worldwide and have developed their product offerings based on the demands and the requirements of their user base. They have been in business since 1996, and hence have a large archive of Indian focused content. Rediff provides their users with:
• Broad range of community offerings such as, chat, singles channel and personal homepages that allows users to interact with other Indians with similar interests;
• Search engine, with technology from Inktomi, that has been customized to provide India relevant content as top searches for queries by users;
• Channels that are relevant to Indian interest, e g Horoscope, Cricket, Singles, Indian finance, Indian music and Indian movies;
• Up-to-date news focused on India, constantly updated by their in-house editorial staff, featuring interviews with several leading Indian politicians, movie stars, and celebrities;
• Airline and train schedule and availability, thereby eliminating the need for Indian users to queue up in airport and train stations;
• An easy to understand interface that strikes the right balance between an attractive visual appearance and fast down-load times for people accessing the site with low speed modems.
2. Comprehensive online offering: Rediff believes that it is "one-stop-shop" for Indian Internet users by satisfying all their online requirements. By providing them with locally relevant content, community functionality, and ability to shop online, it has been able to attract and retain users on its site for extended periods. They believe that their extensive offerings coupled with their aggressive branding program have made them the most recognized Internet brand in India. To help advertisers reach the Rediff audiences, they
help them build their sites, design their banners and sponsorships and lead them through a comprehensive service to assist their marketing efforts on the net.
3. Leading e-commerce platform: Rediff has created the Rediff Marketplace which provides Indian merchants a guide and effective way to move from being merely advertisers/sponsors on their site to selling their goods and services online.
To demonstrate the value of this proposition they created a Rediff Book Store and Music Store online and the initial positive results from them has allowed them to sign up more merchants.
Till date they have put online several dozen merchants in India and are now completing development of software that will allow merchants to automatically sign-up, create their own store and transact business on the web.
On the other hand they have created the necessary facilities to allow their site visitors to easily search and provide the right goods and services in the Rediff Marketplace.
Promotional Strategies
Rediff generally believes advertising in mass media like Television, Newspaper etc.
Apart from these general means of advertising it also believes in promoting the site through web promotion. The best e-commerce site in the world is worthless if no one can find it. But, too often, ecommerce start-ups use shotgun marketing, simply advertising everywhere, to everyone, in the hope that a fraction of a percent of those who see the ads will respond.
Majority of the Rediff customers come through search engines, such as Yahoo, Google, AltaVista and others. So they see to it that they are getting their site listed, making sure that their site shows up high in the list of search results and ensuring that their site is listed for specific keywords which is a science in itself.
Rediff also believes in Word of Mouth policy, an offline strategy. This can be done only if they provide innovative products and services to its customers and to see that what the made by them is being fulfilled, more the number of people visiting their site more is the awareness made by them to other people.
For E.g. Rediff offers ‘Rediff Blogs’ a service that allows a user to publish their thoughts and ideas directly on the web. Rediff.com is the first Indian website to offer Blogs to Indians worldwide using the latest in the internet technologies.
A Blog or a web log is a personal or conversational website updated frequently with views, links, commentary and such other information relevant to a particular topic. This could comprise of links and commentary from other websites on topics of interest such as writing diaries, poetry, uploading photos, providing project updates, news about a company, a person or an idea and even fiction. This service enables the user to express his opinions, be heard and make friends on Rediff.com.
The process of setting up and updating a blog is very simple. All a user needs is a Rediff.com account. Thereafter a blog can be set up in three simple steps, starting with entering a subject, choosing a template and making an entry into the blog.
Building Trust
Online users expect certain things from the service provider i.e. easy to use and trouble free procedures like while creating a new Rediffmail account, the information asked by Rediff to the online user is very specific and up to the point. According to them trust is an ongoing job, at no point can they afford to loose a valuable customer.
On its website they have got a Rediff Marketplace option wherein a customer can buy the products online. Rediff has got this system whereby if a customer after shopping is not satisfied with the product purchased from Rediff, they can return the goods back to Rediff even if they have used the product. Rohit Varma, Chief Marketing Officer said that it is these small things that one has to take into consideration and which can create a sense of trust in the minds of the customers.
Known for being one of the first with news and providing accurate and trustworthy information, Rediff.com provides an ideal platform for Indians worldwide to connect with one another online fast. Rediff.com is committed to offering a personalized and a secure surfing and shopping environment.
Rediff.com additionally offers the Indian American community one of the oldest and largest Indian weekly newspaper, India Abroad.
Founded in 1996, Rediff.com is headquartered in Mumbai, India with offices in New Delhi and New York, USA
Rediff.com is the leading online network targeting India and Indians worldwide. They provide original and third-party branded content through interest-specific channels, extensive Web-based community features such as free e-mail, chat, personal home pages and an India adapted search engine, and the largest e-commerce platform in India.
They have designed their Web-site offerings by keeping the slow access speed available to most Indian Internet users in mind. Rediff believes that it has created the online network of choice for Indian Internet users, as well as created a highly desirable advertising and e-commerce platform for advertisers and merchants respectively.
They believe that their success to date is attributable to the following key success factors:
1. Focus on India & Indians Worldwide: They serve the online needs for Indian Internet users and people of Indian origin worldwide and have developed their product offerings based on the demands and the requirements of their user base. They have been in business since 1996, and hence have a large archive of Indian focused content. Rediff provides their users with:
• Broad range of community offerings such as, chat, singles channel and personal homepages that allows users to interact with other Indians with similar interests;
• Search engine, with technology from Inktomi, that has been customized to provide India relevant content as top searches for queries by users;
• Channels that are relevant to Indian interest, e g Horoscope, Cricket, Singles, Indian finance, Indian music and Indian movies;
• Up-to-date news focused on India, constantly updated by their in-house editorial staff, featuring interviews with several leading Indian politicians, movie stars, and celebrities;
• Airline and train schedule and availability, thereby eliminating the need for Indian users to queue up in airport and train stations;
• An easy to understand interface that strikes the right balance between an attractive visual appearance and fast down-load times for people accessing the site with low speed modems.
2. Comprehensive online offering: Rediff believes that it is "one-stop-shop" for Indian Internet users by satisfying all their online requirements. By providing them with locally relevant content, community functionality, and ability to shop online, it has been able to attract and retain users on its site for extended periods. They believe that their extensive offerings coupled with their aggressive branding program have made them the most recognized Internet brand in India. To help advertisers reach the Rediff audiences, they
help them build their sites, design their banners and sponsorships and lead them through a comprehensive service to assist their marketing efforts on the net.
3. Leading e-commerce platform: Rediff has created the Rediff Marketplace which provides Indian merchants a guide and effective way to move from being merely advertisers/sponsors on their site to selling their goods and services online.
To demonstrate the value of this proposition they created a Rediff Book Store and Music Store online and the initial positive results from them has allowed them to sign up more merchants.
Till date they have put online several dozen merchants in India and are now completing development of software that will allow merchants to automatically sign-up, create their own store and transact business on the web.
On the other hand they have created the necessary facilities to allow their site visitors to easily search and provide the right goods and services in the Rediff Marketplace.
Promotional Strategies
Rediff generally believes advertising in mass media like Television, Newspaper etc.
Apart from these general means of advertising it also believes in promoting the site through web promotion. The best e-commerce site in the world is worthless if no one can find it. But, too often, ecommerce start-ups use shotgun marketing, simply advertising everywhere, to everyone, in the hope that a fraction of a percent of those who see the ads will respond.
Majority of the Rediff customers come through search engines, such as Yahoo, Google, AltaVista and others. So they see to it that they are getting their site listed, making sure that their site shows up high in the list of search results and ensuring that their site is listed for specific keywords which is a science in itself.
Rediff also believes in Word of Mouth policy, an offline strategy. This can be done only if they provide innovative products and services to its customers and to see that what the made by them is being fulfilled, more the number of people visiting their site more is the awareness made by them to other people.
For E.g. Rediff offers ‘Rediff Blogs’ a service that allows a user to publish their thoughts and ideas directly on the web. Rediff.com is the first Indian website to offer Blogs to Indians worldwide using the latest in the internet technologies.
A Blog or a web log is a personal or conversational website updated frequently with views, links, commentary and such other information relevant to a particular topic. This could comprise of links and commentary from other websites on topics of interest such as writing diaries, poetry, uploading photos, providing project updates, news about a company, a person or an idea and even fiction. This service enables the user to express his opinions, be heard and make friends on Rediff.com.
The process of setting up and updating a blog is very simple. All a user needs is a Rediff.com account. Thereafter a blog can be set up in three simple steps, starting with entering a subject, choosing a template and making an entry into the blog.
Building Trust
Online users expect certain things from the service provider i.e. easy to use and trouble free procedures like while creating a new Rediffmail account, the information asked by Rediff to the online user is very specific and up to the point. According to them trust is an ongoing job, at no point can they afford to loose a valuable customer.
On its website they have got a Rediff Marketplace option wherein a customer can buy the products online. Rediff has got this system whereby if a customer after shopping is not satisfied with the product purchased from Rediff, they can return the goods back to Rediff even if they have used the product. Rohit Varma, Chief Marketing Officer said that it is these small things that one has to take into consideration and which can create a sense of trust in the minds of the customers.