A review of social shopping platform, LimeRoad that is specifically targeted at women in India. The most distinctive feature is its magazine style layout and feel.
Whoever prescribed ‘Retail Therapy’ must have been a woman. Imagine anything more healing than a day out with your fellow shopaholic pals! For the majority of us women who have discovered Pinterest early this year, its virtual retail therapy all the way. We can now boast of our very own curated boards with a plethora of pins ranging from tops, bags, earrings to lawn chairs and cushion covers, from local as well as global brands. We often revel in sharing it with friends and dream of buying it all one fine day.
Bringing in a similar experience is the recently launched Indian portal ‘LimeRoad.com’ where you can also buy what you fancy.
So what exactly is LimeRoad?
LimeRoad is an ecommerce portal with a difference. Here, you can discover that perfect top, share it with your Facebook friends, get a second opinion and buy it only if it gets a nod from all your friends. Exactly the way we women prefer to shop!
The home page greets you with this tempting magazine spread you see in the screenshot. This is the first page of the LimeRoad scrapbook collections – ‘Affordable Intelligent living’. A click on the rupee symbols displayed on the items shows the brand and price for that item along with a link to view more details. The item pinned as ‘hot picks’ is the most recommended one by LimeRoad.
The pink icons serve to flaunt your style and share. Click the heart shaped icon to show you love this collection. Click the book with clip icon to create your own scrapbook. Click the people icon to share it with your Facebook friends.
You can flip through this page to see the next collection ‘Summertime Blues’ just as you would flip through a fashion magazine. In addition, those green flaps on the edge of the magazine allow you to shop by cities or brands or your own scrapbook. Creating a scrapbook is easy – every item you browse through has a scrapbook icon. Just click the icon and you have an open scrapbook beside. Drag everything you like and describe your collection under ‘Lets Party’, ‘ Workwear Wardobe’, ‘Flirty me’, ‘Bollywood Dazzle’, etc.
You can then share this scrapbook with your Facebook friends or add it to your shopping cart. Currently, the shopping cart option on the scrapbook isn’t enabled. But you need to sign in with your Facebook account to be able to share. There is also a sign up form for a new account. You need to be logged in if you plan to go shopping on this road.
Additionally, the menu bar lists categories from clothing and accessories to food, home decor and fitness products. Whatever you browse through, there are many filters to make your search easy, just as most eCommerce portals do, but having my own scrapbook beside me is really cool!
How social is LimeRoad?
For a social shopping platform, LimeRoad is itself quite social with an active presence on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Content on Facebook is largely visual with informative updates about LimeRoad. A contest has been launched with big prize money – Rs. 1,00,000 where fans have to record their message for a woman they love, hate or envy. Unfortunately, the contest app is not working and shows the 404 error.
Twitter, although a fairly new account seems to have started on a good note with more than 2000 followers already. Tweets are informative, fun and relate to the brand. Pinterest has 4 boards as of now with 17 followers. These are early days on Pinterest and with the kind of boards I’m seeing, it shows good promise.
The good, the bad and the beautiful!
As far as the Indian ecommerce players are concerned, none of them have the social aspect weaved in so well as LimeRoad. We did cover a few social commerce players in the past – Exprestore, ShopSocially, Badhai, 99presents – but these differ in their models, they are not purely social commerce. Some curate gifts based on your interests, some help you in group buying with the help of Facebook friends, while some of them just use the Facebook login and sharing option.
At LimeRoad, I can browse away happily and drag what I love onto my scrapbook – the shopping cart comes in much later. Imagine how happy I would be when my Facebook friends present me with some of the stuff from my scrapbook titled ‘Favourite things’ as I had shared it with them. The best part is letting your family and friends on Facebook to know what you have fancied at LimeRoad and taking their recommendations too. Now gifting me would be a breeze for my husband!
I’m mighty impressed with LimeRoad; it sure is going to be the most travelled road for women looking for ‘affordable luxury’, especially for its flip magazine design and social sharing features that set it apart.
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