Kart Flipped on the bigbuggday #BlackMonday

Thanks to the 'most reliable' e-trailer for the kick start event to create 'big' history for itself. As the epic sale is all over, 4 major 'production day' bugs have been reported. Most of the defects looked blockers for the online customers, but the business severity seemed "expected".

Major bugs that went live:

1. Sale tax applied to offered products :
Description:
Sale tax , different from the normal sales tax was applied on every product that was on sale.
Observation : Sale tax is a magic figure that brings selling price equal to offer price.
RCA : A developer was on research from past many days to find out this magical equation to submit a maths project for his son at school.
Action taken:  Son's high school maths teacher has been called up and given live demo.

2. Best offers are showed sold out as they were pushed into CMS.
Description: Every best offer was seen along with a 'sold out ' tag.
Observation : Best offers helped 'start of day' publicity.
RCA : while creating ' best deal ' sticker , developer has duplicated the existing ' sold out ' sticker and forgot to change the image path.
Action taken : image path field has been made unique in content admin system.

3. 502 errors all over.
Description : Site reported maximum number of 502 issues may be due to high load.
Observation : 502 errors were applicable only on products with good deals.
RCA : The team working on 5th February go live (502- the bus number in which they were traveling when they got this idea to start company )  have checked in part of code to wrong branch .
Action taken : New branch with restricted access have been created for 502 team.

4: Few orders were placed with good deals.
Description : Few of the customers were able to checkout good deal products like moto e.
Observation : The above three defects did not impact the sale of few offers.
RCA : Detailed inquiry has been commissioned on why the bugs couldn't stop orders from being placed.
Action taken : All the customers have been communicated via SMS and email about the bug and orders have been cancelled.

The sale has set an example on what not to be done to turn online customers skeptical about e trade.

Why "Big Billion Day " should lead us into " Black Friday "

     Black Friday,the day following Thanks Giving Day shares paramount percentage of the sales for most of retailers in US. This sensational Friday is awaited all over the year for its own unique importance. This Friday fits well in between thanks giving Thursday (harvest festival)and weekend. Being a continuous 4 day vacation and the last additional holiday before the festive season, Christmas shopping starts with this.  On the similar lines, India's most reliable online retailer Flipkart has chosen a day to kick start Diwali season, India's biggest celebration.



Flipkart has announced "Big billion day " on 6th October.  Flipkart is trying to bring together a billion customers through what they promise is going to be the greatest sale ever in India. In its teaser ad, Flipkart has announced ‘Bumper discounts at 90% off’ and ‘shop for things that are priced as low as Rs 99’.   As the retail world observes it closely , success of such a day long shopping event would create a positive buzz around Indian online retail capacity. As  Government of India plans effective "make in India" campaign , investments flow in only based on potential of market for their products. If the day of sale can prove what E-tailer Flipkart aimed at , India is getting ready for a new headway in the field of retail.

The sentiment behind choosing this date(6-10) is said to be 610 – the number of the flat from where Sachin and Binny Bansal, Flipkart promoters, began their journey in 2007. If all the online bigheads in India along with in-store retailers come up with a common day before the next biggest celebration, we will  quote our market capacity to the world providing a carpet for  investments into retail and manufacturing.

 Time to market our market..!