By Saumya Tewari

Times Internet’s online shopping portal, IndiaTimes Shopping has revamped its user interface with a responsive layout. The revamp comes at a time when increasing number of users are accessing internet on small screens (smartphones and tablets).

On glancing through the portal, the UI looks clean and clutter free. The mast head has a search bar where users can key in the products they want to search and also select the category they want to check. Right below the search bar there is a scroll text called ‘Hot Searches’ which showed recently launched smartphones clicking on the name takes the user on the respective page where one can directly buy the product.  The hot search only showed smartphone products even after we hopped on the other categories. Also, clicking on Canvas 4 took us to a Book page which was strange.

The home page has information like various categories listed on the left hand side and ongoing sales on right. An interesting point to note was that on clicking on any particular category, a hand sketch appears symbolizing the category. Once you scroll down, various categories with their products appear one just needs to click on it and it takes you to the page where the product can be purchased directly. Therefore, there is lot of relevant content on the homepage which reduces the effort by the user navigating for the right product.

Right in the middle of the homepage there are customer testimonials which are presented up front in the first scroll.

The company has also launched intuitive search while punching in any product name an instant list of similar products pops up allowing you to choose the desired product. We also noticed on typing word spelling website offers spelling corrections and suggested terms. It throws up results closer to the word punched in.

Users can also wish list their products and indulge in express buying via QuikBuy feature.

IndiaTimes Shopping operates in a competitive ecommerce space in the country where increasing number of players either shut shop or merges with bigger players. The recent revamp looks like a move to stay updated and relevant for users thereby not losing the spot in the competitive ecommerce race.

It is to be noted that in May this year, Times Internet has shutdown its NRI focused ecommerce portal, Hutk.com. However, the company added that Hutk.com and its supporting sourcing relationships are very much ‘alive’ indicating that the portal may be merged with its online shopping unit IndiaTimes Shopping in future.