Yet again.

The first time we had tried the service was on 26May2011. The order (#56187) was placed and, during the call back they mentioned that:

• the kitchen will open later and they have no information about it
• the kitchen is out of gas and hence they have no idea about order fulfillment

We tried today (order #63133). The call back happened and, we were told:

• the selected dishes are available only on weekends
• the kitchen is out of gas and hence they can only open post 2000 hours and thus no idea about the order

This is disappointing at many levels. TastyKhana might just be responsible for delivery of the food/order, but since they are the interface via which the order is placed, it is their responsibility to provide information up-front. Such lackadaisical approach doesn't go well with the intended objective of getting orders raised and delivered.

I don't think we are going to try this again. Spoiling the scene both times is good enough reason to ditch a service.

Instead of the sporadic "@Flipkart I don't like this or, that" on twitter, I decided to write down what exactly I would like to see happening to the site over a period of time.

When I buy books I usually know which specific book I am looking for. If that is the case, then either the book is found through a search or, it is a recent book and hence it will be visible via the Recently Sold, New Release or, Pre-Orders sections.

Sometimes there are books that are in a series and, I want to buy either the set of books in the series or, a specific book in the series. Two examples come to mind - if I want to purchase the Kurt Wallander novels. I can either pick a specific book in the series or, desire to buy the entire series through a single click. The common data point in this example is the author and that it is a set in the Kurt Wallander series. Unfortunately, currently they don't make themselves available as the boxed deals etc.

Or, take another example - O'Reilly has a set of books with the title "Beautiful ..." these include Beautiful Testing, Beautiful Architecture, Beautiful Visualization etc. All these books have different author/author pairs. The commonality is that it is published by O'Reilly/SPD. In other words, I need to be able to use this piece of information as a data item and select the books. As of now, I don't think the site allows this to happen.

Another item is around the display of books/covers in either list or, grid form. The current upper limit is 20 items. When looking through books by Category (which, by the way, requires some bit of fixing), it is perhaps a better option to let more covers come up in either an infinte scroll or, something around 70 per page. That allows a quicker visual comprehension of the books and, less click-through to the next pages.

I have a request for the cart as well. I buy books for myself as well as send them as gifts to others. I am sure others do so as well. What is a little bit annoying is that the cart (and this isn't just a problem with Flipkart's cart only, but the usage pattern impacts it the most) doesn't allow me to save a transaction and open up a new transaction for someone else. I guess what I am asking for is the ability to save the state of a transaction while opening up and completing a new one. Currently I maintain two accounts to get this usage pattern going :)

The Flipkart.com folks sent across a survey form to be filled up. The one pattern I noticed was that the questions asked for comparative analysis ie. "best amongst", "easiest amongst" and so forth. This has an amusing downside - if an user hasn't actually ended up using competitor sites they may be tempted to give it a shot. And, additionally, it somewhat dilutes the brand/unique-ness of Flipkart as a business site.

A random selection from the survey questions are as follows:

• At Flipkart.com it is the easiest to search for products, compared to other online shopping sites
• Flipkart.com offers the widest range of payment options, when compared to other online shopping sites.
• Flipkart.com provides the best delivery AND after sales customer service, among all online shopping sites

with the options for responses ranging from "Disagree Strongly" to "Strongly Agree".

The same survey could perhaps be re-designed to ask the users the following questions with a numerical rating (1 to 5) or, even the existing rating

• You find it easy to use the search engine on the site to receive accurate and relevant product results
• You find it easy to Order and Checkout using the options provided for payment
• You will recommend the site to others based on delivery and after sales customer service performance

Was my hack the most optimal ? Surely not. But it does avoid the comparative behavior while trying to self promote.