thestorez.com vs Pustak.co.in
A while back, I blogged on pustak.co.in. Today, I came across one more online book store aimed at Indian buyers - thestorez.com. This is started in May 2008. I quickly browsed thru thestorez.com, compared this with pustak.co.in and this blog is about that comparison -
1. User Interface - Look & Feel, Ease of Navigation - thestorez.com has more professional user interface among the two. It is very easy to navigate the website. Registration is simple and lesser number of fields to fill in thestorez.com.
2. Number of books available - pustak.co.in is a distinct winner here - pustak boasts to have around 12 million titles, where as thestorez have only 1 million. I also could not find quite a few books on thestorez but on pustak. But both the sites offer a feaure to submit a request for a book that is not found.
3. Search for books - searching for books in thestorez has distinct advantage over pustak.co.in - the results in thestorez will also show the price of the book which is a key thing for user to make a purchase. The price is not available on pustak.co.in till one clicks the “Buy Now” button.
4. Price of books - this is a MAJOR suprise to me. I searched for the book Good to Great - the price on pustak is INR 987.50, where as the price on thestorez is INR 476.00. Almost 100% difference in price! I searched for couple of other books and the same result.
5. Payment Methods: Both offer same options, except that thstorez does not accept Master cards, yet.
6. Shipping/Delivery - I havent experienced this. If you did, do drop a comment.
7. Other Features: there are other features like tagging, gift messages, book preview on thestorez.
Overall, I believe pustak.co.in has lot to do to catch up with thestorez in terms of the website usability and features offered. More than that, the price difference seems very strange to me - the difference is too huge for any one to prefer pustak, provided the book is available on thestorez.
Filed under: Startup
I would like to clarify a few things in your post and suggest a few more.
1. The price of the books on pustak is high because they are US edition books. However thestores offers you Indian editions of books which are significantly cheaper. But many good books don’t have an Indian edition in which case pustak offers a good price.
2. Flipkart.com also has a great collection of books. They provide both Indian and US editions. So its like a combination of both thestores and pustak. Sometimes flipkart offers better prices than pustak on US editions.
3. Then there is infibeam which offers great pricing with Indian editions. I haven’t bought US editions from them so don’t have any idea about that.
3. As for shipping Indian editions, thestores and flipkart has given me the fastest delivery. Infibeam is slower than both, but is still within the delivery time promised.
For US editions, flipkart has the fastest shipping and pustak offers the worst shipping. The books I ordered on pustak took about 2 months to reach. In those 2 months I placed orders on flipkart for other US edition books and received them long before the books from pustak arrived.
Thanks
Gautam