Practo - Find Doctors, Diagnostic Labs, Gyms, Spas & Salons

Review Date : 5th June, 2016.

Aesthetics: 4 on 5

Home Page

The site's design is simple and efficient. The home page has a big search box and quick links below the box. Type whatever you're looking for and it'll quickly list auto-suggestions. The auto-suggest is actually quite smooth and quick. 

Results Page

The results page is quite helpful - with information like:

• qualification, 
• experience, 
• rating, 
• user feedback link, 
• consultation price, 
• timings, 
• location 
• appointment number (looks like a number allocated to the enlisted doctor/establishment by Practo itself - that way they can track how many people booked an appointment directly because of Practo).

Transparent Algorithm

The folks at Practo clearly take pride in their work. On the search results page, they link to an explanation of how the Practo Relevance Algorithm works! 

Interesting find - The fact that they really care about the user shows in the fact that the user's feedback and appointment experience (including waiting time) are also considered when ranking the practitioner! 

Photographs

The photographs (of practitioners & business establishments) are the only let-down. They're almost unpleasant! I mean, what is the purpose of a photograph of the black couch in the waiting room? Or a (rather amateurishly taken) photograph of the flex banner advertising the establishment's services provided? 

Granted these pics are probably uploaded by the establishment owners themselves, but it's not asking for a lot to expect trained Practo staff to take some photographs when they go to enlist the establishment.

Navigation: 5 on 5

Home Page
Practo's home page makes it clear that they are a search engine and not selling you anything else. The home page is really uncluttered - a lot like Google. 

Either you search for a specific service/specialist/doctor, or you browse through the bunch of quick links. There's not even a "menu"! Just type what you're looking for and select from their listed practitioners.

Search Results
At first it irked me that I have to choose a search topic from the auto-suggest list. For example, if I typed "Eye" and clicked on the Search button, I expected a Google-type behavior where it listed everything related to eye - doctors, clinics, surgeries etc.
Practo is different here in the way that it doesn't let me search for any word I typed in the box. It will only let me choose from the auto-suggest list. So I have to select one of the suggestions like:

• Eye Surgeon  (Specialty)
• Eye Clinics     (Specialty Clinic)
• Eye Hospital  (Multy-Specialty Hospitals)
• Then it goes on to list business establishments with the word "Eye" in it.

After getting used to this feature (sorry Google!) I realized that this is actually making the site work faster - both to load and to navigate.

It sort of makes me like Practo in the sense that they're not promising to be a know-it-all in the medical/health & lifestyle space. They're putting out a good vibe that they're building their services slowly, but steadily.

Cart & Checkout: 2 on 5

There is basically no transaction happening here. Practo will either give you a phone number you can call to book an appointment, or let you book an appointment online right there on the site.
If the practitioner has chosen to accept appointments online, there will be a "Book Appointment" button, Clicking this will show you the available time slots. Just select one timeslot, give your name/number and you're done!

There does seem to be an issue here regarding the consultation fees. When viewing the profile of a doctor I visited recently, I noticed that it mentioned the fee to be Rs.100/-. I know for a fact that when you actually go to the hospital, you're asked to pay Rs.500/- as consultation fees. So, that's a big issue there. 


Social & Support:  2 on 5

Practo is very active in the social media space. They have excellent content being created & shared (creative & funny), and they're quite interactive in the comments etc.
It's good to feel that there are humans at the other end. 

There is no phone number listed for a user to call in case of urgent queries or emergencies. If you're are in the health space, I expect to be able to talk to a live person to clarify any doubts or to quickly ask the price/availability of a scan that I need to do right away. Practo loses some points on my chart for this.

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Thanks for reaching this far! Please do let me know if you think I can improve my writing/criteria/subject in any way.

First Review - pupkart.com

In my previous post (which was posted 2 seconds before I started writing this post), I wrote about a fellow at work you quit to work on his start-up. The name of the venture his pupkart.com and as the name suggests, they sell pet supplies.

A quick google search for dog food online india shows pupkart.com in the first page of the search results, which is a good sign for a start-up!
So, pupkart.com is Gurgaon based and a look at the Main Menu shows that they've worked on building up their catalog for Dog& Cat supplies, while other growth areas are present in Birds, Fish & Small Pets sections.
Google's PageRank value & Alexa's traffic rank show that this is a very new site and there's not much data to talk about its' popularity on the interwebs. So if you'd like to know about the site from a human perspective, read on.

Aesthetics : 3 on 5

At first sight, its a very likable website.
The site is simple and I would rate the ease of navigation pretty high. The site loads very fast and I didn't come across any broken links.

I'm really not aware of the pet supplies brands available in India, and their half-heartedly written "About Us" page doesn't speak volumes about their products.

I like the fact they took the effort to put up good product images, but there's definitely scope for improvement. A quick search for a randomly picked product (Kiki Canaries Bird Food) shows amazon.in to have a much better (read: glossy) image. But its totally fine for visitors who know what they want.

The Refund & Return policy, Shipping & Delivery Policy, and Order Cancellation Policy links are basically the same content just copy pasted. The Terms & Conditions page is clearly copied with a "Find & Replace" on the name. Either they're a very "less talk more walk" kinda duo, or content writing is not their strongest suit. Of course, this doesn't matter to 99.9% of the visitors, but I'm a bit of a hard-ass that way.

There's no "XYZ days free returns policy" displayed anywhere, suggesting that such a policy is not in place. A quick read through their Refund & Return policy (or the Shipping & Delivery policy, or the Order Cancellation policy :p ), reveals that they're not very big on refunds. They'll only refund your money if you cancel it before shipment. If you don't like what you got, it can only be replaced. Meh.


Navigation : 5 on 5

There one main menu which leads to products for that pet type. The dropdown menus work flawlessly smooth and don't do anything unusual or crappy. Even when you go one level deeper inside the navigation tree, the side menu on the left doesn't get cluttered with the various "filters". A "price range" filter might be a useful feature for visitors who know what they're looking for and are on a budget. But to be fair, the site doesn't have a bazillion products under each category and so the filters might not even be required at this stage.

The search bar works just fine - quickly spitting out very relevant searches based on your search terms.

Cart & Checkout : 3 on 5

Once a purchase decision is made, the seller should ensure there are no glitches or clutter in the path from the cart to the "Proceed To Payment" button. They've done well in this effort by having a 4 steps process (the fourth step being the actual actual transaction, which happens on CCAvenue's payment gateway page). So this leaves 3 quick steps on the website - all of which are very short and not at all a headache to fill out.

The 3rd step is where you choose whether you want to pay online or choose the Cash On Delivery option. C.O.D costs Rs.50/- extra.
An excellent point to be noted is that they are not charging a shipping fee. At all! Even if you're buying something that costs less than Rs.100/-. Big brownie points there!

There's just one glitch if I choose the Online Payment option. It takes you to the CCAvenue's (archaic & ugly in my opinion) secure payment gateway page where you carry out the transaction. The glitch I caught was when I clicked back from the payment page - my cart had zero items. The cookie with my cart item seemed to have cleared. This happened repeatedly.

I also noticed that if I checkout as a guest user, my email and shipping address are 'remembered' for only a few minutes (probably an hour). When I visited the site again after an hour, I had to type my email, address once again even though I had not closed the tab.


Social & Support : 4 on 5

pupkart.com is present on Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus. I didn't expect their pages to be very active. But I did see that they're shared dog-related content across all the social media platforms.
All they need now is to create engagement by bringing together animal lovers, animal care centers etc and they'll have a good community.

They very clearly display a phone number & support mail id (unlike some other stalwarts in the e-commerce scene). If I had a doubt regarding a product/process, I don't have to navigate away from the current page to look for help. This is one more obstacle removed on the path to "Proceed To Payment".


If you have reached this far, please do tell me what you felt about the post. I'd love any kind of feedback on my writing, on the criteria of review, and suggestions, advice or corrections.
Please do leave comments!

The reason for this blog

While at work yesterday, I saw another 'farewell' email in my inbox. Not an unusual thing in IT companies. Most farewell mails where I work are for

• 'Better professional growth', i.e. new job 
• Or 'better personal growth', i.e. marriage.

This farewell however was a refreshing change. The excited fellow was off to work on a start-up e-commerce venture.
After reading his email it dawned on me that with all the hullabaloo about the e-commerce boom and the start-up culture brewing in namma Silicon Valley, I see very few people quitting to  actually "start-up".

• There are people who quit, take a holiday, and look for another job.
• There are people who have been trained to believe that the only time to quit a job is when you have a better offer letter in hand.
• Then there are people who quit to start-up, but got overwhelmed by it all and went back to working under a boss. 

That last one's me, in case you were wondering.

Anyhoo, my intention of starting this blog is to write about e-commerce businesses that are plopping up from the innumerable home-offices in this intrinsically baniya cultured country.
Why? Because this country is getting obsessed with e-commerce. And I'm loving it!