E-commerce has come of age in India. Online book stores in India are making the most of it. From the times when people were too shy to give out their credit card numbers to spending a major part of their income in buying online. Indians have finally realized the importance of buying online. Apart from other things, books remain on the top. It makes sense to buy books online rather than the conventional way. One, it’s easier to look for the book that you want to buy and two, it’s much cheaper when you buy online. The low prices, free shipping and a large numbers of books available online have turned people like me to buy books online only.
Here’s a review of the top 5 online Indian book stores. Let me assure you there’s no official ranking involved, I call these the top 5 based on a number of factors. Also I have not listed them in any particular sequence/ranking here, the top 5 here means that all the five stores reviewed below are all at the same level. I wanted to do this for quite sometime now but I wanted to a proper review only after making a purchase. So I’ve reviewed FlipKart, Infibeam and Indiaplaza while Ishtleen has reviewed Landmark and The Oxford Book Store. The basis for ranking is based on ; User Interface, Prices, Availability, Customer support, Shipping. We’ve also reviewed the pros and cons of each book store.
FlipKart
FlipKart is one of those online book stores that brought about a change in buying books online especially to Indians. FlipKart managed to generate an excellent buyer experience. The user interface is neat, you search for the book you need, if it’s available you check out the price, make the payment and you’re done. What worked for FlipKart was their pricing, not only were their prices cheaper than conventional book stores but they also provided free shipping. What else do you need? My one-time experience with FlipKart was simply awesome. The book shipped in 3 days flat and the packaging was impressive.
User Interface – 4/5
Prices – 4.5/5
Availability – 5/5
Customer Support – 5/5
Shipping – 5/5
Pros: Neat user interface, good availability, free shipping and low prices.
Cons: None.
Infibeam is a fairly new entrant to the Indian e-commerce scene. It’s not a dedicated book store but it’s a full fledged online store. Here I have reviewed only the book store part. Infibeam is empowered by a similar strategy as deployed by FlipKart. Low prices and free shipping. Infibeam sometimes surprises with even lower prices than FlipKart. I’ve ordered a couple of times from Infibeam and their service has been great. Initially I had some reservations about the customer support but the folks did a pretty neat job to impress me. They provide online support, telephone support and they’ll respond quickly if you tweet about them on Twitter! Infibeam is recommended for a hassle-free shopping experience powered by an awesome customer support.
User Interface – 4/5
Prices – 5/5
Availability – 4/5
Customer Support – 5/5
Shipping – 5/5
Pros: Good support, awesome packaging, cheapest prices at times.
Cons: None
Indiaplaza is the big daddy of online book stores. It’s also a full fledged e-commerce store in India. With big daddy I don’t mean it’s the best, it’s just that it has been there for a really long time now. It has now revamped itself to face it’s competition. I have ordered a book once from Indiaplaza. It was not a great deal but I was having a hard time locating the book at local book stores. The customer support is excellent although shipping takes time. Now these days they have some books under the ’ships in 24 hours’ service. That’s something I’ll keep an eye on in the future!
User Interface – 3/5
Prices – 4/5
Availability – 4.5/5
Customer Support – 5/5
Shipping – 3/5
Pros: Low prices, good support
Cons: User interface is still Web 1.0-ish, prices comparatively higher
Landmark book stores are quite popular in India. The online edition acts like an interface to these existing offline book stores. You buy online, they’ll send you a copy from one of the closest book stores or from the Delhi hub. Landmark offers free shipping now and of course a large collection of books. I ordered twice from Landmark and they didn’t let me down. I’ve personally not checked out their customer support since everything went fine for me, I guess they do have guys to help you out in those cases. Overall a good online buying experience for me.
User Interface – 3/5
Prices – 3.5/5
Availability – 4/5
Customer Support – 4/5
Shipping – 4/5
Pros: Good end-user experience, free shipping
Cons: Interface, packaging issues and sometimes prices sky rocket.
Oxford Book Store is again an online edition of the famous Oxford book stores in India. It doesn’t offer the best prices, an awesome service or a good support and most of the times when I inquired about a book it was not in stock. Too much to handle for these guys I suppose. Not that they don’t care but somehow the offline book stores are doing really well so they don’t bother I believe. Not recommended.
User Interface – 2.5/5
Prices – 3/5
Availability – 2/5
Customer Support – 4/5
Shipping – 4/5
Pros: Hardly any I suppose!
Cons: Bad interface, low availability, higher prices.
Alternatives
Here are some alternatives to the above book stores.
Feel free to post your reviews in the comments below and suggest alternatives.
Article by Harry
Harry has written 408 awesome articles on HarryJerry.com.
About: ...an engineering student, a freelancer, a professional blogger, a loving lover, too shy, an Internet freak....and everything I shouldn't be.
Tags: book lovers, books, bookstores, buy online, coupon, discounts, flipkart, free shipping, indian, indiaplaza, infibeam, landmark, novels, oxford bookstore, prices
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I had a great experience with Flipkart, they had some technical books which I could not find anywhere. And they specially called me up to tell me that they would not be able to deliver the books on time. I *like* it!
Flipkart is my favorite of the lot. Very professional, to-the-point layout. :]
infibeam has the best prices for books and their customer service is superb. i rate them the best of the lot. i find all my technical books on infibeam and order from them. i have also tried flipkart but the condition of books is not good and packages are delayed and thier service has deteriorated.
I have been buying books online for several years with IndiaPlaza. Their range is good and the prices are the lowest and very attractive. Recently I tried Flipkart and Infibeam. While Flipkart website is good, their delivery systems are still hot good. Infibeam simply sucks, they stole my money, never shipped any book and stopped responding to my queries.
thanks harry for the informative review. infibeam works for me all the time. flipkart has sent me books that look old and used. their cs really never responds.
Thumbs Up Harry! Appreciate your review. We’re here for you and we do everything to ensure a great shopping experience for our customers. And by the way its really motivating to see someone appreciating our good work. So thanks a ton!
Alka, Apologies for your experience. If you are reading the comments, please provide us your order id or login email and we’ll help you out right away.
Hi Harry, great reviews. thanks.
Out of Flipkart, infibeam, and landmark, i like flipkart the best…
I didn’t have a very great experience with landmark … they haven’t been able to integrate their web presence with store presence well, and their customer service isn’t the best.. ( i think they are shortstaffed).
Actually, in the last couple of months, few more online book stores have popped up, including ours
1) TheWisdomCart.com – Our site.
2) Lebooks.in – their user interface is very impressive… and they r doing a decent job on twitter etc.
3) TheStorez.com – website is pretty ok, however, haven’t seen them around on facebook, twitter that much, but may be I am just missing something.
4) A1books.co.in: It is more or less a platform where third party sellers can sell there books, so the customer experience is like that of Ebay… mostly you like it, but some transactions can leave you with a bad experience. Also, prices are definitely on the higher side..
5) Lastly, Ebay.in — sometimes, you can really find amazingly good deals on ebay. & usually, sellers take all the pain to get the books to you on time.