Zapstore: A unique shopping website for Gadgets

Zapstore is a new way of getting some awesome price cuts on the gadgets, and the way you get the discounts, is no where related to the bidding sites that you find online, most of them being scammy, promising less prices but in the end showing it as sold to someone else. You lose your money on bidding there, but here if someone gets the price cut while zapping along with you, you get the zap points refunded so that you can use them again for zapping the price on the same gadget or any other.

While on a questionnaire with Gokulraj, the COO of Zapstore, we found that Zapstore was launched with the prime reason of making the eCommerce and online shopping more interesting, rather than the static and boring lines of shopping sites that are seen these days. Competition in prices, competition in design and keeping the customers engaged, not easily leaving the site before buying something at catchy prices is what Zapstore targets.
When a customer signs up with the website, he gets 3 Zaps for free. That is good enough to get at least Rs. 50-70 of price cut, and if the same product is being zapped by someone else too, the price you see would be still lesser. But the Zapstore has got many different zap packs available, which can be bought to use for zapping the prices.

What products can be zapped?
There is a wide range of products or gadgets that one can purchase from Zapstore, and they include the smartphones, digital cameras, tablet devices, accessories etc. that comes from the various brands including Apple, Samsung, Sony, Blackberry, Canon, HTC, Dell, etc. Unlike the other discount stores which provide the gadgets which can be sometimes duplicate, or sometimes original but refurbished and that isn’t mentioned anywhere in the sale page. Recently, we have even seen the GPS systems being on sale on Zapstore.

A few advantages with the Zapstore include the Cash on Delivery option where people can pay for the product purchased, without the hassle of going through all the system of payments online, although those too are possible – Debit card, credit card, online bank transfer etc. Shipping of the products is free of cost, and all the products come with a Manufacturer warranty.

The entire website runs on the concept of Zapping as explained already, and you play around with the prices by zapping the products. There are several zap packs available, and the cost of each zap comes to Rs. 15, and buying multiple packs is possible, where the store gives an option of buying 2 Zaps to 1000 Zaps at one go. With a coupon code right now, i.e. “zappongal20” you can get 20% discount on the zap packs till 17th Jan 2012.

In an interview with India365, Gokulraj, the COO said, “With the advent of 2012, you will see a lot more about ZAPstore through various mediums. We will be starting our 2nd phase of Marketing during Mid-January that would enable us to reach a much bigger audience. In the mean time, we would be building up our infrastructure to support the increase in demand.”
Gokulraj said, that the team is not big yet but would later on making it bigger. “We have a core team of two members. Me (Gokulraj.GK), COO taking care of Operations, Marketing and Logistics / Balaji Gopalan, CEO taking care of Finance, Scope & Seller Communications. We also have Mr.JayaKrishnan, working as Tech Master. We also have dedicated Customer Support team of two.”, Gokulraj said.

Gokulraj also said that the Zapstore team would look upon the customer feedback and try to improve based on it. “We improved the ZAPPING concept during the development phase and made sure that every customer at ZAPstore.com is well taken care of and satisfied. We have made sure that our customer’s voices are heard and their feedbacks are put into effect ASAP. We have been tweaking ZAPstore.com for the betterment, every day since it has launched depending on the customer feedback and reviews.”

There is a live chat with an assistant online most of the time, to help you out with the zapping or anything within the website. The same did let me know about the latest coupon code for buying the zap packs in discount. The interface too is pretty easy to understand and use, and the colors are different yet attractive.

You could even share the Zap points with any of your friend who needs them urgently and for that, only the recepient’s email address and the number of points are to be entered, and the store does the required job. Update: This feature is removed for now, but would be brought back soon into the system.

How to Zap for products – Here is the page where one can learn on how to zap for the products and how one of the multiple zappers can take advantage of the unique system to get the big discounts. The page has an infographic explaining all the steps and the entire concept of Zapstore.

Getting in touch with the guys on Zapstore is possible through one of the many ways, like their Facebook Page or tweeting to their  Twitter Handle. Zapstore even has the option to call to their customer care reps through the free calling option from the website itself.