Tesco Malaysia Soft Launch, but Pre-registration Fail

Tesco Malaysia (a 70:30 joint venture between Tesco and Sime Darby Bhd), a hypermarket giant from UK, soft launch their Tesco eStore locally to sell groceries and daily households items to Malaysian

Tesco, according to wikipedia, is the third-largest retailer in the world  So of course, our expectation is HIGH.

Then I tried to sign in with my pre-registered account details, this is what I am greeted with:

Then was the proof I did sign up for an account in prior. Then after going through the details, I suspect this is not working either due to following 2 reasons:

1) My area, Cheras is not covered, that's the reason they didn't sync my details with the live Tesco stores or

2) They pre-registration process is not integrated nor part of the live store sign up process, it is mainly treated as email newsletter to inform new customers if their area is covered. (Suggest Tesco to change the "pre-registration" naming as it suggest pre-register for an account and can be very confusing like what I just experienced) 

Leaving me no choice, I re-register again. Then I found my office area is not covered. This article by Amanz.my cited that places close to tesco stores will be covered, there's a Tesco store just 2KM away from my office! (Postcode: 56100)

Tesco is just 2KM away from my office, maybe they just want me to exercise more...  

Then I tried input using dummy data, I found out the form is very rigid, very structured, they pre-loaded all the values for you, even to your suburb (come on... nobody use this suburb term here...) and street!

I don't know why Tesco being this extremely rigid on the household address, but from what I observed, I suspect maybe this is how they control the expectation of their fulfilment service, given they let you select the timezone (an interval of 2 hours each, see below pictures from Amanz.my). This is some really tough operation.

Let's see how this evolve from here. Tesco is a highly successful retailer who knows how to run eCommerce and I'm sure their investment will move the industry forward here.

But still... can anyone tell me why Kuala Lumpur is a city/town of Selangor? If you already shop at Tesco eStore, let us know in the comment below on how was the experience like?

For those who haven't tried, take note of Guide Price before you start shopping! Cheers!

Note: 

Check out this too!

Other online groceries websites in Malaysia (by MalaysiaCrunch.com)

Is facebook commerce dead?

Facebook Commerce (f-commerce) pioneer, Payvment.com, just announced that it will cease operation on 28th Feb 2013 and the entire team will be acquired by Intuit.com - US largest provider of small business financial software.

This comes as quite a surprise for me, cause I personally think Payvment has first mover advantage in the field of social commerce. They had also raised in excess of USD 7 million in funding and is one of the featured facebook open graph partner. I expected them to stick around much longer.

Does it mean social commerce is over?

Let's do a quick reality check, I think most of you shop online, but how many of you actually bought something online by going through the whole checkout process inside facebook itself?

As far as shopping for physical goods is concerned, I'm confident very few has actually done that, period. The main issue lies in humans' "State of Mind".

Many so called f-commerce is actually done via PM (Private Message), customers either commenting on a product post or sending messages back and forth checking on price, sizes, stock availability, payment methods etc and this whole process is very tedious.

Shopping is a "State of Mind"

Imagine in an offline world, we go restaurant for dining, we go barber to trim hair, we go stadium for sports entertainment, in any of these events, no one likes being sold to as we are NOT in the mental state of shopping!

Same goes for online world, we go to ebay to shop, airasia.com for airline tickets, and facebook to checkout friends & family photos and stay updated with gossips, but few actually are in a state of mind to buy things.

And it's notoriously hard trying to change the state of mind and status quo - eg when you logon to Airasia.com, your mind is all about getting cheap airline tickets!

This explains well why most airline or travel website are not yet transformed into successful etailers selling to you everything from A to Z even though tickets are most likely the first thing we as consumers actually buy online. (see chart below released by PayPal)

eCommerce on a Facebook Tab won't cut it

If you take a close look, early attempt at Facebook commerce is mostly about replicating an e-commerce website inside Facebook tab, this, so far has not been getting traction (sales).

Yet, don't count out f-commerce, it is still at its infancy, eventually some company (or Facebook itself) will find a model which will make f-commerce work. Speaking of such, Facebook is already experimenting with new ecommerce initiative such as Facebook gifts, which lets users make purchases for friends directly through facebook.

Also, new innovation on social commece is emerging at speed of light! Checkout this new collaboration by Twitter and Amex which actually you buy and pay via a hashtag #. 

  

No matter how it will eventually work,  you can be assured that it won't be just about duplicating an eCommerce website inside Facebook itself. That's why we didn't do that on webShaper and we decide to build only gorgeous looking design which sync the new arrival, best seller and featured products from the webstore. It smartly integrates social button like Facebook Like, Pin It, G+1 when you hover over the product images (pic below) to enable the merchants' customers easily share what they love inside facebook. If customers click on the products, it will lead directly to the merchant webStore to complete the whole shopping process without compromising the online shopping experience.

Source: Uploaded by user via webShaper on Pinterest

More reading:
Facebook Commerce Has Been A Big Flop 
http://read.bi/11Mhm74

Intuit acquires payvment team, tech and patent
http://tcrn.ch/11O8IoB

11 Things I learn as entrepreneur thus far

I was honored to be invited by Goh to share on mystartr.com on my entrepreneur's journey (back in 2012), this was the slide with some touch up, put it up here just for sharing.

I know I didn't update this blog actively, I will post up more frequently, as encouraged by Pawoot, it is a good writing exercise, treat it like making a journal notes to own selves so we can reflect back and grow on that. :)

How about your journey? I would love to hear from any of you too. Cheers! Great 2013 ahead!