Website UX Research for Polycab From 619 Interviews

Polycab needed to identify the drivers behind building a world-class web experience for every stakeholder in its ecosystem, not just end customers. The brief was to identify the greater brand purpose behind the redesign, and to deliver best-in-class design, experience, and solutions built on real stakeholder input rather than internal assumption.

ibs Fulcro ran a structured four-phase process: identify every stakeholder group across internal leadership and external business partners and consumers, gather in-person and phone interviews to capture vision and expectations, identify a prioritized wishlist of features from those insights, and map every feature against the collected vision.

Internal interviews were conducted in person; external interviews used a mix of in-person and phone methods. Source: ibs Fulcro stakeholder research.

Product categorization was built directly from the interview findings, structured around how products would actually need to be presented to different end users on the site: Cables, Telecom, International, Dowell's, Wires, Switches, Switchgears, Conduits, HOHM (Home Automation and Smart Homes), FMEG, Lighting and Luminaires, Fans, Appliances, Pumps, and Solar. This categorization was also used to structure how insights and features were subsequently captured across the audit.

Rather than paraphrase internal ambition into generic strategy language, the research captured direct stakeholder statements.

Category leadership: “For me success is, if anybody in India or Globally, when they think about anything to do with electricals, they should think Polycab.”

Radical personalization: “[Every] individual user should feel that this website is made for him.”

Trade transparency: “We should be transparent with our partners, show them their earning potential.”

Product depth: “Our website should have so much detail, that before you purchase a good, you should understand everything about everything you should consider when you purchase an electrical good, and end it with, why Polycab?”

Safety and trust: “Safety is paramount. An electrician goes to work when a lady is alone in the house. She should be able to trust confidently.”

Sustainability nuance: “India is a net importer of copper, and yet our standards make us put more copper than necessary for some uses.”

External interviews revealed practical, often blunt feedback that internal stakeholders couldn't have generated on their own.

Explicit service request: “I want to be able to have someone manage my whole house wiring as a project, like Asian Paints.”

Content format preference: “Teach us to repair products, that's what customers prefer, rather than a new fan.” And: “Hamme video deejiye, videos easy hai to understand” (give us videos, they're easier to understand).

Trust gap: “How to verify what my electrician told me? Is this the correct price?”

Commercial ask, reframed: “Schemes and pricing are fine, but help me increase my sales, bulk orders, online shopping.”

Visual expectations: “Customers want to see what a product looks like in their room. Visuals are key.”

Category stakes: “Wires, switchgears, is not one and done. It has to keep my family safe.”

The stakeholder interviews generated over 200 individually requested features. These were deduplicated and prioritized down to 93 candidate features, then distilled into 8 core insights that together define the vision for the new website.

Transform from products to services: provide solutions and services to every customer segment, not a product catalogue alone.

Deliver personalized experiences: tailor the experience by customer segment, location, and context rather than a single generic journey.

Information and tools to aid decisions: provide not just every piece of information a buyer needs, but tools and interactivity that actively aid the decision.

Impact to industry and nation: use thought leadership and demonstrated impact to drive meaningful change, positioning Polycab beyond a product vendor.

Drive customer satisfaction: make the experience a genuine one-stop point for every customer need across the journey.

Establish and reinforce brand credentials: establish product superiority and clear differentiators to build category stature.

Grow with partners: co-opt retailers, distributors, electricians, and architects into the brand's growth through the web experience itself.

Drive purchase convenience: make both online purchase and assisted offline purchase genuinely convenient across B2B and B2C.

50+ unique brands analyzed across product subcategories, including domestic and international brands as well as select non-category brands for design benchmarking. Source: ibs Fulcro competitive research.

Product benefits are not addressed for the customer: competitors describe specifications, rarely what those specifications mean for the buyer's actual problem.

No clear reason to believe beyond price: every competitor claims to be “the best” or “leading,” but almost none articulate a differentiated reason to believe beyond cost.

Product advisory is largely absent: aiding the customer's decision-making process is not a focus for most brands in the category.

Design does not reflect modern browsing behavior: most competitor sites do not account for mobile-first, touch-driven browsing patterns.

Almost no meaningful product selection tools: calculators, selectors, and configuration tools that actively help a buyer choose are rare across the category.

Diverse audiences get lip service, not real design: most competition goes brand-first in its communication rather than genuinely serving distinct audience needs.

No brand has claimed industry thought leadership: some competitors lead specific product categories by market share, but none functions as an overall category thought leader, a clear open position.

Brands are not addressing customer evolution: modern content formats like AR/VR and evolving digital behavior are largely absent from competitor sites; the design and content approach is close to one-size-fits-all across the category.

The 8 insights and the feature recommendations above were not a report handed off for someone else to build. ibs Fulcro used the same research directly to design and build Polycab's live website. The 14 product segments mapped during the research became the site's real navigation and category structure. The features prioritized across Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Post-Purchase, and Advocacy were the actual build brief, not a wishlist filed away after the research phase ended.

Polycab.com is live today and credits ibs Fulcro directly in its footer as the team behind the site. That credit is a real, checkable link between the research on this page and the website a visitor can see for themselves.

The finding that matters most strategically: no single brand in this category, including the international entrants, currently holds the position of overall industry thought leader. Several are market-share leaders in specific product lines, but the broader thought-leadership position is genuinely open. That's a rare, structural opportunity in a mature, price-competitive category.

The 8 insights were translated into specific features mapped across all five stages of the consumer journey: Awareness (help consumers experience the offering through tools and interaction, not just messaging), Consideration (provide the means to critically evaluate products and services favorably), Purchase (simple, direct purchase paths for both B2B and B2C), Post-Purchase (outstanding support and relationship management), and Advocacy (create delight that drives repeat purchase, word of mouth, and referrals).

Awareness, selected features: location-based content shown automatically based on the visitor's detected location; dynamic content fragments that update based on prior behavior; browsable, gated flipbook-style product catalogues; an interactive HOHM smart-home control demo; virtual walkthroughs of experience centers and manufacturing facilities; and dedicated industry-focused content tracks for renewables, infrastructure, and oil and gas.

Consideration, selected features: AR/VR (WebAR) product visualization in the customer's own environment; a product usage estimator returning a bill of materials from room size and fixture count; load and horsepower calculators recommending the right switchgear, wires, or pump specification; a lighting layout tool; search by international certification standard; and ChatGPT-powered product solutioning integrated into selectors and recommenders.

Purchase, Post-Purchase, and Advocacy, selected features: multi-faceted product search across application, industry, and specification; turnkey electrical solutions modeled on the Asian Paints services approach; electrician-on-demand locating a Polycab-certified electrician directly from the site; co-branded partner microsites; an automatically generated professional estimate/quote PDF for electricians; and transparent, region-specific earning-potential information for prospective retailers and distributors.