Gen Z and First-Time Online Shoppers in India's 2026 Festive Sales: What They Mean for D2C Collection Pages

Gen Z and first-time online shoppers stood out in Redseer's estimate of India's 2026 festive sales. What the numbers say, what they don't, and how a D2C brand should set up its collection pages for them.

Two numbers in Redseer's estimate of the 2026 festive sales are about people rather than products. Gen Z and first-time online shoppers stood out: Gen Z accounted for about a third of shoppers on the opening day, and the number of first-time online shoppers in the first two days was twice that of the same period last year. Most of that buying happened on marketplaces. But a shopper who is new to buying online, or new to buying from brands at all, does not stay on one marketplace forever. Sooner or later they land on a brand's own website, and the first collection page they see decides whether they stay.

We build software for Shopify stores, including our own collection-sorting app, SellRank, and most of the stores we work with are Indian D2C brands. On 12 October we wrote about the festive sale's opening week as a whole: Amazon's and Flipkart's own figures, Redseer's two-day estimate, and a plan for the weeks before Diwali. This post does not repeat that. It looks only at the two groups of shoppers named above, what the reported numbers can and cannot tell you about them, and what to change on your collection pages before Diwali on 8 November.

What Redseer reported about Gen Z and first-time online shoppers

Redseer Strategy Consultants published its estimate for the first two days of the sales on 11 October 2026. We read it as reported by Storyboard18 on 11 October, by the Free Press Journal on 12 October, both carrying PTI's report, and by Apparel Resources on 12 October. The figures are Redseer's estimates across platforms including Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho and Ajio. They are not audited, and the outlets round them slightly differently.

• Gen Z: about one-third of shoppers on the opening day. Storyboard18 and Apparel Resources both specify the first day; neither gives a Gen Z figure for the two days together.
• First-time shoppers: twice as many as in the same period last year. Storyboard18 calls them first-time online shoppers; the Free Press Journal quotes Redseer's Nikhil Dalal saying first-time shoppers doubled from last year. No absolute number is given.
• Shoppers: about 6 crore to 6.5 crore people made purchases in the first two days, and nearly two-thirds of them came from Tier 2 cities and rural areas.
• Reach: in a normal month, 15 crore to 16 crore unique shoppers transact online, so the opening two days brought more than a third of that monthly base into the sale.
• Outlook: Redseer expects around 10 crore, or 100 million, shoppers across the 11-day first phase of the sales.
• Value: about ₹24,000 crore of gross merchandise value in two days, which the Free Press Journal puts at over $2.5 billion, close to ₹24,200 crore, from 8 crore to 9 crore orders.

The category split matters for a D2C brand because it shows where the money went. Mobile phones took 38 to 40% of sales value, consumer electronics 25 to 27% and fashion 15 to 18%. Fashion's GMV grew an estimated 22 to 25% year on year in the opening two days. Storyboard18 reports that value fashion drew shoppers from smaller towns looking for festive clothing at accessible prices, a point Redseer's Nikhil Dalal made to PTI.

What these numbers do not tell you

It is tempting to turn a headline like "Gen Z is a third of shoppers" into a strategy. Before you do, be clear about what the figure measures. We would rather leave a gap in this post than fill it with guesses.

• A third of shoppers is not a third of spending. The Gen Z figure is a share of people who bought on the opening day. Nothing in the coverage says what share of GMV they accounted for, or what they bought.
• It is one day. The Gen Z share is reported for the first day only. The mix of shoppers on later days may differ.
• We do not know how the groups overlap. Many first-time online shoppers may be young, but the coverage does not say how many of the new shoppers were Gen Z, and we will not assume it.
• Doubling has no base here. First-time shoppers doubled, but without the absolute number you cannot tell whether that is a few lakh people or many crore.
• These are marketplace shoppers. The estimate covers large platforms. It says nothing directly about traffic to brands' own websites.
• Nothing here describes behaviour. Redseer's reported figures do not say how Gen Z shoppers browse, which devices they use or what makes them buy. Advice that claims to know this from these numbers is going further than the data.

So what is left? Two things we can rely on. A large number of people bought online this October who had not done so before, or at least not on these platforms. And a large share of all shoppers came from outside the big cities. Both mean that more of the people who will visit a D2C site this season, and after it, are less familiar with online shopping and with your brand than the customer you designed the site for.

Why marketplace shoppers end up on your own site

A shopper who bought a phone on a marketplace in October does not become your customer by accident. But the routes from a marketplace to a brand's own store are real, and most D2C brands see them in their own data. Someone sees your product in a reel, searches your brand name, and lands on your homepage or a collection. Someone receives your product through a marketplace, finds your website on the packaging, and visits to see what else you make. Someone is sent a link on WhatsApp by a friend. In every case, the first page they see is usually a collection or a product, not your About page.

For a returning customer, a collection page is a shelf they already know. For a first-time visitor, it is the whole brand. They judge you on six or eight product tiles on a phone screen: whether the products look good, whether the prices make sense, whether the first thing they tap on can actually be bought in their size. If the top row is half sold out, or shows a product with no price visible until they open it, there is no second chance. They go back to the marketplace they know.

What a first-time online shopper needs from a collection page

Someone new to buying online has questions an experienced shopper has stopped asking. Is this the real price? What does delivery cost? Can I pay on delivery? What if it does not fit? A collection page that answers those questions near the grid, rather than three taps away, removes the reasons to leave.

• In-stock products first. A new visitor who taps a sold-out product on their first visit learns that your site wastes their time. Put available products, in available sizes, in the first rows.
• The full price, visibly. Show the price on every tile. If delivery is charged below a threshold, say so in a line above the grid, not only at checkout.
• Payment reassurance. If you offer cash on delivery or UPI, a short line such as "Pay by UPI or cash on delivery" near the top of the page answers the question before it is asked.
• Returns and exchanges in plain words. "Free size exchange within 7 days" is clearer than "Easy returns", provided it is true. Link to the policy.
• Fewer choices at the top. A first-time visitor overwhelmed by forty near-identical tiles leaves. Lead with a small number of clear, popular, in-stock options, and let the long tail follow.
• Honest signals only. Do not add countdown timers or "only 2 left" badges that are not true. A new shopper who catches one false claim stops believing the rest of the page.

None of this is new advice. What has changed is how many of your visitors need it. A store designed for a repeat customer in Mumbai, who knows your sizing and your returns policy, can afford to be terse. A store receiving first-time online shoppers from a Tier 2 town cannot.

What we would do for younger shoppers, without pretending to know more

The reported figures tell us Gen Z was a large share of opening-day shoppers. They do not tell us what Gen Z wants from a collection page, and we will not invent it. What we can do is pick changes that help any shopper who arrives from social media on a phone, and cost little if our guess about Gen Z is wrong.

• Match your content to your collections. If a product is in this week's reels or creator posts, it should be in stock and near the top of the collection the link points to. The most common mismatch we see is a featured product buried on page three, or sold out in the size most viewers would want.
• Link to the right page. A reel about one kurta should open that kurta or a small collection built around it, not your homepage.
• Keep new arrivals visible. Give newly added products a fair chance near the top for their first days, rather than letting all-time best sellers hold every top slot. Our post on new arrivals versus best sellers covers how to balance the two.
• Test on a mid-range phone. Not your own. A collection page that loads quickly on office Wi-Fi can take several seconds on mobile data.

If you have real data on your own younger customers, from your orders, surveys or analytics, use that instead of anything general, including this post.

Value fashion and price-point collections

Fashion's 15 to 18% share of the opening two days, and its estimated 22 to 25% growth, came with a specific note: value fashion from smaller towns. For apparel and accessories brands, the practical response is to make price easy to shop by. A first-time shopper with a fixed budget for a festive outfit wants to see what they can afford without filtering through everything you sell.

1. 1Pick two or three price bands that match how your customers actually spend, based on your own order values, not round numbers you like.
2. 2Build a collection for each band, such as festive wear under a set price, and keep it automated by price so it stays correct when prices change.
3. 3Order each band by what is selling and in stock, so the first row of the cheapest band is not your slowest stock.
4. 4Link those collections from your menu and homepage during the festive weeks, where a new visitor will see them first.
5. 5After Diwali, check whether the price-band collections converted better than your main collections for first-time buyers, and keep the ones that did.

Landing pages for shoppers outside the metros

Nearly two-thirds of the opening-day shoppers came from Tier 2 cities and rural areas, by Redseer's estimate. Our post on quick commerce in Tier 2 cities covers the delivery side of this. On the collection page itself, three things matter most for a shopper outside the big cities.

• Delivery dates they can trust. A line such as "Order by 31 October for delivery before Diwali to most of Maharashtra" is far more useful than a generic fast-delivery badge, provided your logistics partner's real transit times support it. If you can check a pincode before checkout, put that check where shoppers will see it.
• Light pages. Heavy images and autoplay video on a collection grid cost more on a patchy mobile connection. Compress images, and keep any video off the grid itself.
• Plain language. Avoid internal names and clever collection titles. "Cotton kurtas" is clearer than a campaign name a first-time visitor has never heard.

A seven-day collection page check before Diwali

With Diwali on 8 November, there are under three weeks of peak season left from the date of this post. Here is a short check you can run in a week, one step a day, on your most-visited collections.

1. 1Day 1: run your top three collections through our free collection page checker. It flags sold-out products in the first rows, products with most sizes gone, and new arrivals buried below older stock.
2. 2Day 2: fix the first rows. Move sold-out and broken-size products down, and bring available best sellers up.
3. 3Day 3: add the reassurance line above the grid: delivery cost, payment options, returns. Keep it to one or two short lines.
4. 4Day 4: build or refresh one price-band collection and link it from your menu.
5. 5Day 5: line up content and collections. List the products in this week's posts and reels, and check each is in stock and near the top of the page its link opens.
6. 6Day 6: test the whole path on a mid-range Android phone over mobile data: from a social link, to a collection, to a product, to checkout with UPI.
7. 7Day 7: write down what you changed and when, so that after Diwali you can compare each collection's numbers before and after.

How to tell whether new visitors are converting

The point of all this is to turn first visits into first orders. You will not know whether it worked unless you look. Shopify's analytics shows sessions, conversion rate and orders for your store and for individual pages, and your order data shows which orders came from first-time customers.

• Track first orders separately from repeat orders. A good festive season for returning customers can hide a poor one for new visitors.
• Compare each collection's sessions, add-to-carts and orders for the week after a change against the week before, and against the same festive week last year, allowing for the shift in festival dates.
• Watch where first orders come from by region. If the share from outside the metros rises, your delivery and payment messages matter more than they did.
• Note every change with its date. Without a record, you cannot tell a change that worked from a good week.

Where SellRank fits

SellRank ranks the products in a Shopify collection by real performance, such as views, add-to-carts, orders, revenue, conversion rate or profit, and writes that order into Shopify's own manual collection sort, so there is no theme code to change. You can describe a collection as percentage slots, for example the first 20% as in-stock best sellers and the next 20% as new arrivals, and add conditions such as in-stock or a price range. On the Grow plan and above it re-sorts daily or weekly at an hour in your store's time zone, which matters in festive weeks when stock moves fast.

It also keeps every published order as a version and attributes daily views, carts, orders and revenue to the version that was live, so after Diwali you can see what each order actually did. The free plan covers one collection, which is enough to try it on the collection most new visitors land on. Install SellRank from the Shopify App Store and start on the free plan, or, if you would like a second pair of eyes on your store before Diwali, tell us about it on our contact page.