E-commerce News South Africa

10 year's expertise in online leads to festive spending

Having celebrated 10 years in online retail, Loot.co.za is in a strong position to take advantage of the growth in online shopping by South Africans.
10 year's expertise in online leads to festive spending
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"We are proud to be celebrating this milestone at a time when e-commerce is increasing at a rate of around 30% a year, with no sign of slowing down. Our development over these past ten years has seen good escalation. The launch of our new general merchandise categories, such as wine & gourmet, kitchen & dining and office & stationary has been the catalyst in repositioning and driving growth, while we continue to amplify the local supply-chain," says Gary Hadfield, who joined the company as CEO in January 2011.

Its shoppers have shown a significant increase in shopping via their mobile devices. The site has a 159% growth in mobile traffic with a 400% increase in revenue. A 102% increase in tablet traffic has resulted in a 148% grown revenue, with IOS tending to be the leader in mobile traffic.

The site will be shortly be introducing new mobile initiatives, such as a responsive mobile site, to improve the mobile shopping experience for customers with the anticipation of improved direct and assisted conversions. M-commerce is steadily gaining traction in South Africa as more consumers are doing mobile banking transactions, money transfers and purchasing airtime as opposed to purely desktop-based transactions. According to a survey recently conducted by World Wide Worx on mobile consumers in South Africa, phone-based purchases of physical products that are delivered to the buyer are made by only 4% of urban cellphone users.

In addition, it recently launched a free delivery service for purchases over R250 to anywhere in South Africa during the Christmas trading period. This courier delivery services main centres and regional areas and has no weight restrictions.

"This festive season we are expecting to see significant growth and popularity within our kitchen& dining, electronics, computers, baby and toys vertical stores" concludes Hadfield.

For more information, go to www.loot.co.za.

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