A year after going live with its e-commerce site, Makro's next rollout in the coming few months will have more of a focus on commercial functionality.
"Up until now, the online store has mostly focused on retail customers," says Makro head of e-commerce Paul van de Waal.
The retailer, part of the Massmart group, will not create a separate business-to-business portal for commercial customers but rather offer a single platform with different options, he notes. "In store, you will have both retail and commercial customers having different experiences, although all transacting in the same environment. That is exactly the view we have of the Web site too."
There will be subtle changes once users have registered as a commercial customer, such as seeing products in lists instead of grids, he explains.
Consumer trends
In the year Makro has have been offering the retail option online, Van de Waal says Makro has noticed a few key customer trends.
"Firstly, Mondays are by far our highest traffic days." He attributes this to customers seeing what they want over the weekends and then making the purchase online afterwards.
"Also, customers really like shopping at work; we see they mostly log on around 9am [on] weekdays and log off at the end of the day. And shopping baskets are on average three times more full online than in store."
The most bought product at the moment is a laptop, but consumers also go for "big ticket items", such as two-door fridges, when shopping online. The average age of Makro customers is 10 years younger than those buying in store.
In December, Van de Waal said Makro saw a big change in how people were shopping, with over a million unique visitors to the Web site from mid-November to mid-December. "Over the past 12 months, we have seen more people visit our online store than in store; however, not every visitor buys something ? the platform is often used for research."
A recent study conducted by Ipsos on South African online shoppers showed the pool is growing, with 22% of respondents saying they have made purchases online, while 48% expect to do so in the future. This means 70% of South African Internet users are potential online shoppers.
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