Durban — Makro has launched a new shopping app aimed at bringing customers closer to the brand’s shopping experience.
In a sensitive economic climate, and as part of Massmart’s overarching strategy for e-commerce transformation in South Africa, Makro wants to enable customers to buy products across its categories in a way that saves them time and money.
The app will make it easier to shop wherever a consumer may be and make it simpler to access a full shop from one of South Africa’s favourite destination retailers.
The app, which was built in eight weeks, with over 120 000 products available, allows customers to shop for a wide range of products, including an extended range for your pantry, right in the palm of your hand. Furthermore, the search functionality has improved allowing customers to find what they are looking for without having to try multiple search terms or keywords.
Massmart B2C apps executive, Jean Ochse said: “The mobile app has far more compelling capabilities including universal search and has reduced 70% of the registration friction customers previously experienced. In line with the launch of the new app, the Makro website has also undergone an overhaul to improve user experience. Moreover, with our unified cart, you can easily shop between our platforms.”
The new app will have dedicated pantry and liquor categories.
Combined with app gestures such as drawers, swipes, shifts and sharing – the app will make it easier to shop and experience the full range on offer. The retailer has also implemented local sourcing for pantry items to enable a 2-day delivery and optimised courier costs through automated IP detection and GPS delivery address location. These improvements will come with an advanced checkout design to showcase pantry items and an increased product range.
“The retail space has evolved, and we understand that there’s a growing need to provide the consumer with multiple shopping experiences, in multiple channels with In-store, online and in-app becoming a standard consumer expectation. The future enhancements will take advantage of how customers shop between these channels. The new Makro Shopping App allows the customer another way to shop with Makro and will allow us to build a deeper connection with our customers and access customers who prefer to shop in this way,” Ochse said.
Massmart reported over 100% growth in online sales compared with the same period last year and has the second-largest retail website traffic generator, achieving a 56% increase in e-commerce Gross Merchandise Value in 2021.
“We know and understand what our customers spend most of their time and money on. Our efforts have, as a result, deliberately gone towards ensuring customer experience is consistent between our website and our app, with specific app nuances to amplify their channel experience. We want customers to be anywhere in the country and feel like they have a Makro in their pocket,” Ochse added.
The assortment has further been enhanced with the introduction of Makro’s full pantry offering – which now means they have their top-selling store assortment in the app and on their website. The addition of this assortment will allow consumers to shop a monthly pantry load in a simple and intuitive way. The brands’ More4Less offers are particularly easy to shop in the app and present a compelling way for customers to save more money and live better.
Makro explained that they will form deeper and more meaningful, data-driven customer connections through the app over the coming months.
App features include:
- Customers get easy access to their Makro card
- Introduction of upsells and cross-sells
- Shortcut to key categories
- A Makro card stored on the app
- Earning mRewards on the app
The app is available in both the iOS and Google Play Store and can be downloaded there too.
Daily News