Massmart-owned South African retail mainstay Makro, known for its wholesale products, has today announced that it has launched a new online shopping app in part of its owner’s long-term digital and e-commerce transformation strategy.
“Makro wants to enable customers to buy products across its categories in a way that saves them time and money. Making it easy to shop wherever a consumer may be and making it simpler to access a full shop from one of South Africa’s favourite destination retailer,” reads the app’s launch announcement.
According to Makro, the app was built in just eight weeks, with over 120,000 products already available. The app will reportedly allow customers to shop a wide range of products, including an extended range for their pantries, all from the conform of their mobile devices.
Furthermore, Makro says the app runs an improved search functionality which allows customers to find what they are looking for without having to try multiple search terms or keywords.
“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,” explains Jean Ochse, Executive for B2C Apps at Massmart.
The Makro Shopping App has dedicated Pantry and Liquor categories and makes use of app gestures such as drawers, swipes, shifts and sharing for added accessibility.
2-Day Delivery via the App
Makro says it has also implemented local sourcing for Pantry items, such as foods and perishables, 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.
An extra benefit for the app is that customers will be able to get access to their Makro cards, stored digitally on the app, on their devices. Seeing as you need to have your card present to shop at Makro, or go through the process of getting a temporary card if you’ve forgotten it that day, this could be a very welcome solution to an annoying decision from the company.
Additional features in the app include:
- Introduction of upsells and cross-sells
- Shortcut to key categories
- Earning mRewards in the app
“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,” says Ochse.
“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.”
Massmart Reports Successful E-Commerce Turnover
In the same announcement, Massmart reported an 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,” concludes Ochse.
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 retailer says.
The Makro Online Shopping app is currently available on both iOS and the Google Play Store.
Edited by Luis Monzon
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