On Thursday Zalora launched its Android app following its iPhone app which debuted back in April. The Android app follows closely in terms of features and abilities and opens the store to a much wider audience. The company expects its mobile apps to significantly expand its sales and reach in its aim to be the preferred fashion shopping destination.
Zalora Indonesia held a formal launch of the Android app on Thursday evening in Jakarta in which co-founder and co-CEO Hadi Wenas spoke about the company’s goals and achievements especially with regards to the mobile applications. Wenas reiterated that since the launch of the iPhone app, 25% of all sales had come from mobile and that 30% of those mobile sales came from the mobile website. In other words, mobile has become a significant play for the fashion retail company.
He explained that it is very important for Zalora to be present on mobile as people are far more likely to make purchases while on their mobile devices. “People have their mobile devices with them practically at all times so it makes it very convenient to shop when they are for example, stuck in a traffic jam”.
Up to this point, sales from Android users had come mostly from tablets, according to Wenas. “Because we didn’t have the mobile app for Android until today, Android users shop through the mobile website and they mostly used tablets”, he explained. Perhaps it’s the size of the screens that made it more convenient to see the photos and descriptions on tablets, but he didn’t elaborate further.
The Android app’s launch is expected to push mobile sales proportion from 25% to 40% before the end of the year. Many at the audience had asked and wondered why, despite Android’s prevalence, that Zalora launched the iPhone app first. Wenas was a little gun shy in revealing the reason, only saying that it was a decision made from the regional office.
Back in April, Zalora had told TechCrunch that iPhone users are far more likely to make big ticket purchases than other mobile consumers. With hindsight, that fact seems evident as the iPhone app immediately made a big impression by grabbing 25% of all sales in less than a quarter.
In other words, Zalora’s internal data shows that Android users are less likely to make purchases but with the rapidly increasing portion of consumers in all segments picking up Android devices, add to that the more recent releases of high end Android devices, this fact may have to be tested again.
As far as sales on mobile devices are concerned, Wenas seems very proud of the fact that Indonesians are far more likely to shop on Zalora through the mobile app than the rest of Southeast Asia. He said that the sales numbers from Indonesia through the iPhone app is higher than in any of the six other countries that Zalora operates in.
Wenas said that Zalora Indonesia receives 200,000 visits from the iPhone app on a daily basis and it records 2000 purchases per day for a 1% conversion rate, a fact that he is quite happy about.
Being mobile also helped Zalora convert those visits into sales. “The use of our shopping cart feature is very popular as people tend to place items there before actually making the purchase on the desktop but direct purchase on the mobile app is right up there too”, Wenas said. In other words, even though desktop sales represent 75% of all sales, many may have been triggered from the mobile site or app for later consideration.
Even after setting a minimum purchase to be eligible for a free delivery, the sales numbers kept going up, he told DailySocial. “We had a free delivery promotion for any purchase for a while, but even after we set a minimum purchase of Rp 200,000 to be eligible for free delivery, our sales numbers didn’t fall, in fact they went up. Not just the number of sales that went up the amount of spending as well”.
Wenas also revealed that currently Zalora Indonesia has a 2500sqm warehouse which it holds up to 30,000 different products or SKUs (Stock-Keeping Unit). The company will be moving its warehouse to a much larger facility at 4400sqm with an expectation to hold more than 50,000 SKUs.
Lastly, Wenas revealed that the app will also be coming to BlackBerry 10. “We are already in talks with BlackBerry about our app and we’re working to make it available in two months or so”.
