{"id":42868,"date":"2013-07-25T11:08:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T09:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=42868"},"modified":"2013-07-25T12:44:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-25T10:44:36","slug":"woolworths-targets-more-online-shoppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/42868\/woolworths-targets-more-online-shoppers\/","title":{"rendered":"Woolworths targets more online shoppers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listed food and clothing retailer,\u00a0Woolworths<\/a> has revamped its website as it looks to increase its traction in the online shopping space, having already seen growth double over the past year.<\/p>\n

Although online sales have accounted for a relatively small percentage of its business to date, Woolworths\u00a0believes that South Africans will become more enthusiastic online shoppers as bandwidth connections become cheaper and faster, and customers become more comfortable with online and mobile shopping.<\/p>\n

The group reports that its number of online shoppers have doubled year on year. Traffic from smartphones increased by 38%, while 8% of traffic came from tablets.<\/p>\n

The new-look online shopping site now offers the full range of Woolworths products. \u201cIt features almost everything our customers would find in-store,\u201d said Nikki Cockcroft<\/a>, head of online at Woolworths.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom groceries to clothing, home, beauty and financial services, we\u2019ve integrated all our services into one easy-to-navigate destination.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve listened to thousands of Woolworths customers who wanted a simpler, more seamless integration between online and in-store shopping, with the added convenience of being able to access all their Woolies favourites no matter the time, place or device,\u201d Cockcroft added.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy using responsive design, their shopping experience remains exactly the same regardless of their device of choice \u2013 whether it\u2019s a desktop computer, tablet or smartphone.”<\/p>\n

The group said that the majority of its online purchases are for food and household goods, and nearly half of online shoppers shop more than once a month.<\/p>\n

Although the majority of Woolworths online shoppers are women, the company says it is seeing more men joining the online shopping world, especially for special occasion gift buying.<\/p>\n

Most of its online shoppers are based in the major metropolitan areas, with Johannesburg, Cape Town and then Durban leading the charge.<\/p>\n

Research conducted by World Wide Worx<\/a> in May 2012, found that, in 2011, online retail sales figures in South Africa were recorded at R2.636 billion and it is expected that the contribution of eCommerce to the country\u2019s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will increase to 2.5% by 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cDigital innovation and integration remains a strong focus for Woolworths and is an integral part of our strategy to meet customers\u2019 expectations for convenient shopping. With all the digital advances our online offering will be an ongoing process of looking at how we conduct business online and ensuring an enriched, seamless customer experience,\u201d said Cockcroft.<\/p>\n

More on Woolworths and eCommerce<\/h3>\n

Woolies resumes services after data centre outage<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Woolworths hit by \u201cmajor technical issues\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Woolworths targets online retail growth<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listed food and clothing retailer, Woolworths has revamped its website as it looks to increase its traction in online shopping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":3921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[677,26,949,607],"class_list":["post-42868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-ecommerce","tag-headline","tag-woolworths","tag-world-wide-worx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42868"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42883,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42868\/revisions\/42883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}