Shopper experience
“The user experience is very important because it is easy to come up with an app, but if you don’t come up with the right app, then you end up hurting the e-commerce experience because e-commerce, m-commerce or social commerce is a big ecosystem. You need to cover everything by providing the same experience.
Balci said Lazada works closely with smartphone brands, especially the local manufacturers, in working to enhance the mobile experience for users.
“Keeping in mind that the purchase rate is higher on the mobile platform, it is very important for us to meet the needs of these customers,” he said.
With its success in the online retail space, Balci said the company has no plans to venture into offline retail, and prefers to remain a pure-play e-commerce player.
“We are very focused on online marketing, which we think is the most efficient way of marketing and we want Lazada to be perceived as a purely online shopping mall,” he said.
Although mobile commerce started slow in the Philippines because of the limited infrastructure and low smartphone adoption, the growth is huge that Balci said the country is poised to be one of the largest e-commerce market in Southeast Asia in two to three years.