Zalora sees daily site visits hitting at least 500,000

MANILA, Philippines – Top online lifestyle shopping platform Zalora Philippines expects to hit roughly half a million daily site visits this year amid an improvement in internet penetration and smart phone usage in the country.

In a recent interview with The Star, Zalora Philippines co-founder and CEO Paulo Campos III said the website is now attracting daily visits of 300,000.

“Growth has been mind blowing. The target is high double-digit growth in terms of traffic like 50 percent. So from 300,000, we’ll be pushing for half a million visits toward 2017,” Campos said.

The increase in website visitors is seen to translate to higher sales and revenues for the company.

He said 2016 was the first year that the Philippines beached the 46 percent global e-commerce average penetration or the level of penetration over population with access to internet.

“People have better access to the internet. It improved significantly from over the past five years,” Campos said.

At 46 percent, however, there is still much room for growth.

The increased usage of smart phone penetration has also improved significantly this year, Campos said.

“The other shift is smart phone penetration. Smart phone changes the way customers interact with us. It’s a huge fundamental shift in consumer behavior and that’s the trend in the last five years,” he said.

Zalora promises to offer more products this year through the addition of many popular brands such as Nike and Adidas.

“These brands create their own demand,” he said.

Campos said the number of Internet users is growing and would also spur growth for the company.

“By extension if we do a good job, the number of people visiting the website is expected to grow,” he said.

 More importantly, the Philippine market has already reached deflection point and is no longer apprehensive to shop online.

Founded in 2012, the Zalora Group has a presence in Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines.

It offers an extensive collection of international and local brands and products across apparel, shoes, accessories and beauty categories or men and women. It also offers 30-day free returns, speedy deliveries and cash on delivery.