HERE’S A BREAKDOWN OF THE ANATOMY OF A SUCCESSFUL E-COMMERCE GROCERY PLATFORM
Superior technology stack
Our goal is always to deliver a best-in-class customer experience and we have invested significantly in developing our award-winning grocery ecommerce solution. Our customers see the user-friendly interface, but behind this is a highly efficient integrated tech suite covering automated stock technology, picker/packer apps and driver apps to ensure that from the moment a customer places an order until it’s delivered to them, the process is as seamless and integrated as possible.
Diverse payment options
In the Middle East, cash payments are still a preference for many customers who don’t trust online payments, however this is changing. Over the past year there has been a huge increase in credit card payments generally across both female and male Danube App customers—over 600% for women and over 500% for men. We are continually working to bring diverse payment options to our customers. Danube Online is one of the first merchants in KSA to introduce Apple Pay, which arrived in the Kingdom earlier this year. We also have options to pay by Visa, Mastercard and Madacard.
Continuous enhancements
We conduct in-depth surveys and focus groups with our customers regularly. This helps us to improve our offering on a continuous basis. Our teams work hand-in-hand and side-by-side to implement improvements and tweak our offering according to the feedback we garner from these focus groups. Examples include personalized instructions for meat and fish orders—our online shoppers can leave instructions for the Danube butchers and fish mongers in-store on how they want their order prepared. For any queries or issues about our customer’s experience, we have a 24/7 live chat online, and for customers who prefer to speak to customer service agent our call center operates six days a week.
Customer-centric approach
We wanted to bring more meaningful content to our customers and recently launched version 2.0 of “Danube Kitchen”, which is a swish new feature where Danube App customers can enjoy new weekly recipes that bring together world flavors, from a variety of cuisines to prepare for themselves and their families. If a customer wants to try a recipe, they can quickly add all the necessary ingredients to their cart. Recipes are curated by season and by points-in-time. For example, as back-to-school season approaches, breakfast recipes and school lunch recipes are featured on Danube Kitchen. We have also expanded our categories to add a toy section, which is popular with parents.
Shrewd marketing
Our goal is to be a benchmark in omnichannel marketing; we work closely alongside the offline Danube team to run competitions and seasonal campaigns simultaneously. We also launched a very popular referral program on the Danube App whereby we award our customers with credits to drive new user acquisition. It’s been very successful.