The Landmark Group, the Middle East’s leading retail and hospitality conglomerate, has pivoted its E-commerce strategy to offer a simpler, more useful and more customer-friendly online shopping experience.
On November 24th, 2016, the Landmark Group’s Web Team replaced the existing online portal LandmarkShops.com with seven individual, brand websites – HomeCentre.com, BabyshopStores.com, MaxFashion.com, SplashFashions.com, ShoeMartStores.com, LifestyleShops.com and CentrepointStores.com, for Home Centre, Babyshop, Max, Splash, Shoe Mart, Lifestyle and Centrepoint respectively. iPhone and Android apps for each of the seven brands were also launched at the same time.
“We’re excited to announce this important pivot in our digital strategy. Our new brand sites and apps bring our millions of customers closer to the brands they love regardless of whether they shop online or offline. Shopping our many brands in just one checkout continues to keep our customer experience both simple and convenient. This is the next chapter in our Group’s e-commerce and omni-channel growth story and we’re as committed as ever to continuously improve our customer experience.”
– Savitar Jagtiani, Business Head, E-commerce, Landmark Group.
Customers can browse over 55,000 products across the seven brands, add their purchases into one universal basket and complete their shopping in a single checkout. If they’ve shopped with LandmarkShops in the past, their accounts will remain unchanged. This includes their profile details, payment particulars, brand preferences, order history, Shukran preferences and more. Existing customers can continue to sign in and shop using their current username and password.
61% of LandmarkShops’ customers are members of the group’s popular loyalty programme, Shukran. The new sites and apps will continue to offer them the facility to earn Shukrans for future savings and spend them for instant discounts.
While the new sites have retained other popular features like Cash on Delivery and 1-click shopping with FastPay, new features and innovations have also been introduced. One such feature is ‘Favourites’ which allows shoppers to save their favourite products to buy later. The Favourites list can be easily accessed from the My Account section whenever they want to make the purchase.
With more and more customers preferring to shop online today, this pivot is strategically aligned to the Landmark Group’s long-term vision. The new sites and apps ensure that the Group’s leading brands provide customers with a seamless extension to and from their brick-and-mortar stores.
The Landmark Group’s foray into E-commerce began in December 2012 with LandmarkShops.com, which initially offered 1,200 products across three brands. Today, the E-commerce business for the Group features seven major brands with over 55,000 products in their combined catalogues. E-commerce has grown exponentially for the Landmark Group with over 300% YOY growth in its third year, and over 200% YOY growth in year two. This has been driven through continued focus on innovation by actively rolling out new features and improvements.
Over the next three years, the Landmark Group aims to grow its E-commerce business significantly and better bridge the gap between online and offline shopping. This includes introducing more omni-channel features, bringing more brands online, launching the platform in other territories and offering an Arabic language version.
