High-end online retailer Yoox Net-a-Porter says it is developing technology to allow customers to buy goods directly through WhatsApp.
According to The Independent, the platform’s personal shoppers already message clients on the Facebook-owned service and Chief Executive Federico Marchetti says that the Milan-based company plans to expand its use of the app but did not set a date for the launch of the feature.
The giant retailer is an e-commerce platform for such luxury brands as Prada and Versace and is looking to one-up competitors Farfetch and the online shopping portals of high-end brands.
Yoox Net-a-Porter says that close to 40 percent of its higher-margin in-season revenue comes from two percent of its clients, which it calls “Extremely Important People,” or EIPs.
“We’ve made some of our biggest sales to EIPs by chatting to them through WhatsApp,” Marchetti said, according to The Independent.
According to the newspaper, customers accessing the Net-a-Porter website on a mobile device place more than double the orders of desktop users, leading strategists to focus on mobile access as an area of development.
In August, WhatsApp changed its rules to allow companies to communicate with its one billion users.

Source: Arab News