Online marketplace Fruugo plans fast expansion of the number of countries that it trades in – and has adopted new technology to enable it to do that.
The marketplace, which enables shoppers from around the world to buy from retailers in different countries using their local payment methods and language, aims to increase its markets from 30 to 50. It needed a strong content delivery network to support its web performance as it does so.
Glen Richardson, chief marketing officer at Fruugo, said: “Our plan is to expand from our current 30 countries in to a total of 50 countries in a very short space of time. We have a duty to our customers and retailers to deliver an ‘always local’ feel, with the same level of excellence of service and high speed response, regardless of geographic location, language, currency, taxes and ‘local ways’.”
The company started testing with Akamai earlier this year and completed the migration of its website onto the Akamai platform, implementing its web performance solution, in May.
“We want to make it easy for the shoppers of the world to shop through Fruugo,” said Richardson. “Not all retailers on Fruugo have the internal resources to market their products to all territories, so what we can now offer them is access to our traditional great service but further enhanced by our partnership with Akamai, which we believe will deliver speed, consistency of performance, drive increased conversions, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately provide the power to increase sales and revenues.”
Alex Keith, UK and Ireland regional sales manager at Akamai , said: “Delivering fast website performance without compromising on the richness of the sites’ content is increasingly important to exciting international retailers like Fruugo. Fruugo’s unique selling point is that it can guarantee consistency for its users whether within the UK or all around the world and that requires infrastructure with a powerful global reach and a tool box of optimisation technologies. The Akamai Web Performance solution is designed specifically to deliver fast, rich experiences to end users wherever in the world they are located.”
