Selling online in Peru

Peru_128  Peru
With a population of 32,551,815, Peru is an emerging consumer market with a growing ecommerce sector.
Top sites
1. Mercado Libre
2. Amazon
3. Sagafalabella.com.pe
4. eBay
5. Alibaba.com
Top online payment methods
1. Cash
2. Payment cards
3. E-wallets
Country Profile
Population 32,551,815
Language(s) spoken Spanish
Currency Sol
GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) 424,385
Nominal GDP 215,224
GDP growth rate 2.70%
Number of Internet users 13,036,965
Internet penetration 41.00%
Learn more about selling in Peru.

Ecommerce facts & tips on selling in Peru

With a population of 32,551,815, Peru is an emerging consumer market with a growing ecommerce sector.

Top ecommerce sites

The top ecommerce sites in Peru are Mercado Libre, Amazon and sagafalabella.com.pe. Other top retail sites include eBay, alibaba.com, apple.com, Linio Sites, Buscape Company, cineplanet.com.pe and ripley.com.pe. It’s worth checking out these popular sites to see which ones might best suit your product in terms of traffic volume, competition and the type of ecommerce buyers that they attract. To learn how to expand in this market, download our International growth eBook

Popular products

The top products and categories for Peruvian ecommerce buyers include accessories and apps, technology products and clothes and shoes. Offering products from these categories may help you establish your presence on Peru ecommerce market and give you a headstart. Discover your product feed’s international potential.

Payment methods

The top online payment methods in Peru include cash, payment cards and e-wallets. It’s important to provide your (potential) customers with payment methods of their preference, not supporting common payment methods in a given market will immediately exclude a certain proportion of that market. In many cases, if online shoppers can’t find their preferred or trusted methods of payment during checkout, they will abandon the shopping cart entirely.

Your site’s checkout is the most important and most sensitive part of your buying funnel. Optimizing your checkout for your customers, particularly your international ones, will have a huge impact on your conversion rate. Make sure you provide local payment options, currency conversion and appropriate, cost effective, and timely, local shipping methods.

Mobile commerce

For B2C online purchases particularly, mobile ecommerce now makes up a significant proportion of Peru ecommerce market and within the next 12 months is likely to surpass desktop usage. Ecommerce merchants should bear this in mind when setting up their online stores and product listings. Mobile optimization and a great mobile buying experience is no longer a ‘nice to have’, it must be core to your broader ecommerce strategy.

Digital marketing and SEO

To drive Peruvian traffic to your website, local marketing & SEO will be essential, however, in order to do this effectively you will need to localize your store for the Peruvian market. Having a localized version of your store, in Peruvian Sol and in Spanish will enable you to have your store indexed in Peruvian search engines and in order to generate free organic traffic. Another great and highly effective way to generate good quality, qualified traffic, is Google Ads. To learn more about global traffic growth, download our free international SEO eBook.
 
Another great and highly effective way to generate good quality, qualified traffic, is Google Ads. Glopal provides a simple & fully managed ecommerce solution that connects your existing Google Shopping product feeds with buyers worldwide, growing your sales instantly. Glopal also handles all components of localization required to use Google Shopping in Peru. Not sure about your international marketing potential? Use our free Google Shopping grader.

Shipping

Peru has a sophisticated and efficient ecommerce industry and to compete effectively it is essential that you are able to offer cost effective and timely local shipping options. The easiest way to provide a reliable and secure local shipping service in a new market is often to use an international parcel forwarding service.

Customs, Tax & Duties

In order to ensure a seamless buying experience and reliable delivery times for Peruvian buyers it is a good idea to consider calculating and displaying all local taxes and duties up front. This involves assigning relevant HS codes to all your products and then using those to calculate the taxes and duties that need to be applied to a specific product. This is an arduous manual task, but can be automated using Glopal’s HS Classification tool.

Peru: General Information

Selling in Peru is a great option for growth-minded online merchants. When you launch your store in a new market, there are a number of useful facts and data that you should consider.

There are 13,036,965 Internet users in Peru and Internet penetration amounts to 41.00%. In terms of device usage, there are 11,585,000 smartphone users and smartphone penetration amounts to 36.00%. On a global scale, smartphones are being more and more widely used for digital purchases.

Population & language

The total population of Peru is 32,551,815. The median age is 28.4. The language spoken in Peru is Spanish and the currency is the Sol. The country code top-level domain is .pe and calling code +51.

The economy

According to the International Monetary Fund, GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) is 424,385 (millions of Current Int$) and nominal GDP is 215,224 (US$MM). GDP (PPP) per capita is 13,342 Int$ and GDP (nominal) per capita is 6,762 US$. Real GDP growth rate is 2.70%.

International ecommerce sales potential

Selling in Peru is worth considering for many international ecommerce merchants. It’s a large and active consumer market. If you’re already selling into Peru, you may be happy with your sales figures. However, you may have noticed that your Peruvian, and your international traffic in general, converts at a much lower conversion rate than your domestic traffic, even in markets that share the same language.

The likely reason for this is that, even if your site and product descriptions are in the same language, you may not have addressed many of the other components of localization, that will impact conversion rate.

‍ A fully localized buying experience should address:

  • Ecommerce-optimized translation
  • Local marketing & SEO
  • Size & Currency conversion
  • International payment methods
  • Local shipping options
  • Tax & duties
  • Legal and local compliance
  • Local product restrictions

 

Online retailers used to do a great deal of manual work to expand globally, managing translation manually, matching product categories, attributes, sizes, etc.

Luckily, thanks to the developments in machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), online merchants no longer have to spend time on ecommerce translation & localization when launching their stores abroad.

Machine learning technologies now provide automated translation, extract attributes, convert sizes and map the right category in an accurate, efficient and consistent way. To learn more about our cross border solutions, contact us.

Sell in Peru: Translate & localize your online store with Glopal

Sell with Glopal to reach new customers worldwide. Using powerful localization features, Glopal enables merchants to sell their products to global buyers in their language and currency.

Our Plug & Play solution takes 15 mins to install and is available for Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud.  Custom integrations are available on our enterprise plan for other platforms.

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