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ewcomer Alfacart.com, part of retail giant Alfa Group, hopes to climb the e-commerce ladder and control a larger market share in 2017 as it gears up to introduce new features.

Touting itself as the e-commerce platform with the most “online to offline” transactions in Indonesia, Alfacart has promised more service innovations in 2017.

Currently, the platform is ranked “around 7th or 8th” in terms of e-commerce market share, following its initial launch six months ago.

Alfacart.com CEO Catherine Hindra Sutjahyo said on Friday that it would build designated “product return points” and purchase points at Alfamart stores to address customer service needs.

She claimed the online to offline element was among the platform’s biggest strengths compared to other e-commerce platforms.

It is part of Alfacart’s efforts to also drive foot traffic into Alfamart convenience stores as a way to connect online customers to offline services.

At present, Alfacart has product drop-off points at over 2,000 Alfamart stores nationwide and 8,000 Alfamart stores serving as pick-up points for Alfacart transactions.

“By making online to offline transactions easier, we also hope to further support the optimum operations of small and medium businesses operating on Alfacart and also push more of them to go digital,” Catherine said.

The platform hopes to multiply the number of vendors on its site by 10 times in 2017.

Additionally, the integration with Alfamart stores is a response to the fact that Indonesians’ preferred method of payment continues to be cash on delivery, a model that Catherine described as “quintessentially Indonesian”.

As of December, Alfacart has seen daily traffic of 400,000 users a day, with around 10,000 of them usually ending up purchasing something from the site.

The online to offline approach will benefit both Alfamart and Alfacart, as about 4 million customers come into Alfamart stores on average nationwide.

Around 7,000 Alfamart outlets are already integrated with the Alfacart service, from a total of 11,750.

As a result of the semi-integration, the site has seen monthly growth of 15 to 20 percent in 2016, with grocery items making up 48.4 percent of sales — the largest proportion.

The site’s most profitable market is East Java, with customers from the province making up 42 percent of overall numbers.

Back in October, Alfamart stores partnered with Japanese messaging platform LINE to further its reach into the digital world when LINE offered free stickers to those shopping through Alfamart’s official LINE account.

Regarding that offer and Alfamart’s ongoing integration in the digital realm, A. Hans Prawira, who heads parent company Sumber Alfaria Trijaya, previously noted that the online facet of Alfamart ultimately aimed to increase foot traffic into stores.

Both Alfamart and Alfacart’s primary market demographic revolves around the 22 to 35 age bracket, with women dominating the figure. The recent partnership with LINE and future online collaborations will be used to draw more millennial traffic to both services.