E-commerce is fast becoming the de-factor standard for setting up business quickly and with minimum physical requirements. More and more E-commerce stores are springing up by the day. At the July edition of Mobile Monday Nigeria’s meet-up, attendees had the opportunity of listening to key influencers in the e-commerce space. The event was great because it exposed the various success factors in E-Commerce and also the drawbacks of running an online store in Nigeria.We had Jesse Oguntimehin in the house and we also had the Tech360 NG Team covering the event and giving live updates to their faithful followers on twitter. The First speaker was Mayowa from buynownow. He gave the audience an overview of the multi-vendor platform that buynownow uses to sell products from its various vendors. He also spoke about the various benefits of using their platform to buy and sell products. He gave some advise to those who want to start e-commerce businesses.
- Give your staff incentives to stay else they will be hired by someone else.
- Offer attractive incentives for those who want to use your platform such as Instant payment to vendors when goods are purchased on your platform and so on.
Next up was Femi Adebiyi (CEO of Taafoo). He gave a history of Taafoo (which was first a social network before it became an e-commerce store). Here are some of the insights Femi Adebiyi gave to the audience.
Before going into any online venture, be sure that you’ll be able to monetize that venture.
For Online stores, digital marketing is the way to go. Traditional Marketing does not work.
The reason why online businesses haven’t gained traction in Nigeria is because people don’t have trust in the system yet.
Some of the other insights he gave:
Challenges of E-commerce in Nigeria
- There is no insurance against online fraud.
- Poor Logistics for delivery and return.
- Inadequate funding for ecommerce startups which leads to them using obsolete technology for their storefronts.
- Lack of enough technical manpower for managing online stores.
Key Success Factors for E-commerce in Nigeria
- Good customer services helps to bring repeat customers
- Good exchange/return policy e.g. 90 day Return policy / Money back guarantees help to ensure that there is high customer retention.
- Infuse cultural habits into your e-commerce platforms. E.g. adding bidding capability to your e-commerce store for some products like a physical market.
- Always monitor your platforms analytics e.g. Bounce Rate, Amount of Time customers spend on your website. Invest in tools such as Google Analytics, New Relic etc.
- Focus on increasing your earnings not your search engine rankings.
- Give your staff incentives to stay else they will be hired by someone else.
We also had Onyeka Akumah from Sabunta speak about his experience in the e-commerce space while he was with Wakanow where he increased their daily Sales from 8 Million Naira to 35 Million Naira daily by creating Intuitive and innovative product packages such as the Wakanow Olympic packages and by Strategic offline and online advertising.
Representatives from Afrisoft, Vougepay, CashEnvoy also came and spoke about their products.
The event ended with the networking session where people exchanged contact details and business ideas. To all who attended, we hope we were able to provide enough info about e-commerce in Nigeria and we would like to thank you for coming.
And for those who could not make it, we are hoping to see you at the next #momonigeria event. Smile, Its Monday!!