Nigeria – Africa’s leading e-commerce market

E-commerce offers great benefits to any community. Online shopping and Internet businesses have rocketed rapidly and these play a vital role in affecting a country’s economy. With innovation happening across the globe, a good percentage of world trade is done via the Internet. Nigeria is backing up on the improved broadband access, which is the reason online shopping is flourishing in this country and has become Africa’s largest economy.

Emergent e-commerce:

Nigeria is productive and high-yielding ground for e-commerce and it has been evident by the statistics. According to a research study, the amount of existing and potential online shoppers in Nigeria sum up to 89 percent of the Internet users. You can say that this covers almost each of the users who are connected to the online world. Comparing this to South Africa, the numbers are 70 percent with just 60 percent in Kenya. It has been estimated that transactions of around 2 Million USD are done weekly in Nigeria with Jumia, Konga and Google store being the hot favorites.

How mobiles are driving a positive change?

Mobile technology is penetrating very well to drive a positive change in this area. The mobile apps have changed the way we work and today there’s an app for almost everything. Online retailers are targeting audience by launching mobile apps. Almost 50% of users, who own a smart phone, have used it once a month for online shopping. Though shopping through mobile browsers can be cumbersome, the number is more significant than the app users. This is mainly due to lack of availability of apps for some of the retail stores.

What encourages buyers?

 The factors that encourage a buyer to indulge in online shopping are offers, faster and convenient deliveries and low prices (in that order). Giving offers on certain items is the most used method by retailers and is the most intriguing one. When asked, people tend to feel that a door step delivery is much more fun to have rather than wasting time to reach the stores and facing traffic jams that is a common scenario in Nigeria.

What discourages buyers?

 Payment security and cost of deliveries put off customers sometimes. Nearly 30 percent people don’t shop online cause they feel that online payment is not secured. In such a case, they are not ready to feed their credit card details to the online merchant or to the website. Implementing cash on delivery is making improvements in this area. The second concern is the cost of deliveries. Around 25 percent feel that cost of deliveries on certain items is high.

This sector is becoming big and is the next thing to look forward to for the investors and job seekers, as this will result in a good amount of revenue for the investors and create a number of jobs for young Nigerians. There just needs to be some awareness and technological advancements that help people build trust in this new upcoming and potential idea. Let digitallagos know about your views by commenting below and stay tuned for my post.

Source: http://venturesafrica.com