Nigeria,
Africa’s biggest and 26th largest economy in the world is
experiencing a boost in online businesses due to the massive surge in
m-commerce. Online shopping community Kaymu has witnessed a direct impact
on its sales via social media.
According to
Evangeline Wiles, Managing Director of Kaymu, “With more people spending time
on social media via their mobile phones, Kaymu is able to reach and engage new
and existing buyers all over the country”.
The rise in
mobile phone traffic to online stores is incited by the overall trend of social
media becoming a major marketing channel for brands. In a survey released by
the founder of Shopify, Tobe Lutke, Facebook accounted for less than 5% of
traffic to ecommerce sites on their personal computers, that number jumps to 7%
when looking at mobile phones in the United States of America.
In
comparison, search based traffic from Google represented 18% of traffic from
computers, but just 12% on mobile phones. This data seems to show that
computers are being used to search for more commodity-type goods, while social
media and mobile are used for more spontaneous, discovery-based purchases.
This is not
farfetched in Nigeria as shopping on mobile browsers seems to be the most
popular way to make purchases with 43% of Nigerian mobile shoppers stating a
preference to shop using the phone’s browser, compared to 34% who prefer to
shop from an app (and 23% who have no preference), this is according to a
report by Paypal.
This trend
could be attributed to the number of hours spent on social media via mobile
phones for leisurely activities as opposed to the time spent on the computer at
work or at school attending to non-social functions.
Kaymu’s Head
of Social Media and Community Africa, Abiola Fabio stated “The rise in mobile
shopping also brings about another fascinating trend, called ‘shopping on the
go’. In other words, shopping is no longer something people go and do anymore;
it’s something they are always doing”.
A few months
back, Kaymu launched its mobile app on iOS designed to make online
shopping in Nigeria even easier and more convenient, with features that enable
sellers to list products and buyers to select from a wide variety of products
at a glance.
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