By Jim Rex-Lawson Moses, Maryam  Oseni, Adeyemi Bamidele Ezekiel, Abdulsalam Omowale

Intro
The internet has revolutionized the way socio-economic activities are conducted globally especially in the advanced world. One of such activities is shopping. E-commerce or online shopping as a new model of commercial interaction enables business and consumers to participate in an electronic market place.

While it has brought about a fundamental shift in national economies that are isolated from each other by barriers to cross border trade and investment isolated by distance, time zones and language, it has also reduced the difference in government regulations, culture and business ethnic systems.

E-stores offer the consumers certain benefits such as diverse product choices, individualized products, service information, shopping convenience, time saving and competitive pricing.

In recent times in Nigeria, online shopping which was alien to us is fast becoming an alternative means of transaction. This nascent sector of the economy which is not only limited to supply of products, is also providing quality services that meet the needs and expectations of consumers.

Facilitated by the proliferation of social media and networks, these new medium has enabled potential buyers to shop at their own pace and convenience, and its novelty is fast gaining general acceptance from the public, considering how it has erased the challenges associated with traditional method of transaction.

Although low internet infrastructure, unstable power supply, high level of illiteracy, cultural barrier; security issues and inadequate regulatory frame work have led to low internet penetration, as well as making the adoption of online shopping unpopular among shoppers in Nigeria, interestingly, this innovation has completely reshaped our business environment, as well as simplified how we did business in 2014.

This would not have been possible without the ingenuity and efforts of some dynamic and visionary leaders within the industry. While these people shaped the way we did business in 2014, their activities also enabled a flexible and competitive business environment.
In recognition of how online stores have shaped business transactions in Nigeria, we conducted a survey to determine and showcase 5 most outstanding online stores that have reconfigured our business environment in 2014. In doing this, we considered players in various sub-sectors of the e-commerce industry.

Our survey was based on the following parameters: customized overall look of company site, types of payment system, customer service quality, public perception, reliability, products images and descriptions, customer reviews and social sharing, uniqueness of business/business model, quality control strategy, fraud control measures, ability to train and retain talents, global business acumen, volume of business transaction and online traffic.

Although our parameters for selection of the eventual 5 are based on the foregoing, it is important to note that our top 5 Nigerian online stores that shaped business in 2014, have not been presented in any order of ranking.

Our top 5 online stores for 2014 are:
​DealDey Limited
​Konga.com
​Cheki.com.ng
​Jovago.com
​Jumia.com.ng

The CEO’s and Managers of the aforementioned companies spoke with our team.
Excerpts:

Cheki

Cheki.com.ng is Nigeria’s No1 car website with strong presence in sub-Saharan Africa. Established in 2011, Cheki Nigeria is an online marketplace where all leading Nigerian dealers, importers and private sellers advertise their cars for prospective buyers of automobile.

Headquartered in Marina, Lagos, cheki.com.ng has presence in over 15 states in the country covering all the major regions. Cheki.com.ng is a division of Cheki Africa Media which operates and invests in leading marketplace websites in several East and West African countries.

With over 800,000 visits monthly and over 232,930 car listings since inception, cheki.com.ng offer a state of the art advertising platform where Nigerians can buy and sell their cars, 4WDs, vans, bikes and trucks and other vehicles. The main focus is to simplify the selling and buying process in the automobile industry, ensure that visitors to the site get positive results to their automobile questions and replicate the offline car marketplace online.

The powerful network of the cheki team ranging from seasoned professionals to marketing experts to experienced-customer focused teams strive to discover, analyze, build and implement solutions that ensure that the auto needs of the buyers and sellers are met.
The two main products of the company include “Buy A Car” and “Sell A Vehicle. These two products are supported by the “Car Loan” and “Insurance” products to facilitate the car buying and selling process.

Cheki.com.ng enjoys strategic partnerships with key investors and strong financial backing from SEEK (most profitable jobsite in the world) and Tiger Global. It also belong to One Africa Media group renowned for controlling Africa’s major portfolio of online marketplaces focused on Cars, Jobs, Property and Travel. The group which has investments in over 10 countries in Africa is one of Africa’s biggest digital publishers and currently serves over 400 million Africans.

According to Tomi Hodonu, the General Manager cheki.com.ng, the company offers a state of art advertising medium for Nigerians to buy and sell their cars, 4WDs, vans, bikes and trucks and other vehicles, as well as a vision to offer its audience the best, convenient and accessible marketplace where buyers can meet sellers of automobile in and out of Africa. Our aim is to provide an online marketplace that is as close to the physical marketplace out there.

On her Company’s progress in 2014:
She claimed it has been a productive year for the company with amazing growth in important metrics of the business, higher traffic to the website, higher sales made by the dealers and increased car listings on the website. For example, we had 900 dealers on our platform last year but currently, we have over 2,000 dealers comprising dealers in and outside Africa. We also recorded 25,000 car listings last year, currently, the car listings on the cheki.com.ng platform is over 80,000 with a lot more in the process of being listed. Furthermore, the number of visitors grew over the months, from 4.7 million visits of last year to 7.4million visits as at today buttressing the fact that it has been a dynamic year for our customers and for us at Cheki.

What should we expect from Cheki come 2015?
Come 2015, there would be more Smartphone usage and this will affect the amount of transactions carried out online. More than ever before, it is important that businesses begin to consider the importance of placing their messages on the only medium accessible to people irrespective of the time in a day.  People of all ages do not go anywhere without their phones, not even to bed. The last couple of years were about being “mobile friendly” but that isn’t good enough anymore, now we need to think mobile first. Take our website for example, the number of our mobile visitors has increased significantly; last year, we had more desktop visitors to the website but currently, the number of mobile visits has exceeded that of desktop visitors. From over 2.4millions visits from mobile last year, 2014 has so far recorded almost 100% increase in mobile visits which is massive. We attribute this mainly to the fact that there is huge increase in the amount of mobile usage and reduction in price of smart phones. Also, our website is mobile friendly, making it very easy for mobile users to buy and sell cars on our platform.

The second trend to watch out for is that of increase in internet usage. Cisco has projected; there will be an increase in internet usage in 2015 to the tune of “nearly 3 billion Internet users –more than 40 percent of the world’s projected population”.  I actually agree with this projection and certain that it will apply to the Nigerian Market come 2015.

This is because of the fact that we observed that more and more Nigerians are gaining access to the internet and are discovering the power of the internet; when we started, it was only about 125, 000 people that were aware that the process of buying and selling of cars can be simplified and had access to carry out these transactions. However, with our recent monthly visits of over 800,000 monthly, we realized that more people have more access to the internet and have also learned to optimize the power of the internet. So the subsequent years will be no different as the Nigerian Online market is a growing one with a lot of growth potential.

Market share
With our recent records, we can safely say that we own the largest share in the market. This is taking into consideration the number of dealers on our platform, the number of visits daily, the number of sales recorded monthly and the number of cars listings currently fielded on the cheki.com.ng platform.

Strategies adopted to meet customer needs and expectations
We run occasional customer survey to know the current expectations of our clients, our well trained client service executives also call our clients from time to time to do same, while our social media platforms provide us with a good avenue to interact directly with our clients and know what their thoughts are about our services and products.

Findings from these enquiries assist us in proffering informed solutions to the issues that were identified. Our two main products “Buy a Car” and “Sell A Vehicle” are created to fill the customers’ need of having a convenient, trust-worthy and best marketplace to buy or sell their cars with little or no hassle.  So we improve on this experience every year by offering some value added services to the customers on our platform, like working with them to increase their offline brand visibility (creation of dealers’ signages), management of their online car inventory on our website and face-to-face informative sessions on important issues related to their business.

We have also made the process of receiving interests from would-be buyers easy for the dealers we work with.

Talent attraction and retention
We have very strict selection criteria that target only the best the industry has to offer. We also believe in frequent training of our staff to ensure that they are well-equipped and up-to-date with the current trends in the industry.

Konga
Konga Online Shopping Limited is one of the leading online retailers in Nigeria, founded by Sim Shagaya, in July, 2012, with a mission to become the engine of commerce and trade in Africa. According to the CEO, Sim Shagaya, the company’s vision is to connect Africans with each other and the rest of the world through technology and commerce, as well as to be a company that employees, customers and society are proud of and depend on honour and integrity, team work and sacrifice, hard-work, passion, and constant evolution.

On the overall look of the store
He noted that proper merchandizing is crucial to the success of any e-commerce store. It is important for customers to easily navigate the site and find the items they need. Konga.com has a very powerful and customer friendly e-commerce site, developed by a highly skilled team of Konga engineers.

On consideration for current payment system
Konga offers flexible payment options to meet the different needs and lifestyles of our customers. In an emerging market like Nigeria, there is still a need to be innovative in ones approach to doing business. Customers can either prepay at the point of completing purchase with a variety of payment options or choose to pay on delivery instead.

Customers Service
We understand the importance of speaking with, rather than to our customers. At Konga, one of our fundamental building blocks is our belief that the customer sits on the throne. This belief is considered in every decision we make and in the way the business is run as a whole. To this end we make it very easy for our customers to reach us via various platforms. Social is a very important channel for communication because it makes it even easier for our customers to reach us. We have some of the best trained customer care people in the county. In fact, during the recent global customer service week, Konga received two awards in recognition of our excellent customer service track record; ‘the Nigeria Customer Service Awards for the ‘Best Customer Service Company in E-Commerce’ and the Customer’s Heart Beat award for the ‘Best Company in E-commerce’
We are honored by these awards but will not rest on our oars. We will continue to press toward our goal of providing excellent customer services.

Shipping Cost
We are able to provide very low shipping costs to our customers in line with our desire to cultivate ecommerce in Nigeria. Following our significant investment into Konga’s own logistics unit called KExpress, there has been in increase in the efficacy in our order fulfillment with reduced costs for our customers.

Consideration for best product images and descriptions
Konga has a photo studio which once again relies on the expertise of very skilled Konga staff in capturing high quality images of items sold on the site. We train sellers and merchants on the site on proper product display.

Customer reviews and social sharing
Communication and sharing is at the heart of our business. To that end, our in-house team has developed a sophisticated messaging tool that allows for real time communication across web and mobile between buyers and sellers.

Attracting online shoppers
The customer is our North-star, we listen closely and respond to their need. We find that this helps to attract and retain customers.
It’s listening to the customer that drives our strategy, our catalog expansion, the build-out of our logistics network, our pricing and the sort of people we hire.

Company’s success
Our biggest success story is the number of new customers we record every week and the old customers that still consider Konga their trusted platform for shopping. Konga.com, through hard work, innovation and an all-consuming desire to improve the lives of the society through technology has grown to become Nigeria’s largest online mall.

Fraud and Security concerns
Konga takes security for customers shopping on our site very seriously. All online payments are handled through Nigeria’s most secure payment gateway and are protected by Konga Escrow 100% Purchase protection. This way the risk is taken away from our customers. Payments made on Konga are safe and very convenient.

Uniqueness
Konga is unique in that we have the broadest selection of items across several categories in Nigeria. Despite this, we still have services tailored to the unique needs of our different customers. Konga is also unique in investing not only in retail but in technology and creating an empowered network of entrepreneurs through Konga’s marketplace platform. We can give the Nigerian customer a fulfillment experience that is not unlike that experience in many more developed parts of the world.

Market share
Konga is the biggest online mall in Nigeria today. The number of items available to buy on Konga is 50% more than that of our closest competitor. For us, the best way to manage any competition is to focus squarely on delivering exceptional customer experience, continuous innovation and providing an incredible selection and value for money
Strategies adopted to meet customer needs and expectations

We have very strict quality standards for items sold on Konga.com. Konga retail will only source from several leading product manufacturers and dealers, to ensure the authenticity of the items. With this, we are able to verify the quality of items sold by Konga. In addition to this, our quality control team conducts important checks on each item to be shipped out of our warehouse locations.

We also have measures in place to ensure that Konga merchants follow our strict product quality standards. Furthermore, with the platform we have created for customers to review items and sellers, we give our customers the opportunity to make informed choices on the sellers they would buy from on Konga.com.

Talent attraction and retention
Today, Konga has over 700 employees. We source for the best talents in a variety of ways ranging from internship opportunities to referrals and so on. Konga is a vibrant and exciting place to work. It is a company that values individuality and the contribution of each employee to the growth of the business. We consistently develop our employees through knowledge transfer and several training opportunities.

Future of e-commerce
Konga.com’s mission is to be the engine of trade and commerce in Africa. We know that building Konga is a marathon and we don’t shy away from hard work neither do we lack for ambition. With the internet penetration in Africa as well as the increasing proliferation of mobile in the continent over the past few years, smartphones and broadband will be pervasive across the continent in the next few years and ecommerce would have an even more important role to play.

Africa doesn’t lack people who want to sell. Africa doesn’t lack energy or matter. What we lack is an operating system to coordinate it all. This is the task that we have set ourselves on. The company is slightly over 2 years old now and in this time we have come a very long way towards building this operating system.

It will take time and effort but we have an opportunity here to tell the story of the rise of Africans out of poverty aided by powerful information technology.

Deal Dey
DealDey Limited is a premier group-buying e-commerce website offering Nigerians the best discounted deals on local restaurants, shops and more. With a mission to provide local businesses cheaper and result oriented marketing platform for their products and services as well as to give the consumers great discounts on their purchases, Dealdey has positioned itself to be one of the leading e-commerce company in Africa.

According to Ikpe Etop, the Co Managing Director of Dealdey, the guiding principles of the company remains customer focus, continuous improvement, honesty, integrity, respect and teamwork, and its vision, to be the driving force for business and consumers in the e-commerce industry.

On consideration for current payment system
He said since we are not sure of the payment type the public prefer, we specifically accept online payment, bank deposit, pay on delivery, credit card, and interswitch. We considered these payment gateways for customer’s convenience and security.

Effectiveness of payment system
I can say we have recorded about 50% success rate on interswitch and online payment which have been convenient for us. I believe a lot is needed to be done to increase the success rate as well as improving on infrastructural challenges.

Customers Service
Maintaining good customer service is crucial for any business, and in our organization we have a mindset to provide the best customers service. We try to understand what customer’s challenges were and we adopt the best possible approach to treat issues professionally. We receive feedbacks from our customers, history of complains combine with customers data base, which enable us to make effective decisions.

Shipping Cost
Basically, it depends on what it takes to get the product delivered at customer’s door step. We calculate this base on the cost of getting the ordered product(s) to consumer’s residence in terms of fuel consumption, distance, and the driver’s salary.

Attracting online shoppers
Definitely one of the major method of attracting customers is through the placement of adverts both offline and online. Typically we attract customers by rendering the best services to meet their satisfaction and that is our stock in trade. We work very hard to deliver quality products and with our good customer’s service, customers never stop shopping from our online store.

Desired company’s image
We are realistic in the way we do our business, and also ensure quality products are delivered all the time; this has really help in creating the image we craved for. Our service quality is second to none, and when it comes to issue of trust we are always there for the consumers.

Customers review and social sharing
We have a team that take cares of customers review, and our review system is quite democratic. Customers comment are not edited, it often help us to know where we are, what we are doing that is wrong, and what we should maintain. I think when you offer good and quality service; one should be less concern on users comment.

Uniqueness
Yes we are, we have our own style when it comes online retailing, we focus on good deals which make us outstanding and from merchant perspective we serve as advertising platform to promote new products. Secondly, the enviable effort of our customer service team has placed us in the pole position when it comes to e-commerce business.

Securing good deals
Internally we have a sales team that goes to the field to woo companies that are looking for avenues to reach wider audience by promoting their products. We also develop a marketing plan for our merchants, which allow them to analyze and estimate what they can get in return, after using our platform to promote their products. I will say we do create a ‘win win’ situation for both parties.

Company’s success
Success is relative, it can be measured in terms of sales, profits margins, frequency of customers that visit, the returns rate, customers satisfaction, and users ratings e.t.c. As a company we have our standard benchmarks, these enable us to track the degree of progress we made annually. We always adopt myriad of parameters from proceeds to KPI, customer service, response time, delivery time, subscriber’s data base, website traffic and other relevant indices.

Market Share
It is at times very difficult to estimate a company’s actual market size, but we do use the social media platform like facebook to know the potential size of the internet shopping market, once such individual is able to open an account on our website which shows he or she is a potential buyer, we takes such record. One must also consider the stage you are as a company in the industry, may be early adoption, innovative stage, early majority and finally lead majority. E-commerce in Nigeria is still nascent and I can say we are still in the adoption stage, based on this the industry is still at 30% and we can boost of 15 to 20% of it.

Fraud and security concerns
To be candid, I think the Nigeria card payment system is actually well secured and we have never had a situation where someone uses another person details to make purchase on our web site. I know in terms of data confidentiality, data integrity, and mutual authentication we have made a great improvement. Our cyber security is well protected. Lastly, government intervention is as well needed in terms of promulgating relevant laws to curb cyber crimes and setting up dispute resolution system.

Competition
From mine perspective, every company has a unique selling point which stands them out from one another. For me I don’t like to pay more attention on competition, but it is good to know where we are heading and what is going on in the industry. But for us at Dealdey we try to focus on our strength, we are curious to know the stage the industry is, and also improve on other areas.

Talent attraction and retention
We offer great opportunity to young men and women such that they can learn and develop their skills in relation to business activities and particularly in e-commerce industry. We have a very relaxed working structure, then going by the stage of the industry in Nigeria opportunities are abound.

Future of e-commerce
Looking at similar market in some Asian countries, the availability of infrastructure serve as an impetus for rapid growth of e-commerce over there. However, the growing increase of mobile phone users which translate to more potential consumer, I believe the future of e-commerce in Nigeria is bright. Provision of infrastructural facilities and more media coverage will do this nascent industry a lot of good.

Jumia

Jumia is one of Nigeria’s online retailers with a vision to become the one-stop shop for retail in Nigeria via implementation of best practices both online and offline. Jumia Nigeria belongs to the African Internet Holding group (AIH) with presence in Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda, Ghana and the United Kingdom.

Jeremy Doutte, a Co founder of Jumia.com noted that the desire to make life easy for the local population considering the traffic congestion, and how difficult it is to traverse from one point to the other, propelled us to create an online store to put these barriers to bed.

On customizing the overall look of Jumia’s store;
He said that the company always try to adapt the style of its website to what the public wants and also ensure they have a nice experience where and whenever they visit our website.

Customer Service
He opined a very good customer experience is key to succeed in Nigeria because it is the door to people’s heart.  We do adopt two strategies when handling customer service, one we have a reporting tool which tries to find all the commerce and balance on social media and all the websites on daily basis. Secondly we also have a tool that capture all the email sent to our customer service team which I also get to read on twitter, facebook etc to know their complains. We also send out surveys to majority of our users, and try to identify and aggregate disappointments and we have a customer’s experience team who are dedicated to resolve issues to improve customer’s satisfaction.

Consideration for current payment system
We consider payment on delivery because of the issue of trust as an average consumer in Nigeria will want to see and feel the product he ordered for before he or she pays. I will like to state here that our team handling customer experience are not perfect, therefore I will not want to impose online payment on customers. You also find out that some of the populace is always reluctant to use their payment cards.

Shipping Cost
We always consider the key parameters of shipping cost, these include volume, weight, distance, nature of the goods, and we have other information on other goods that are considered. We do our calculations on these above mentioned variables to determine shipping cost.

Delivery time
Our delivery time is relative; it depends on the availability of the product in our warehouse or from a supplier out there. So if we have the product readily available in the warehouse, we can potentially deliver within 24hours.

Desired company’s image
We tend to improve on image quality to compliment detailed information supplied online on a particular product. We also realized that the higher the quality of an image the heavier it is in terms of data required to view images, therefore we try to strike a balance by providing quality image that is affordable irrespective of the device used.

Attracting online shoppers
Over the years, we have invested in marketing, advertisement for the public to know we exist. We are almost at the end this phase, I believe customer’s satisfaction and trust is the key to attract shoppers.

Customers review and social sharing
Yes we do, as mentioned earlier we have two major tools we employed. It has enables us to known where we are, what and where we need to improve on.

Customers review and social sharing
We receive feedbacks from customer and at times you feel you are the biggest, but this is not relevant because in a modern trade where you have supermarkets like cash and carry, shoprites, packing shops and many online stores such as jumia only 5 to 6% are the volume of the market while about 94 % is in the other market. I feel it not much about how long you been in this business but your ability to provide quality products and services.

Market Share
I will say its 50 t0 60% considering how fast we are growing, recently we have acquired about 200 motorbikes to further increase our dominance when it comes to online business, we are constantly improving. I think your market share is not relevant at this point in time, but how fast you are growing and how you are able to capture the market.

Fraud and security concerns
We have a team dedicated to take care of that, we work every day to deal with the big issue of fraud.

Uniqueness
I think that what we do in Nigeria is unique. We have about 25 ware houses scattered around the country, a huge youthful labour force, and thousands of customers on daily basis in space of two, three years makes us unique. Launching e-commerce in Nigeria also makes us unique.

Talent attraction and retention
We actually like to attract young, flexible, hardworking, visionary and career oriented people, we tend to assign them with great responsibility and as a manager we are always fair enough in term of remuneration.

Customer’s satisfaction and expectation
The best way to meet customer’s satisfaction and expectation is to listen and talk to consumers; we want to know what they are happy about, what they detest about us, and how to improve to meet their expectations. Then, on product quality we have a QCT which vet the products before they are taken into the ware house. We also assess the percentage of returns we get from the consumers, and possibly try to detect the supplier of these sub standard products.

Global business acumen with respect to online shopping
The key to succeed in life and business is when you are inspired by people working for you; of course we look at what is happening out there and try to replicate that herein. We can import the best practices and teach people on how to manage their business with the internet.

Future of e-commerce
I believe the future of e-commerce in Nigeria is bright, considering the rate of adoption, convenience, its clear benefits, and values. What will further boost adoption and acceptance of e-commerce is good customer’s satisfaction.
Jovago

Jovago is an online hotel booking service headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, and founded by Africa Internet Holding. Jovago, Africa’s No.1 booking portal, facilitates the booking process for its users to provide them with the best hotel booking experience with fast, transparent and easy-to-use services.

On customizing the overall look of Jovago’s store;
He explained they focus on functionality rather than design because we wanted people to actually come on the site and make bookings easily. Now we are also constantly revamping the site to provide both functionality and the best online user experience.

Consideration for current payment system
We are aware of how wary some Nigerians are of using their cards to make purchases online. So even though we made the online card payments system 100% secure, we also gave customers the option of paying for their booking at the hotel while we secure the booking for them.

Customers review and social sharing
We take customer reviews very seriously as we believe that customer referrals is the easiest way to get additional customers.

Attracting online shoppers​
When Jovago launched in July 2013, the focus was first on growing inventory and then we invested heavily on online marketing with Google ads and Facebook ads. More recently, we have also started to do a lot of offline marketing, PR and event partnerships, which are easy ways we believe to get the word out there and sensitize Nigerians about the hotel booking culture.

Company’s success
As Africa’s Number 1 hotel booking portal, Jovago.com has grown astronomically in just 1 year. For a company that started out with just a few hotels in August 2013, we now have over 200,000 hotels around the world and 5,000 hotels here in Nigeria.

Fraud and security concerns
Unfortunately, fraud and security concerns are very real issues here in Nigeria. On Jovago.com though, we have created an additional level of security by ensuring that all card payments on our site are secure and customers can also choose the option of paying at the hotel.

Uniqueness
When it comes to providing excellent service to our customer, we are always at the top of our game. Our excellent customer service has been recognized by the Nigerian Customer Service Awards who nominated Jovago.com for the Best Customer Service Award. We pride ourselves on providing our customers with verified hotel information. All the hotel pictures on our site are verified personally by our staff on ground and we also write the hotel descriptions based on actual facts on ground. Our website is extremely user-friendly. We are constantly improving on the user experience on our website so that our customers can easily search and book the perfect hotel stay.

Market Share
For us, our key focus is on providing the best service to our customers. This has repeatedly distinguished us from the competition and has ensured that we have the largest market share with regards to online hotel booking in Nigeria.

Customer’s satisfaction and expectation
With the constantly evolving state of online shopping in Nigeria, social media and chat platforms have become very big mediums of reaching and communicating with customers. While we work hard to provide our customers with secured hotel booking where and when they want it, we also are available to reach them wherever they may be on social media or chat.

Talent attraction and retention
At Jovago, we pride ourselves on being one of the best young companies to work in Nigeria. To attract and retain great talent, we focus on 3 major factors: we create a magnetic culture that pulls in highly skilled and talented people, a flexible work environment, and to Build career entrepreneurship.

Future of e-commerce
Nigerians are great shoppers. Go to any commercial city in the world and you will find a Nigerian trying to strike a deal or purchase something such is the entrpreneural spirit that Nigerians are known for. Now with the boom of the dot com business and with e-commerce companies on the rise, Nigerians are quickly adapting to the more convenient way of making purchases for goods and services online. Why spend hours going from shop to shop trying to buy a nice dress for your cousin’s wedding when you can do that in minutes online? Or why subject yourself to the inconvenience of waiting till the last minute to walk into a hotel (which might be already fully booked) to secure a booking when you can do that easily on your mobile phone or laptop?

E-commerce in Nigeria, and Africa as a whole, is experiencing exponential growth. It is safe to say e-commerce is here to stay and will undoubtedly experience more growth. The Nigerian e-commerce industry, only second to South Africa’s on the continent, is projected to take the top spot in the coming years.