Jumia Market Country Manager, Lauritz Elmshauser speaks to the press members analyzing e-commerce business in Dar es Salaam.
Jumia Market Country Manager, Lauritz Elmshauser (left) speaks to the press members analyzing e-commerce business, companied by Harrieth Mgongolwa Marketing Manager (right).
JUMIA Market intends to educate e-commerce entrepreneurs as well as those who are, in any other way, associated with this rapidly developing industry in the country. One of the key focuses for E-commerce is understanding online shopping behavior/trends of customers and monitoring them in order to better align services with new customer trends.
Knowing why consumers behave the way they do helps determine the right strategies to implement with the aim of influencing the potential customer’s decision. By uncovering the buyer’s specific information or emotional needs throughout the purchase process the right content can then be delivered at the right time and to the right audience to fulfill them.
AGE DEMOGRAPHICS.
As per Jumia’s research and collected facts it can be observed that the younger audiences of the age between 18 years of age to 34 years are most actively involved in e-commerce activities. The leading audience being 25-34 years of age who hold 44.13% of the total audience followed by age group of 18-24 years.
This can also be due to the reason that people of the age 35 years and above are less inclined to be tech-savvy while the younger audience is the fore front for technological revolution and are more open towards online shopping.
There is no significant change in the age demographics comparing insights from last year and this year.26.89% of the audience are aged 18-24 years and audience aged 35-44 years old hold 16.39% of the total audience.
Jumia Market Country Manager, Lauritz Elmshauser (left) speaks to the press members analyzing e-commerce business, companied by Harrieth Mgongolwa Marketing Manager (right).
GENDER DEMOGRAPHICS.
Analyzing on gender demographics, men’s involvement in e-commerce continues to increase dominating 66.7% of the total sessions on the website in 2015 to 70.7% in2016. Despite the increase in men’s participation in e-commerce, women’s activities have declined over the year by 4%. This can be due to the fact men are more appealed to simple, easy and convenient shopping as opposed to women who can be quite skeptical when it comes to shopping. JUMIA aims to increase the number of Women in their audience in the next year by multiplying their assortment in women centric categories, actively engaging with this audience and ultimately gaining their trust in online shopping.
RETURNING VISITORS vs NEW VISITORS.
Some may think ‘Why should I focus on returning visitors, they have already been to my website and they know that I exist, my primary goal should be on New Visitors.’Returning visitors tend to have a much higher conversion rate than new customers. This is because 30% of the visitors visiting the website for the first time are not ready to make a purchase, they are somewhere in the customer buying process.
Therefore, there is a need to focus on both returning visitors to influence purchase and new visitors who become aware that the product exists and will return when they are ready to make a purchase.
Out of the e-commerce activities throughout the year it was observed that 51.4% of the total sessions are estimated to be from returning visitors while 48.6% of the total sessions are from new visitors.
MOBILE USERS
Over the past year Tanzanian e-commerce witnessed an increase in 16% of the sessions received from mobile users from 2015 to 2016 with nowadays two thirds of all customers accessing websites like Jumia on their mobile devices. This is no surprise since we are currently living in a mobile age era where everyone and everything is connected using Mobile Phones.
More consumers rely on mobile to make purchases not just on their device but also in physical stores. Mobile devices have proven to be a powerful tool to increase sales, conversions and loyalty as well as track and mine consumer data for targeted marketing.
In 2015 48.7% of the total sessions were generated by mobile users. The numbers have then spiked in 2016 to 64.7% of the total sessions.
Jumia Marketing Manager, Harrieth Mgongolwa speaks to the press members.
USER INTERESTS.
By analyzing e-commerce trends in Tanzania it is important to look into the interests of the customers with respect to their lifestyles. JUMIA observed that Technophiles had the highest % of total e-commerce activities (5.7%), followed by TV lovers (5.46%) and Movie Lovers (5.34%).
SOCIAL MEDIA ERA.
Social media is one of the channels used greatly for business promotion whether as Free Social Media or Paid Social Media. It is also a great way to have an ear on what people have to say about the services or products and provide customer service and management.
Over 30% of the sessions on JUMIA site this year were from Facebook users, followed by Google/ Organic with 19 % other online marketing channels also provide their fair share of traffic towards the website i.eNewsLetters, SMS and Whatsap.
Leveraging on social media era at the moment JUMIA uses multiple channels to advertise and create awareness of the products & services offered. Facebook being the most popular platform with over 3.5 million subscribers in Tanzania alone serves as one of the main online advertising channels that JUMIA currently uses. Insights gathered shows that there has been an increase in 15.8% in the sessions received from Facebook 2015 and 2016. With insights provided from Facebook creating specific targeted campaigns which can serve to different audiences, gender, sex all with the aim of providing the best online shopping experience is made a less harder task than it was before the social media era.
THE ROAD AHEAD.
Over the next years, a number of developments will shape the e-commerce market in Tanzania. First of all, a wider audience is starting to embrace online shopping as a valid mean to satisfy their needs. The audience will get older as more people get accustomed to shopping online, more women will participate and areas far from larger cities will discover the advantages of having hundreds of products at their fingertips.
Secondly, mobile money and prepayment will get well integrated in the online purchasing journey, either at the time of placing the order or upon delivery. Finally, the rise of mobile will continue, with affordable smartphones and lower roaming charges allowing more and more people access to the benefits of the internet economy.
Taken together, all this will result in a strong growth market that will become a necessary and widely embraced sales channel for most businesses.