Kupatana.com is one of the best online classifieds websites in Tanzania where consumers can sell and buy used and new products. It’s a marketplace for both consumers and sellers.
What is an online directory website?
A directory website is a website that lists products and services you can browse through. It is one of the best techniques of online marketing where business owners compete to get listed online so that users can find their products and services.
Purpose of the online directory website
Basically, the online directory businesses serve the three-fold purposes:
Business owner – This one is for the directory business owners who create websites and provide an opportunity for the product and service owners to get listed on their directory websites.
Listing owner – Another purpose is for the listing owners who want to get listed and promote their expected products and services.
End users – This category is for the visitors who visit the directory site and search for their preferred products and services.
How to monetize your directory website?
There are many ways you can start making money through your directory website, Crefati suggests the following ways:
Charging for Listings – once you start bringing valuable traffic to your website, which leads to conversions for listings, companies and business owners will start to take notice and will want to submit more content for your website. This is when you can start charging them for that privilege.
Sell advertising space – Given the (hopefully) large numbers of visitors to your website, you will be able to further monetize it by providing relevant ads.
Membership/Subscription-based – Once your directory website becomes a reliable source of listings in a particular field, you’ll be able to charge both listers and users to access your information.
Listers will want access to the large number of potential clients visiting your website. Therefore, they will be willing to pay for benefits such as listings without an expiry date or featured listings which appear at the top of searches.
Similarly, customers may be inclined to pay to see the best deals on your website. Alternatively, you can allow users to see all of your listings but only provide access to contact details if they are a paid-up members.
Sell premium listings – for listers to get featured or their products/services to get more visitors, you can sell them premium listings (so that they can be seen first before others).
Crefati designs and builds directory websites with the following features:
User friendliness
Mobile-friendliness
SEO Optimized
Front-end submission – This is one of the most crucial features of any type of directory website. A quality directory website should allow its users to submit a listing to the directory from the front end. It makes the way of adding a listing easy as compared to the back-end submission.
Online payment gateways (paid exclusively)
Opportunity for customers to rate and review businesses
Booking (Reservation & Appointment)
Location-based features
Free-listing feature – allows business owners to list their services and products for free.
You don’t need a physical store to sell products online. Thanks to the internet for presenting many opportunities like this. And with dropshipping, you don’t even have to worry about holding inventory and dealing with the products yourself, you’ll only have to focus on the fun stuff i.e., marketing your online store and products and building a good customer experience.
Here’s how dropshipping works: an entrepreneur (you) sets up a website or online store to sell certain products, but you don’t keep any of those products in stock. Instead, when a customer orders a product, the dropshipper (you) purchases the products from a third party (supplier), and has them shipped directly to the customer.
Dropshipping works in just four simple steps:
Customer purchases products from your online store
Their order goes direct to your suppliers
Your suppliers ship the products to the customer
You keep the profit from the retail price
Why should you start a dropshipping business today?
Dropshipping is a proven business model with a market that’s projected to reach a worth of $476 billion by 2026. It’s worth it to start today, here are reasons why dropshipping business may be good for you:
Lower startup costs – the great thing about dropshipping is that you don’t need a lot of money to make it happen. The initial capital you need is the subscription fees to your domain (website name), an ecommerce platform/website, and any dropshipping platform you may choose to use.
Scalability – you can scale quickly because order fulfillment is not dependent on the size of a physical location or the number of workers needed to ship out an order. For this reason, dropshipping can greatly benefit retailers that experience fluctuating sales due to seasonal factors or other reasons.
Lower inventory management – by eliminating the need to maintain physical inventory, dropshipping reduces the management overhead retailers that face. You don’t need to spend time tracking inventory, managing the infrastructure that houses it, or managing shipping, which is outsourced to suppliers.
How and where to start a dropshipping business?
Choose products to sell – Just like any other business, you need to have an idea about what products you are going to sell online. If you already have an online store and want to use dropshipping to boost your inventory, then you’ve probably got a clear idea of the products you want to sell. Make sure that they complement your existing stock and match your audience’s price range.
Find a dropshipping supplier – finding great suppliers is the key to your business success. You have to connect your store to reliable national and international suppliers, with a broad catalog of quality products, who offer realistic and transparent shipping estimates. You can use dropshipping marketplaces like Spocket to connect with different suppliers.
Build an eCommerce store – you have to build an ecommerce store made with customers in mind. Ecommerce store which will enhance your credibility, compel shoppers to browse, and make them feel secure when it comes to making payments.
Market your dropshipping business – this is fun stuff you’re going to deal with. Competition is fierce out there, so you need to put much effort and focus on marketing your online store and the products you are selling.
Some of the best dropshipping marketplaces to find suppliers
#1 Spocket
Spocket is one of the best platforms for dropshippers. It offers branded invoicing and gives users access to thousands of dropshipping suppliers. It’s incredibly easy to use, and also works well with third-party marketplaces like Etsy. Click here to visit Spocket
#2 Printify
Print-on demand supplier, Printify allows you to sell customized products with your own unique design or logo. You select from hundreds of products—from t-shirts to reusable water bottles, add your designs or logo, and then import the products to your online store. Printing, product fulfillment and shipping are handled by the print on demand supplier. Click here to visit Printify
#3 SaleHoo
This is a wholesale supplier directory that connects dropshipping companies with dropshippers supplier allowing them to grow together. Although it offers an array of products, it is not available for free. It costs $67 per year.
#4 Doba
Doba gives you access to hundreds of different dropshipping suppliers and gives you access to millions of products through a discrete catalog. The best part is that you don’t need a credit card to sign up either.
#5 AliExpress
AliExpress doesn’t need an introduction. It’s one of the largest platforms for dropshipping companies, offering millions of products with a free sign-up. You can buy a range of different products including electronics, apparel, footwear, DIY, accessories, cosmetics and much more.
According to IMF’s World Economic Outlook Report of 2017, 11 of the 25 fastest-growing economies are countries in Africa. It is estimated that Africa’s iGDP (Internet’s contribution to GDP) will reach USD 300 billion, 10% of Africa’s overall GDP by 2025. Online marketplaces could drive inclusive growth across Africa with electronic commerce likely to create as many as 3 million jobs by 2025. Already, estimates suggest as many as 264 e-commerce start-ups are operational across the continent, active in at least 23 countries.
What is Ecommerce?
Ecommerce, also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions.
Types of Ecommerce Models
There are four main types of eCommerce models that describe almost every transaction that takes place between consumers and businesses.
Business to Consumer (B2C)
When a business sells a good or service to an individual consumer (e.g. you buy a pair of shoes from an online retailer). Example konga.com
Business to Business (B2B)
When a business sells a good or service to another business (e.g. A business sells software-as-a-service for other businesses to use). Example pesapal.com, dpogroup.com
Consumer to Consumer (C2C)
When a consumer sells a good or service to another consumer (e.g. you sell your old furniture on eBay to another consumer). Example kupatana.com
Consumer to Business (C2B)
When a consumer sells their own products or services to a business or organization (e.g. an influencer offers exposure to their online audience in exchange for a fee, or a photographer licenses their photo for a business to use). Example bantuphotos.com
Examples of Ecommerce
Ecommerce can take on a variety of forms involving different transactional relationships between businesses and consumers, as well as different objects being exchanged as part of these transactions. These include Retail, Wholesale, Dropshipping, Crowdfunding, Classifieds, Subscription, Physical products, Digital Products, and Services.
Electronic commerce started in the first place in developed countries, characterized inter alia by:
Mature markets with heavily banked consumers with high purchasing power,
Internet access by the population, giving rise to a mass of connected consumers,
A network of quality infrastructure, technology, and logistics networks to supply and delivery these new customers.
It’s no lie that electronic commerce in developed countries is a real thing. According to PPI Radically Pragmatic of September 2017, it estimates that eCommerce jobs in fulfillment centers and eCommerce companies rose by 400, 000 from December 2007 to June 2017, and fulfillment jobs pay 31% more than brick-and-mortar retail jobs in US.
The eCommerce sector has shown tremendous success in developed countries such as the US (eg. amazon.com) and China (eg. Taobao.com) but in Africa, it’s another story, we have seen many startups come and go due to a lack of profitability. Old local e-commerce giant Kalahari shuts down its operation on 2011, Jumia Technologies retrenched its operations in Africa in 2019 due to severe loss. Why is it very hard for eCommerce businesses to penetrate the African market? Why eCommerce giants like Amazon.com and Alibaba.com are not opening their operations in Africa?
According to Geo Poll’s 2016 survey of 1, 251 people from five African countries (South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda), the two main reasons for the reluctance of these populations to use e-commerce are:
Lack of trust (poor trust of customers in the quality of products) and
Lack of security (customers’ feeling of computer insecurity especially when making online payments)
The reality of internet business in Africa deviates from what is obtainable in the Western world. The following are the top electronic commerce challenges in Africa that make too many start-ups unprofitable, and how merchants can overcome them.
Low consumer trust and e-skills
Apart from the poor trust of customers in the quality of products sold online, also many Africans are slow to trust online stores with their personal payment details. This stems from a lack of knowledge about online payment systems and advanced security measures.
In Nigeria, for example, where phishing is common, people are skeptical about putting their credentials online. To mitigate this challenge, some companies such as Jumia.com.ng and Konga.com offer COD (cash-on-delivery) payment options.
To overcome this, consumers should be educated as to how electronic commerce and online payments work. If customers understand how online fraud is prevented and the techniques that are used to prevent security breaches or fraud attempts, they are more likely to trust an eCommerce website with their payment information.
Fragmented markets
Despite all the efforts to make Africa appear as one market, it is not. A company has to set up country-specific sites because of barriers from cross-border payments, languages, cultural differences, and other factors. This affects economies of scale and impacts efficient allocation of capital with duplication of resources across the region.
To overcome the challenge of fragmented markets is to introduce free trade zones and initiatives whereby tariffs and taxes are eliminated for cross-border transactions. And merchants should use PSP (Payment Service Provider) which operates internationally.
Uncompetitive delivery infrastructure
Many of Africa’s transportation and delivery system is not equipped to deal with the booming electronic commerce industry. Many African roads are not paved, and the terrain is often difficult for travel. This has created obstacles for eCommerce merchants seeking viable delivery options. Nonfunctioning postal systems in Africa make most of the online businesses operate delivery motorbikes, which increases the cost of doing business.
To overcome delivery problems, we can use new developments such as drone delivery and crowdsourced delivery options. Crowdsourced delivery, also known as crowdsourced shipping (crowd shipping) is an emerging method of fulfillment that leverages networks of local, non-professional couriers to deliver packages to customers’ doors.
Low internet penetration and affordability
Only a quarter of Africa’s population regularly uses the internet. Costs are high. On average, 1GB of data is 9% of monthly income (e.g Econet charges USD 165 for a 1.15GB monthly bundle in Zimbabwe). As the internet is expensive, online shopping has not been an option for everyone.
Infrastructure development is the key to providing the Internet to more of the population. Fiber optic networks and other solutions are currently in development. These solutions provide infrastructure and reduce the expenses involved in connecting to the Internet.
E-commerce in Africa could be very profitable, it will just take time and effort. Leaders of the continent must understand that besides launching websites, there are many elements entrepreneurs need to be profitably successful. These include more integration of the disparate African economies; investing in infrastructures like the postal system, broadband, and transportation networks; setting up a pan-African system to prosecute fraud, and improving business trust in the African internet.
The internet is redesigning the world’s business and will continue to reshape the industrial sector. In the next 10 years, electronic commerce will be the next big thing in Africa.
