The number of retail e-commerce transactions taking place through smartphones in Nigeria spiked by 73 per cent within the first quarter of 2016.
This is according to e-commerce Q1 report data by performance marketing firm, Criteo which was presented by the Managing Director, Emerging Markets, Dirk Henke while making a presentation at the Mobile West Africa conference held in Lagos last week. This is a reflection of global mobile commerce trend which has risen by 39 per cent since the last quarter of 2015.
The report which shows smartphones becoming the dominant m-commerce device indicates smartphones taking a huge chunk, about 18 per cent in Africa, of e-commerce transactions compared to about 10 per cent share of other mobile devices.
The report also highlights mobile versus desktop sales trends in the country with desktop sales dominating e-commerce transactions within weekdays and Saturdays while Sundays share equal transactions rates between mobile and desktops. This is in contrast to South Africa’s mobile commerce trends where mobile dominates all weekend transactions.
The report also noted that on weekdays, desktop usages specifically spikes during office hours with clicks averaging 1200 per cent and clicks through mobile barely rising above 100 per cent. However, on weekends, desktops and mobile usage are similar with clicks averaging 250 per cent across the devices.
Another important highlight of the survey is the inability of payday weeks to influence e-commerce sales. Except for significant sales rise during the Black Friday sales in Q4, 2015 which coincided with the paydays, transactions within the other paydays and within the first quarter of 2016 remained basically flat. However, Henke noted in his presentation that despite the impressive statistics and growth trends, everything is not perfect yet, because while 86 per cent of retailers claim they already have a mobile optimised website, only 13 per cent of consumers rate their shopping experience as ‘very good’ on smartphones.
The report, however, shows Nigeria’s mobile conversion rates steadily growing with Android smartphone averaging 1.8 per cent conversion rates, iPhone and iPad, 2.9 per cent and Android Tablet, at 1.5 per cent conversion rates.
Henke noted retailers need to become more strategic in their approach to sales by personalising their marketing across different channels and adopting retargeting strategies to convert more visitors into real buyers.
