Last year was quite a difficult year for online businesses.
The real challenge for businesses was to provide an experience that is always available while offering customers products and services across multiple channels.
This is according to Luke McKend, country director for Google SA, who was speaking on the first day of the eCommerce Africa Confex in Cape Town this morning. "The demand for an omni-channel and 'always on' experience has made remaining competitive quite difficult for many South African online retailers," noted McKend. "The touch points that we now have with our customer are greater than ever before and this has made things more interesting but also more challenging."
Despite this, he did highlight that there was significant growth over the past 12 months. Generic search queries in SA increased 38% year-on-year. When one looks at search queries with commercial intent specifically year-on-year growth in SA increases to 55%, which McKend believes in an indication of the fact that the SA appetite for online shopping experiences is reaching maturity.
"There is a level of maturity in the South African market that we were not seeing five years ago," he said. He added that SA, and many parts of Africa, are expressing similar levels of online commerce interest to their counterparts in more mature Internet economies, McKend went on to say. "A lot of the things that we used to only see happening overseas are steadily starting to happen here," he noted, continuing that this kind of thing happens as people spend more and more time online and become more comfortable with and confident in their online experiences.
More than half (55%) of the search queries with commercial intent on Google in SA are being done on mobile devices. In Nigeria, some 84% of e-commerce transactions are being undertaken using mobile devices. Echoing the day's previous speaker, McKend highlighted that Africa is not a mobile first economy, but rather a mobile only economy and stressed that online retailers have to be mindful of this.
"What this tells us is that African consumers favour a mobile experience and in many instances are moving at a faster pace than many retailers can handle," he admitted.
In the early days of e-commerce, a great deal of focus was on the Web site and the front-end of these platforms, stated McKend, adding that many of the backend elements of the retail business process - the things that actually make the e-commerce ecosystem work - were neglected. "Today we are seeing an increased focus on the backend elements of a business; the nuts and bolts that make online retail successful."
When cars were first introduced into the transport industry, people were sceptical about them because they were viewed as horseless carriages, he said, pointing out that people were unable to see the advantages of this new technology because it was unfamiliar to them. This is often the case with online merchants who create a mobile version of their Web site. "The problem is that you end up with a skimmed down version of their desktop offering that isn't very user friendly. But this is not what consumers want."
Often, when we are thinking about e-commerce, we address the problems obliquely when we should really be addressing them head on, McKend said, concluding that coming up with innovative strategies to tailor offerings to each unique marketplace is the cornerstone of getting this process right.
"You need to provide choice. If you can't offer choice, be convenient. If you can't be convenient be on time. And if you can't do any of these things make sure that you provide a decent customer experience."
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