Sometimes it seems that answers to questions spawn nothing but more questions. When no one is willing or seemingly able to answer the questions, I begin to wonder why. What is it that they`re so reluctant to acknowledge?
Perhaps despite what the analysts say, e-commerce is very much an urban luxury, not so much a survival necessity.
Basheera Khan, journalist, ITWeb
An example that springs to mind is that of the Engen Petroleum/TranZact deal that has reportedly gone awry. I`ve been thinking about it for a while, because the concept of taking e-commerce capability to the masses is one close to my heart - seeing as I`m a born consumer and all.
What puzzles me is not so much the fact that it wasn`t as successful as the press releases proclaimed it would be, but the reason behind this lacklustre performance. I`m not immediately convinced that sales through terminals in Quick Shops would actually take place.
My doubts aside, the fact is, 64 of the 227 Quick Shops that actively promoted the use of the TranZact terminals experienced success, and are willing to continue doing business with the commerce gateway provider.
It`s still unclear how events will unfold in this particular case. However, Engen seems more than willing to ignore this initial enthusiasm in favour of an alternative plan which it must have. No company in its right mind would just invest in a project that promised billions of rand in returns, and then abandon it halfway without a plan B. Or so common sense would have one believe.
What gives me pause is the consideration that maybe, just maybe, Engen doesn`t have a plan B. Maybe, it`s the cost and effort of trying to get Quick Shop managers in backwater locations to promote the electronic sales of cellular airtime, Telkom and Eskom services, flowers, concert tickets through Interflora, tickets via Ticketweb, and electronic Easy Pay bill payments.
Perhaps despite what the analysts say, e-commerce is very much an urban luxury, not so much a survival necessity. And perhaps, Engen Petroleum has overestimated just how hard it is to try to get a consumer to change his or her shopping patterns.
I suppose all that`s left is to wait and see.
Multilingual Web sites
It seems that more and more local Web sites are recognising the multicultural mix of the South African population.
A press release issued today announced a Zulu e-commerce Web site, hosted by the student site gAL.co.za. The release says the site allows visitors to surf in Zulu, and affords them the opportunity to purchase academic books.
John Kuhn, spokesman for the site, says the issue is not so much whether many people will use the facility, but that it is there in the first place - roughly paraphrased, of course.
Alas, I can`t seem to find this Zulu section of the site, but if they say it`s there, it must be there, right?
Of course, there are tons of sites out there that offer their content in Afrikaans - most portals do, and even ITWeb has an Afrikaans section that has a tiny but fiercely devoted following. To my knowledge, gAL.co.za is one of the first to offer the same in an African language.
I say 'one of`, primarily because this trail seems to have been blazed by Uniforum, the South African domain name registrar, whose domain name look-up service is offered in English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa, no less. Beat that, sports fans.
To be honest, I barely remember how to converse in Afrikaans, and my Sotho is almost non-existent. It can be argued that if the content was relevant to my situation, I could be swayed into using it to improve my grasp of these languages. On the other hand, I could opt for the path of least resistance and keep on surfing in English. How many other South Africans are just like me?
My knee-jerk reaction is to say it`s high time that indigenous languages were more strongly represented by local Web sites. But from a business perspective, how viable is this? Can the cost of hiring an interpreter be weighed up against the number of visitors one is likely to get as a result? I tend to think it`s more like offering SMS functionality -- it`s non-essential, but nice to have. If this trend picks up, I see a prosperous future for content interpreters in the long run.
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