Commercial brands operating in Africa can use e-commerce platforms and logistics chains to diversify their businesses to better serve their customers, but this requires that they are able to manage the quality of the experience over any communications and delivery channels they use, cloud communications platform company Infobip’s executives shared during a roundtable discussion on November 17.

Africa has a growing and youthful population and growing penetration of mobile and digital devices and connectivity throughout the continent. With this growth, there is significant potential for the region, said Infobip Africa go-to-market manager Jeremy Osborne.

E-commerce platforms should focus on making shopping experiences frictionless and more convenient for customers, Infobip South Africa customer success division head Kabelo Ngwane added.

"African e-commerce is growing faster than that of Latin America and Europe," he pointed out.

Africa's e-commerce industry is projected to grow by a compound 24.7% to 2024. This represents massive untapped demand, but will also encourage innovation, and demonstrates the power of communications to elevate economies, said Osborne.

"Covid-19 pushed brands to start thinking about online services. They want to position their brands and products where people are spending their time, such as social media," said Ngwane.

The ‘2022 South African Digital Customer Experience Report’ found that 10% of all e-commerce sales take place directly via social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.

"Companies must ensure they provide convenience for users of their e-commerce platforms, as they get more traffic onto their sites and applications (apps)," he advised.

"We are starting to see that the demand is there, and this is where trust comes into play. User-friendliness, ease of use and convenience are important to ensure a good user experience," he added.

Further, there are different consideration for companies that are only online retailers, or e-tailers, and retailers that also have a physical presence. Retailers with physical stores must ensure the customer experience across their different communications and distribution channels is consistent, noted Osborne.

An omnichannel strategy, which enables users to communicate with a company over all their channels, while being identified as the same user across all of them, will provide more convenience for users.

"Retailers with physical stores have interesting opportunities and challenges because their brand and customer experience will be evaluated on two separate environments, namely in their stores and online, and represents an additional dimension to manage," he said.

Physical retailers can also adopt several approaches to serving client needs by diversifying their offerings, such as to include not only in-store sales, but also delivery or click-and-collect services, potentially with different pricing models associated with each.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure challenges in Africa also often present problems for delivery models, and this final gap, or last mile, is a challenge for all e-commerce companies to address, he noted.

"The informal sector in South Africa contributes about 5.2% of gross domestic product and employs about 2.6-million, with 90% of the transactions being cash-based. However, most small retailers and spaza shops do have digital point of sales technologies, and these enable their financial service providers and suppliers to build up profiles of each.

"We are now seeing some of these trading stores being backwards integrated into supply chains as distribution hubs to help bridge the gap to clients," said Osborne.

Brands can only reach so far and remain cost effective or efficient. There are a range of strategies companies are adopting and there are significant number of interrelated facets for retailers to consider when pursuing an e-commerce strategy.

Additionally, the ‘2022 South African Digital Customer Experience Report’ found that e-commerce is not only for the affluent, with more than half of the sample in the research being people who earn less than R10 000 a month, he highlighted.

Meanwhile, companies can tap into a decline in foot traffic in their stores by enticing people onto their e-commerce platforms and apps, but must ensure a consistent, convenient and frictionless experience to retain them, said Ngwane.

For example, companies can potentially offer certain products only online and entice the customer segments associated with these products to shop online, and thereby build their e-commerce market and customer trust.

"The power of the user experience has diminished the power of the brand. The market is highly competitive, not least because of the entry of e-tailers, and companies should aim to get to the point where they are leveraging their brand and user experience, which will set a baseline for their operations, and give customers a sense of comfort and trust," concluded Osborne.