Could the answer to taking your business to the next level be building an e-commerce website in Kenya?
E-commerce, also known as electronic commerce, is the act of electronically buying and selling goods and services over the internet. The devices used are mobile phones, tablets, computers and other smart devices. E-commerce Businesses conduct their trading on applications on social media platforms like Instagram or business applications such as Jumia shopping mall or on their own official e-commerce stores.
A joint 2016 National ICT Survey between the Communications Authority of Kenya and the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) National ICT Survey established that 39% of private enterprises are engaged in e-commerce.
E-commerce websites grew astoundingly more during the Covid 19 pandemic. Many Kenyan businesses could not operate from their physical shops because of curfews and restrictions enforced by the government. Movement was extremely limited for everyone. This move facilitated the dire need for businesses to have an online presence that would support their Kenyan business. The e-commerce business model was now being used as a survival mechanism and also a way to compete against other industry competitors. E-commerce websites have many benefits and should be used by businesses as a tool for competitive advantage, a way to market products and services and to facilitate easy sales.
A good example of a successful e-commerce store or website is Amrey Green Essential oils the store mainly focuses on selling authentic organic African essential oils. The store layout is very simple, clients find their products very easily and the navigation is very easy to go around their website. You can easily find all products that you need and you can easily check out as easily as possible of course with safe and secure payments. The website also has helpful information for prospective clients, this information is optimized so that the search engines like Google can help customers find them more easily online.
Here are the key things to consider before building your e-commerce website in Kenya:
- Reliable hosting: Hosting is basically your website’s home, where your website will be saved online. You need a reliable hosting service that will ensure that your e-commerce website will always be online 24/7 without any downtime and without any crashes. Check on web hosting companies in Kenya and also internationally before you settle on hosting find out more if the hosting is done locally that would be best for your business. At Cutting-edge web design, we offer local hosting service our servers are in Kenya therefore the loading speed is quick and your clients would be very happy with the fast loading speeds of their e-commerce websites.
- Safe payment gateways: Payment gateways are platforms that facilitate easy payment for products and services that are online-based. There are a variety of online payment gateways such as ipay, pesapal , M-PESA’s Daraja and many others. They charge a certain percentage per transaction. They are easy to set up on your e-commerce website, you can test and begin letting your clients pay as soon as possible. Of course, you have to register your business or company first,the documents they require are a company registration certificate, KRA pin, ID of directors or the business owners ids, and bank account details of the business where transactions will go after a client pays.
- Well-designed e-commerce website: You need a well-designed website for the main purpose of trading goods and services. The designer has to design a good layout, good navigation and relevant content that supports the main purpose of the website which is to facilitate visitors to easily go through the website, engage with the content and in the end make a purchase. A good designer will also focus on the brand identity of the business and ensure it’s also on the website. That means that the domain name, business logo, colour codes, themes and anything that helps in identifying the business should also be on the e-commerce website.
- Good quality pictures: This is important for the website because clients want to see the product in the best way possible, showcasing all features of the product to make sure that it’s exactly what they want to buy. Good quality images also attract visitors and increase the click-through rate of your website. Images have to be optimized in good size and good quality so that it does not slow down the e-commerce website. Also get good images that reflect your business theme.
- SEO: This is optimizing your website content so that search engines like Google can find your e-commerce store easily. SEO helps your e-commerce website to be indexed and crawled in order to be ranked by the search engines on the internet. This means that you would have to use the best relevant keywords that your customers would use to search for products related to your business. For example, if I sell Essential oils like Amrey Green I would have products named after something close to what a client would search for like frankincense essential oil or organic frankincense essential oil. I would also make sure that the keywords used are also in the descriptions throughout the website content, titles and also alt descriptions. At Cutting-edge web design we optimize the website by using up-to-date tools that help your Kenyan e-commerce website to rank higher in such engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Bonus: Hidden things to look out for
- Look for credible web designers: Let them explain everything you need to know until you fully understand and are comfortable. Find out if there are any hidden costs such as maintenance costs these are costs for maintaining the website that you want to create or any recurring costs like domain renewal, costs hosting costs, plug-in costs or any other relevant costs that you’re not being told before you make an agreement.
- Workload: Who carries the workload? Will your staff directly upload material to the e-commerce website or would you do it yourself or would you want to let the web developers do it for you? Depending on the size of your business and your availability and resources you can make that decision.
- Online marketing: You can use different platforms to market your new e-commerce website in order to attract clients and to drive up sales depending on your online goals. This can be done by marketing on social media like Instagram or Twitter. This can be done also on search engines like Google ads. It’s a good way to provide awareness to potential clients and your clients about your e-commerce website so that they can find out more about your business, interact with it and also buy their favourite products all in one place.
- “Get a website in 3 days”: Don’t buy into web designers who tell you that they can design your website in afew days. It is possible to design a website even in a day however quality matters and purpose matters.
As you research about building your e-commerce website in kenya we hope that this article helps you. We design e-commerce websites that help Kenyan businesses to grow and showcase unique products and services and also most importantly satisfy the target customer. We offer affordable rates that do not in any way reduce on the quality of the websites. Let’s build your website if you have any questions or comments contact us anytime we are here to serve.
