It was yet another wonderful time at Nigeria Info’s (95.1 FM) with the charming trio (Swat, Ofi and Crazylegs) host of the ever informative Morning Crossfire Show.
This time around, we got to discuss and share actionable insights on how retail businesses can use the power of digital marketing and the internet to attract more customers, grow their revenue and achieve sustainable growth.
I had a wonderful time and shared quite a lot of actionable tips that you too can use to grow your revenue and business.
Many thanks to Chinonso, She really does some magic and turns up the transcribed text of our audio interviews on time. So the choice is yours, are you up to listening in on the audio file below or reading the text.
But hey! dont forget to leave your thoughts or share your experience in the comments box below.
Ofi: Twelve minute passed the hour is 95.1 Nigeria info.
The internet of course is one of the most…….. What is one of the most wonderful inventions that man has ever made and ehmm… the internet is not just for you to chat and post and do stuff, you can actually make some money.
And the expert for making money on the internet, social media and the like! Nativedge, they are back with us.
Good morning!
Daniel Obaike: Good morning.
Swat: Daniel Obaike
Ofi: Daniel Obaike
Swat: How are you doing?
Daniel Obaike: fine thank you
Swat: Hmm so we are back again ya!
Daniel Obaike: Yeah so nice to be here with you guys again
Swat: Alright so for the next fifteen minutes we will be talking about digital marketing and you are the expert, of course and you will be answering the questions.
Ofi: Digital marketing so ehmm that’s just marketing digitally.
Daniel Obaike: Yes more or less
………laughs
Swat: Ok ehm! so starting up with eCommerce this morning what does it take to setup an eCommerce business?
Daniel Obaike: Pardon, can you take that again please.
Swat: I said what does it take to setup an eCommerce business?
Daniel Obaike: Yes to setup an eCommerce business like every other successful business is to first of all have a business plan and having a business plan will also entail you structuring your business model, getting third party partnership especially as it has to do with delivery, implementing the right strategies and you are good to go.
Ofi: Alright so just like if you are starting a haulage business or another sort of business you need to have a business plan?
Daniel Obaike: Yes
Ofi: Ok
Swat: Oh my God sorry about that…sorry about that
Ofi: Buggs in the studio
Ofi: Alright then so setting up a business plan with your revenue models and all that’s important.
Daniel Obaike: Yes that’s very important
Ofi: It’s not just to hop on, get a phone and internet modem and say oh I’m starting my e-business?
Daniel Obaike: Yeah! that’s very important because a business plan will offer you the opportunity to see tomorrow, it will offer you the opportunity to see, possibly project your revenue stream, project your profit and your losses and ehmm! its gives you a clear picture of what to expect from the business once you lunch it.
Ofi: So would that be one of the reasons why so many eCommerce start-ups fail in Nigeria or are there other reasons?
Daniel Obaike: That’s ehm! the biggest reasons why eCommerce start-ups in Nigeria fail, a lot of business, retail business and start-ups, assume that…. for that one that have existing Brick and Mortar business, they assume that since they already have some form of successes in their brick and Mortar.
They can as well just put up a website, you know put of pictures and start selling, but the thing is; branching into eCommerce if your have an existing retail business is a whole different ball game, you need to have business plan, you need to look at ehmm make your projections, look at your business model and all of that.
Ofi: OK ah! and examples of eCommerce business are you taking about bloggers, social media experts and the like?
Daniel Obaike: Examples of eCommerce businesses, probably we have two examples people who retail products for example jumia our popular jumia, it’s an example of a retail eCommerce business.
Ofi: Ok
Daniel Obaike: Let’s say another eCommerce business will be NairaBet.
Swat: Ok NairaBet yeah!
Daniel Obaike: You know it’s more of a service they offer, so for an eCommerce business you either need to have a product or a service to retail on the internet.
Swat: OK so in your opinion what are the most important components of a successful eCommerce business?
Daniel Obaike: I come from a consulting background, and ehm!… I will always answer that questions as people, process and technology.
Swat: Alright
Daniel Obaike: Now people; you need to have the right people with the right skills, process; you need to know the right processes, when somebody goes to your eCommerce website from the point of visiting the website to the point of purchase or exist.
What does the persons do when the person makes a purchase, how does the product reach the person. So that’s for processes, you need to have the right processes on ground.
Now for technology; you need to have the right technology and that’s one of the biggest areas Nigerian eCommerce business are failing the right technology.
Ofi: OK what are the major reasons for shopping cart-abandonment and your recommendations? What is that in the first place?
Daniel Obaike: Shopping cart-abandonment is when you go to an eCommerce website or an online store, you click on a product, and it takes you the product page and for some reason, before you click on checkout and you know finish your transaction you will leave the site.
Ofi: So the person losses interest
Daniel Obaike: You will lose interest. Now one of the……
Ofi: Now that’s bad for me if I have the business, I want you to go all the way to check out.
Daniel Obaike: Yes it’s bad for you because you don’t get to make that sale.
You know, so now shopping cart-abandonment it’s not only bad for the business but the user experience, it matters there and one of the biggest reasons for shopping cart-abandonment is ehmm…
Let’s say lack of information of the product in question, poor image quality you know, the internet of course what you see, you are not seeing the physical product, you are seeing a picture, if the picture quality is not good you may not get a good view of what you are looking at and that’s not too good for you as an eCommerce business.
Swat: But before going to the abandonment, we did not ask you about you how start-up’s drive traffic and making sales online, how do you drive traffic for an eCommerce venture that you are into?
Daniel Obaike: OK, I like that question. How to drive traffic to an eCommerce website. At the beginning I always advice start-ups to focus first of all on traffic, focus on getting people to their eCommerce website or online store.
One of the major ways that… major and underrated ways to drive traffic to an eCommerce website is content marketing, blogging, now someone will ask common on I’m selling ehmm…… my Igbo brothers that you see, you are selling spare parts and you put an online store and I’m like you need to do content marketing.
At first, it doesn’t really make sense, why should a spare parts store have a blog but imagine if you have…… if you are retailing Honda injectors for Honda cars and you write content about the fuel efficiency that the injector can offer a Honda user, someone who ones a Honda car.
Now you have spur an interest, you have told the person what the benefits of buying an injector that means you are telling him ohh look….. Indirectly you are saying is you buy an injector you get fuel efficiency in return.
So now one of the major ways drive traffic to an online store is content marketing and of course paid advert is an option you know but ehmm I like to go with organic traffic, there are two ways of traffic to a website, either its organic or paid for start-ups I will recommend a mix of the two but focus more on organic.
Ofi: OK so what are the common risks for Ecommerce and how do you want…….What are the common risks people make when starting off or running their eCommerce sites?
Daniel Obaike: Common risk is ehmmm… Because first of all if you make the mistake of having poor inventory management or having a poor check out process or poor payment process.
Ofi: Yep!
Daniel Obaike: The challenge you will have first of all you will, you will get shopping cart-abandonment, two; if your logistic is not right for delivery the product may never get to the consumer, if your inventory management is not right the wrong product will get to the consumer.
At the end of the day you put your business at risk and of course the ways to mitigate these challenges are simple, strive to achieve efficiency and you are good to go.
Swat: OK then talking about software’s now, would you recommend any that can help to boost efficiency of eCommerce start-ups?
Daniel Obaike: Yes! For the platform itself Magento and Shopfiy is a platform, software’s that I would recommend any day for any start-up, they are not only cheap but they have proven to be very efficient.
Also this is very key for people who have existing eCommerce businesses that are either struggling or failing. Digital marketing is a science you need to look at matrix, you need to look at how people are visiting your website, what they are doing and survey your website basically to give users a better experience and two software’s which I recommend for doing that will be Survey Monkey and Qualaroo.
Ofi: OK ehmm…. What is conversion optimization and what should eCommerce start-ups be doing about that?
Daniel Obaike: Yeah conversion optimization. You will remember that when we were talking initially I had mentioned that a start-up needs to have an initial focus on traffic, now when you get traffic, when you have a high number of people or some people coming to your website, next thing you need to move your focus to would be conversion.
Now what is conversation?
Conversion is a process of converting or let mi not use the word converting, the process of making people who visit a website move from being mere visitors to actual paying customers. Now these surveys on your eCommerce business is very important because it lets you know who is coming to your website and all of that, and with that data you can achieve a lot.
There is this software it’s an analytic software called ehm….. By Neil Patel “Crazy Egg” what it does is, it gives you heat maps, it tells you when people are visiting your websites how long they are spending on that particular place on the website.
With that kind of data right, you can better tweak or optimise prepared those places that people are going to, you focus on those areas and make more friendly to the search engines, make them more friendly to the visitor that way people will likely buy your product.
For example if you have an online store for example and you sell microphones right you notice that people are going more to visit the stand a lot, that tells you your analytics it tells you that a lot of people have interest for that, what you would do normally in optimization is, to say OK what keywords are people using to look for this microphone, what keyword are they using to look for the stand sorry.
You look for the key word and you try to analyse because when people search for something, they search with an intention, now what is the intend for searching for that stand, you go back to that particular page now you go technical there.
You insert those key word in relevant places and you have optimized your page.
Swat: OK…what about the pages an eCommerce business need to focus for its optimization?
Daniel Obaike: Yes a lot of businesses make the mistake of optimizing their home page for example you have…. let’s say Ofitrading.com now of sells microphones and all studio equipment’s, there is a tendency for Ofi now to optimize his home page to make people visit, direct people to his home page.
But really the home page doesn’t carry much, the page that gives you money is actually the product page, the check-out page. Those are the pages that if you are conversion driven, those are the pages that you should focus on.
Ofi: Ok, alright if people want to get in touch with you how do they do that? I’ve listened to you and I think you could help me with my business, my start-ups how do they get in touch with you.
Daniel Obaike: People can get in touch with me through Nativedge phone number 09-2900 531 or my email dobaike@nativedge.com if they visit our website www.nativedge.com there is a part there where they can fill a form and they would be eligible for my free consulting service.
Ofi: And Nativedge is spelt with just one E right?
Daniel Obaike: One E. N-A-T-I-V-E-D-G-E
Ofi: Ok, alright well thank you very much Daniel Obaike of Nativedge and ehm….. Well keep ruling the internet.
…..laughs
Daniel Obaike: Thank you!
Swat: Alright see you next week Monday
Daniel Obaike: Alright then
Ofi: Alright people
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