Tag: e-commerce

Safaricom’s Deal with SaaS Company tappi Highlights Importance of Startups in Africa’s Tech Ecosystem

by Ismail Patel, posted in Cloud Enable, Mobilize
I. Patel

Summary Bullets:

  • Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startup tappi teamed up with Safaricom’s mobile platform M-PESA to improve the digital presence of M-PESA’s small and medium business (SMB) users.
  • The partnership provides SMBs with tools that scale their operations, enhance their customer engagement, and boost their online visibility in the digital space.

tappi, a Kenyan e-commerce SaaS startup, teamed up with Kenya incumbent and African operator group Safaricom to support its mobile payments platform M-PESA’s network of 650,000 Kenyan SMBs to improve their digital presence. The partnership provides SMBs with tools that scale their operations, enhance their customer engagement, and boost their online visibility to capitalize on the opportunity in the digital space.

Continue reading “Safaricom’s Deal with SaaS Company tappi Highlights Importance of Startups in Africa’s Tech Ecosystem” →

Shopping Habits Are Changing, but ICT Can Keep the In-Store Experience Relevant

by Gary Barton, posted in Communicate

Gary Barton
Gary Barton

Summary Bullets:

  • If the customer is ‘always right,’ then retailers need to accept that e-commerce is not wrong.
  • The boundary between online and in-store shopping is more blurry than it first appears.

‘Showrooming’ is one of the latest neologisms buzzing around media outlets in the UK and elsewhere.  The word describes a phenomenon that most of us have been aware of for some time and probably many of us are guilty of more often than we would care to admit.  The ‘crime’ is that of walking into a high street store, looking at a product, even trying it on/out and then buying the product online for a lower price – increasingly often via a smartphone whilst still in the store.  The problems of brick-and-mortar costs (rent, rates/tax, energy, staff, etc.) versus online stores are also well known; so how do modern retailers seek to turn around this trend? Continue reading “Shopping Habits Are Changing, but ICT Can Keep the In-Store Experience Relevant” →

Impatient Customers and Stiff Competition Make Website Optimisation a Must for e-Commerce

by Gary Barton, posted in Communicate

G. Barton
G. Barton

Summary Bullets:

  • E-commerce should be at the heart of modern retail solutions
  • Optimisation and monitoring tools are critical for modern websites hosted in multiple locations

The importance of e-commerce to modern businesses is a ‘no brainer’. Internet sales in the UK, for instance, account for around 9% of all retail sales (excluding fuel), and the value of all Internet transactions was GBP 489 million per week during April 2012, according to the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) – values that will be much higher at peak points such as Christmas. The British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) report for August 2012 notes that year-on-year growth of Internet sales in the UK slowed to its lowest point since monitoring began in 2008. However, the value of online sales still rose by 4.8% during August, or 12 times the rate of growth for in-store sales. Continue reading “Impatient Customers and Stiff Competition Make Website Optimisation a Must for e-Commerce” →