Using mobile phones to shop online in Nigeria

Posted by Felix Okoli on Saturday May 24, 2014 at 12:5:23:

It is one thing for Nigerian customers to have access to a growing number of online shopping websites and another to be able to buy things on them using their mobile phones.

I have visited a couple of shopping websites in Nigeria and the truth is that most of them are not built for mobile phones and this basically means that they are still missing out on potential customers who may already be visiting their website with their mobile phones.

What does it mean for a shopping website to be mobile friendly? Well, it first of all has to be able to adapt to mobile browsers when that website gets a visit from a mobile phone.

It has been reported that when it comes to internet usage in Nigeria, a majority of those users make use of mobile phone browsers such as Opera mini, Nokia and Android browsers. I think it's high time those Nigerian shopping websites start thinking about how to make their websites mobile friendly.

A good example of a mobile friendly shopping website is Amazon.com. Just visiting Amazon with your mobile phone browser will tell you that the website is suited for mobile phones as well as desktop browsers. It has the capacity to adapt to change depending on the environment it finds itself it such as the browser type, screen size and so on. I think that Nigerian shopping websites should be able to learn from Amazon's ability to adapt to mobile browsers. Just take a visit to Amazon.com and then compare that with a visit to a shopping website in Nigeria and you'd see if there is any difference.

It terms of functionality, a mobile friendly shopping website should allow visitors to log into their accounts, be able to view categories of stuff to buy, have access to search buttons and results as well as be able to place orders using their mobile phones.

There seems to be a lot of shopping websites in Nigeria nowadays but only few of them actually have websites that are mobile friendly and this simply means that most Nigerians who shop online still have to do so by making use of their computers and tablets.

It would be a wonderful thing if Nigerian shoppers were able to do on their mobile phones and devices the same things they do on their desktop and laptop computers. Online shopping should not be restricted to desktop computers alone but mobile phones should be allowed to buy things online too.