Nigeria’s internet penetration rate continues its upward trajectory reaching 53% (97.3 million users) in latest research from Jumia, one of the country’s e-commerce platforms.
The new data sees Nigeria becoming the country with the highest penetration rate in the whole of Africa.
The Jumia’s African Mobile Trends Paper, now in its third edition, examines mobile trends across Africa and specifically Nigeria. it takes a look at how the market has democratized mobile market use, consumer behaviours driving increased smartphone adoption and the role of mobile brands, mobile operators and mobile commerce also known as m-commerce in creating a synergy of an enhanced customer experience.
The report noted that nearly 71% of website visitors on Jumia used their mobile phones.
“This is in comparison to 53% of Jumia African customers. One of the main vehicles of this mobile trajectory is the increasing adoption of the smartphone device by consumers.
“As predicted in our 2016 report, smartphone adoption continues to rise in Nigeria. the mobile phone category continues to be the most popular among Nigerian shoppers on Jumia. Both in terms of the number of items sold, and in terms of sold, and in terms of revenur generated. The slaes of smartphone jumped up by 394% between 2014 and 2016, mostly driven by an increasing range of smartphones price points,” said Jumia in a press statement.
Presently, Africa has 960 million mobile subscribers which is an 80% penetration rate among the continent’s population. Although Nigeria’s mobile subscription rate looks similar to Africa’s at 81% penetration (150 million subscriptions) that could be much lower in reality given that each subscriber owns an average of 2 sim cards.
Another interesting insight the report revealed relates to the type of internet browsers customers were using. 50% of Jumia’s customers in Africa visit the site with Google Chrome. Nigerian visitors account for 28% of that number. Opera Mini however appears the most popular with 41% of the mobile traffic emanating from the browser.
Jumia noted that the trend could be that countries with higher levels of income have been found to have more users accessing the internet with heavier browsers like Chrome – which typically have higher system requirements. Opera Mini on the other hand is a lighter browser in terms of data usage and is popular among new mobile internet users who have lower incomes and cannot afford costly internet data packs.
A report recently showed the cost differences from using Opera browser. In Nigeria users were able to save nearly $198 million (N39.5 billion) over a 10 month period, due to its data compression technology.
“On our end, an immediate key priority is to enhance the desktop user experience (which accounts for almost 30% of Jumia’s traffic and almost 40% of orders placed) by delivering a progressive web application that bridges the gap between conventional web pages and native mobile applications to give customers a faster web and desktop experience that includes functionalities like push notifications and the ability to browse while offline,” Jumia noted.
Mobile customers (both those who use the Jumia app and those who browse from mobile browsers) account for 63% of all orders on Jumia Nigeria. Across the 15 markets where the study was carried out, that figure is at 47%. With a whopping 2,236,000 Jumia app downloads from 2015 to 2016 (a 128% increase), Jumia app users form a significant portion of the mobile traffic on Jumia Nigeria. Currently, 1 out of 2 mobile visitors in Nigeria are coming from the Jumia mobile app.
The highest conversion rate recorded in the last year has been on the app. That is the number of completed orders in relation to the number of visitors is higher on the mobile app than on the mobile or desktop versions of the website. This could be driven by the fact that the app is exclusively designed for mobile and therefore has a faster and better shopping experience for users.
Nigeria’s mobile trends for 2017 are positive with a steady growth of smartphones adoption and diversity. These increased offerings deliver more value for customers and cheaper access to internet connectivity. As smartphone brands and mobile operators continue to invest in research and development and innovative data packages, and ecommerce providers invest in customer service, logistics and marketing over the next few years, our outlook is for an even more synergized digital ecosystem over the next few years.
