Nigeria is a trend crazy country, from fashion, to the entertainment industry (love movies, party songs), technology (laptops, phones and gadgets) and even crime too (kidnapping, LOL) and now, with the proliferation of online shopping sites ads in social media, blogs and online directories, e-commerce is appearing to be the new craze in the Nigerian business community. With a staggering 48 million plus internet users, about 29% of internet users in Africa, and the long grueling work hours that gives little opportunity for conventional shopping for most workers it’s easy to see why online stores has become an extremely lucrative business venture for savvy businessmen.

Online shopping or online retailing is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser. Other names are: e-web-store, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, web-shop, web-store, online store, and virtual store. Online stores provides shopping from the comfort of your offices, home or where ever.
Online shopping has many advantages. Some of them are:

Convenience
Perhaps the greatest benefit of online shopping is convenience. The ability to shop from virtually anywhere in the world and have the goods delivered to you is its biggest sales pitch. A computer, tablet or phone is all you need to make a purchase. You don’t have to waste money on fuel driving or waste time in traffic and not to mention the unquantifiable amount of stress you would save yourself if you physically went to a store.

Price comparison
Another great benefit of shopping online is the ability to compare prices easily. Instead of running around several traditional stores checking prices which would take a lot of time and be very stressful, you could do all that in just few clicks of a mouse online. Additional, there are several websites that specialize in price comparison like www.pricecheck.com.ng, so you need to go to different sites individually to compare their prices.

Variety
Most physical stores have a limited array of products. They can only hold so many items and a lot of them are not easily seen buy shoppers. Shopping online allows you to find many products that would be difficult to find in a physical store.

Discreet Shopping
For a guy, buying lingerie for a spouse or girlfriend can be daunting, nerve racking experience. With online shopping it’s absolutely no problem. Online shopping gives privacy when you shop.

No pressure form sales people
A lot of us Nigerians can relate to this. Ever been approached by an over enthusiastic sales person to buy their product? It’s an annoying situation you can easily avoid shopping online.

On the flip side, there are some limitations/disadvantages to online shopping. Some of them are:

• Buying clothes for instance can be particularly difficult because you can’t try it on or feel the fabric and can lead to a bad experience if you don’t know exactly what you want.
• You can’t talk to someone instantly when you have a problem or a question to ask about a product. You would probably have to send an email or call a number that is not always toll free.
• Privacy and security can also be a challenge. Some phony sites could download spyware on your computer that could be viruses or even worse retrieving personal information from your computer.

In all the advantages of shopping online far out-weighs the disadvantages and has brought a new exciting experience to shopping in Nigeria. However, always be sure to shop from secure sites and a way to know that a site is secure that the billing page has https (the ‘s’ stands for secure) and not the regular http.
Shopping online is fun and I personally love it and recommend it. And I also recommend www.rytedeals.com, a site where you can get the best prices in the country for almost any product. Check us out!

James Gyambibi
Marketing (Social Media)
Ryte Internet Technology Limited
08062341941
jgyambibi@rytegrp.com
www.rytedeals.com