E-Commerce is dead.Long live Conversational commerce in Nigeria
As a call to action to my now viral Medium article penned mid last year, E-commerce Lessons from a Plate of Rice in Lagos , i created Balogunmarket.ng ,a startup which seeks to take small brick and mortar stalls and shops within West Africa’s Biggest Market, Balogun Market Lagos to the digital age all under one single check-out.
Signing up close to 5,000 merchants within this cluster with aggressive street hacking skills in a record time of 6 weeks.Despite our ideas,the Unique Nigerian market gave us its own idea of direction and we listened.
The Market , even at its general low level of Literacy and Tech-savyness showed us these basic facts.
- Markets have always combined commerce and conversations .
Haggling is a core part of the Balogun Market Lagos DNA and experience.This could only be enabled via conversations.Digital Messaging was our only way available to create this experience for the customer. Markets — essentially a concentration of vendors in one physical location — have been a feature of most societies and cultures throughout recorded history.
They fulfil two key functions: One is to enable buyers and sellers to find each other easily. The second is to enable the exchange of information, news and gossip: the communications required to help human societies to function smoothly. For many shoppers, a visit to a physical market is as much about socialising, as shopping. In other words, communications and commerce have been intertwined for centuries. Messaging apps could extend this concept into the digital age.
2. Conversations help build trust
Communication is often a prelude for commerce. In both a personal and professional capacity, people often seek word-of-mouth recommendations or they canvas friends’ opinions on potential products and services. As consumers increasingly use communications apps for this purpose, these platforms are already playing a key role in purchasing decisions across both services and products. The obvious next step is to enable the actual transaction to also take place within the app.
3. Conversations can drive commerce
People use messaging apps to organise their social lives. The personalized service and convinence moderated by an engagement by us will be a winner.
An Chat app will be an icing on the cake enabling haggling on prices.
4. Messaging can enable tracking of delivery to door.
We believe to uberize our delivery network and ensure efficiency to door, messaging apps would be the way to go.
On this note, i am pleased to announce what this little startup working out of a small office in the middle of Balogun Market has become. Inspired by a 4320+ whatsapp ready brick and mortar retailers selling within the Balogun Market axis of Lagos we have become :
A conversational commerce company powered by e-commerce.
…and we rebranded overnight banking in these early stages on the monster called Whatsapp that has enabled encryption end to end allowing direct payment within chat streams before our app is introduced to you personally.
Join us by submitting your whatsapp number at the base of the website to use the service, #BalogunmarketErrands ,while you wait for our chat app coming soon.
With us you never have to go through the experience shown in the above image.
CHAT. HAGGLE. SHOP. PAY DIRECTLY
Olayinka Oluwakuse,founder, Balogunmarket.ng , sales@balogunmarket.ng
