How to sell products online in Senegal and Africa? the A to Z guide by LocalHost

The complete guide that teaches you how to sell your products online in Senegal and elsewhere.

Succeeding in selling online in Senegal and in Africa in general is not as simple as one might think: you have to determine which products to sell, where to buy them, which channels to use to sell them… But knowing how to sell successfully online has never been so lucrative. Online sales in the United States, for example, will exceed  $500 billion by the end of the year .

You’re here because you want your piece of the pie, aren’t you? In this guide, we’ll show you how to:

• Develop an online sales strategy
• Sell ​​through your own store, a marketplace like Amazon, or social media
• Find out what products to sell online
• Attract new customers.

So, if you want to know how to sell online in Senegal or in Africa, you have come to the right place. If you’re worried that it’s too technical or too long, don’t worry: we’ll walk you through it step by step.

Choose on which channels to sell your products online

In this section, we will cover the key selling points on:

• Your own e-commerce store
• Marketplaces like Amazon , Durrell Market
• Social networks like Facebook or TheStarterbook

But here’s the thing to remember: you don’t have to choose between all of them. You can sell online through different channels, without hiring an army of staff. How ? In a nutshell, e-commerce store builders provide apps that allow you to integrate your products for sale with Amazon, Facebook etc. Linking your online store to your social media or a marketplace can be done in a click. This means that your products are synchronized with, for example, your Facebook page. So when a customer visits your Facebook page, they see the products listed in your online store . Update a product on your online storeand the product is also updated on your Facebook page. You can sell online across multiple channels, but running your business from one place is magic! Now let ‘s see how to sell online in more detail.

Do you have a specific project in mind?

Whatever project you have in mind in terms of creating a website or mobile application in Cameroon, LocalHost guides you and helps you clarify your ideas. Worried about your budget? No worries, LocalHost studies your project for free and offers you an estimate within 24 hours.

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Sell ​​on your own e-commerce store

Running your own store is the best way to sell online because you have complete control. You decide how your site looks and how your products are presented. You aren’t vulnerable to external factors, such as algorithm updates, and you don’t have to compete in a saturated market. If you want to change something, you can. You don’t have to wait for decisions from Amazon, Durrell Market or Facebook. Online store solutionsallow you to showcase your products and process your sales faster and easier than ever. You can automate many mundane processes, giving you more time to focus on other aspects of your business. Plus, your online store can literally be “open” 24 hours a day. The three main platforms for new e-commerce entrepreneurs are:

• Shopify
• Wix
• Durrell Market

More than 600,000 people, for example, sell online through these sites. It should be remembered that these platforms are designed to help you sell. To start selling on your own store, the first step is to create an account. Each of the platforms offers a free trial period, except for Durrell Market where you can create and manage your own online store for free. So you can test them out before you spend your money. Having your own store when selling online gives you credibility. The more trust buyers have, the more likely they are to purchase your products. Have your own online storegives you a professional look. Would you be more likely to buy a pair of sneakers from a seller with only an Amazon account? We will then consider selling on some of the biggest marketplaces in the world. Before we move on, though, there are two big reasons why e-commerce platforms are the best way to sell online: abandoned cart recovery and mobile compatibility.

Abandoned cart recovery

Abandoned Cart lets you email customers who have reached the checkout page but abandoned their order. Maybe they left the kettle on. Maybe the internet has stopped working. In any case, you can remind them of their order and give them the opportunity to complete it. This can have a huge effect on your bottom line.

The importance of “mobile-friendly”

If you want to know how to sell successfully online, your store should work just as well on mobile as it does on desktop or laptop. This is where e-commerce platforms come in: your store is automatically designed to work well on mobile. It doesn’t matter how big your customer’s screen is, it’s very easy to navigate and buy your products.

Do you have a specific project in mind?

Whatever project you have in mind in terms of creating a website or mobile application in Cameroon, LocalHost guides you and helps you clarify your ideas. Worried about your budget? No worries, LocalHost studies your project for free and offers you an estimate within 24 hours.

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Sell ​​on marketplaces: Amazon and Durrell Market

Selling on a marketplace like Amazon or Durrell Market is extremely popular. It is estimated that Amazon alone has over two million sellers! And it’s not hard to see why… The barrier to entry for selling in an online marketplace is very low. Simply put, all you need to do is:

• Create an account
• List a product for sale with description, price and image
• Set up a delivery method (how your product will be delivered)
• Accept payment from a customer
• Prepare the item to ship

Marketplaces such as Amazon and Durrell Market expose you to a huge number of potential customers and allow you to start selling very quickly. The difficulty is how to differentiate yourself from all these sellers. Although sell directly on Amazon or Durrell Marketis much easier these days, relying solely on them can be a big mistake. For example, the Amazon search algorithm is constantly changing, so your products might show up one day and not the next. There are always new competitors popping up and slashing prices to win customers. Although we all understand that a price war is not good for anyone, there is always someone willing to lower their price to gain customer share. After all, it’s not easy to “personalize” yourself on marketplaces like Facebook, Amazon, or Durrell Market .So for many buyers you are just another trader with the same product. And they’re going to look for the product that’s the cheapest and has gotten decent reviews…and, let’s be honest, the reviews can be skewed.

Sell ​​on  Amazon

By selling on Amazon, you’re essentially borrowing its reputation, even if you’re a third-party seller. The market is extremely popular with sellers of electronics, books and DVDs. Almost everyone from Walmart to Costco will have a presence on Amazon. You can offer convenient delivery options for your customers at a competitive price. Pay a little more, and Amazon will store and deliver your goods for you. This makes it a very attractive online store for newbie online sellers. Fees vary depending on what you sell and in what quantities. So check Amazon’s fees before you start.

Selling on  Durrell Market

Durrell Market  is a state-of-the-art Cameroonian e-commerce platform available at  www.durrellmarket.com . It is designed to allow  traders and local SMEs  to give visibility to their products and sell them more easily. On  Durrell Market  , they can in 10 minutes  create their own fully operational online stores  , equipped with all the tools to easily manage products, orders and interactions with their customers. The advantages offered by the  Durrell Market platform  are numerous:

• No need for technical knowledge:   thanks to  Durrell Market  , everyone can now  easily create and administer their own online store.  Everything is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly and you, the user, do not have to be IT or digital experts to  create your own e-commerce store.
• No need to break the bank:  In a context where  e-commerce  is booming, we have found that most merchants and SMEs wishing to seize the unique opportunity of e-commerce are unfortunately faced with the very often insurmountable barrier of cost. . Indeed, setting up an e-commerce site or application can be very expensive for a small business or a young SME, not to mention the costs associated with monitoring and maintaining such a site over time. time. Durrell Market  is the direct answer to this problem, because now all these fees are reduced to the sum of  0 FCFA . Yes,  it is indeed FREE

No need to be an expert:  SMEs and local merchants who manage to find the necessary means to set up their e-commerce platforms inevitably come up against a difficult reality:  A plan must be put in place to acquire visitors and turn them into customers. This requires a good knowledge of digital marketing techniques and strategies as well as significant financial resources. It is because of these factors that many online sales sites disappear after a few months of existence. On  Durrell Market  your audience is already there! As a  marketplace in line with many other sellers, the platform is a preferred destination for the customer and the merchant only has to focus on selling his products.

Selling your products on social networks: the example of Facebook

Along with marketplaces , social media is a popular way to market your business and products to your customers. In this section, we’ve focused on Facebook – the world’s largest social media platform, with nearly two billion active users! To start selling on Facebook, you need to create a business page and then add a “Buy” button. Here are some tips for successfully selling on Facebook:

• Entertain  – don’t just post your products waiting for a response. Facebook is a busy place and customer attention is short. Experiment with videos, puzzles, questions, and even jokes to grab your customers’ attention.
• Running promotions  – Offering an exclusive discount in exchange for action on your page is a great way to build an audience.
• Use high-quality images  – don’t undersell your page by uploading low-quality or blurry images.
• Post regularly  – but don’t overdo it. In general, once or twice a day is a good average. Experiment with different times of the day and see what elicits the most reactions.

The problem with selling exclusively through Facebook is that you have to manually manage orders, which can be time-consuming. On the other hand, if you sell through an e-commerce platform linked to your Facebook page, you can manage all your product updates and inventory from one place. The integration of Shopify with Facebook, for example, is fantastic!

Develop your online sales strategy

Once you’ve decided how to sell online, it’s time to think about your business strategy. You don’t have to be Warren Buffett 😁, but you do need to prepare a bit.

• How much do you expect to earn  ? Think about how much money you hope to make and how many products you hope to sell in the first six months. Not having ballpark financial goals would be like driving down the highway blindfolded – you’ll get lost really fast and find yourself in trouble!
• What margin are you looking to make?  Anyone can blindly start selling online, but you’re here to learn how to sell online, right? In this case, you need to calculate your margin. Determine how much it costs you to produce/buy then deliver your product and deduct how much you want to charge your customers. Bingo, you have your margin.
• Who are your competitors?  Do a search on Amazon, Google and Facebook for the products you want to sell and see who shows up at the very top of the results. Examine their product descriptions, images, and layout and make a list of what they do well. Signing up for newsletters is a great way to stay up to date with how competitors set their prices and promote their products.
• How do people spend their money online?  The better you know your customers, the better you can meet their needs. And the more you meet their needs, the more money you will earn. A big part of that is letting customers pay the way they want.
• How will customers find you and your products?  A surprising number of e-commerce entrepreneurs forget to think about this when learning how to sell online. You can attract customers by blogging about your products or sending email campaigns.

Site creation – Personalized price estimate

LocalHost has written a very detailed article on the cost of an e-commerce website , you can consult it for all the information

What products to sell online?

All e-commerce entrepreneurs dream of predicting the “next big trend”. Imagine knowing in advance what the best-selling or trending products of 2020 will be. If there was an easy way to do it, we’d all be millionaires! What you can do is determine the demand for your products. It’s about maximizing your chances of success.

• Use Google Trends  – a great tool to determine which products are popular and which are not. Results are based on the popularity of the search term entered into Google over time. Say you want to sell clothes online, but aren’t sure if you want to sell floral shirts, Hawaiian shorts, or retro sweatshirts. You can enter all three and see which one is gaining popularity. Set the country where you want your customers to live and go! For example, if shoes are particularly popular in December, you might want to increase your marketing during that month.
• Do a keyword search . As soon as you have a product idea, enter it into Google’s keyword analysis tool. You’ll see data on how many people are searching for that product each month (popularity) and keyword competitiveness (how many businesses are selling the product). As a general rule, avoid selling any product with less than 300 monthly searches. What is the point of advertising a product without demand?

How to present the products so that they sell?

Once you’ve chosen the products to sell, it’s time to sell them. After all, even if the food in a restaurant is delicious, you’re less likely to buy it if the menu is poorly written and the pictures on the billboard are unattractive, right? So when you decide to sell products online, how do you display them so they actually sell?

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Add product images

Your products may be good, but how do you sell effectively online if your images don’t look good? The good thing is that you don’t have to be a professional photographer to give your store great images. Just follow these general rules:

• Always use high quality images – if they are blurry you will lose customers.
• Use the same image dimensions each time. You can use a tool like Paint to resize the width and height of images.
• Provide as many views as possible – the more you can offer your customers a 360-degree view of your product, the more comfortable they will feel buying it.
• Make sure that each product variation (e.g. a different color t-shirt) has its own image.
• Give your customers context by displaying images of your product in use whenever possible.

What you need to sell online: the Checklist

That’s when we give you a checklist of the key things you need to sell online, from payment to shipping. Once you’ve sorted it out, you’ll be ready to start attracting customers.

• Shipping and Fulfillment  – ​​you must have defined a shipping method for your products.
• Payment  – ​​you need to add a payment option to your store.
• Customer service  – make sure buyers have at least one way to contact you.
• Security  – make sure your store or page has adequate security to keep your customer data safe.

Conclusion – How to sell online in Senegal and in Africa in general?

When you want to sell online , it can be difficult to know where to start. You can sell on a marketplace such as Amazon, Durrell Market, a social media platform such as Facebook, or an online store that you create and control. The bottom line is that with e-commerce platforms, you don’t have to choose. You can sell across multiple channels, but manage your business from one place. The best way to build a stronger business is to create your own e-commerce website . It can help you make your business better known by having built a great store instead of having a simple page on Amazon or just an online store on durrellmarket.com.

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Building your own professional website is now much easier than before. Dedicated platforms help you set up your own storefront without you knowing how to code. They also give you access to powerful marketing tools to help you sell your products. The main players in this sector are Shopify, Wix. You can try them out for free to see which one you prefer. Good luck and happy selling!

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Take advantage of the promotion to launch your professional website

We are specialists in the Creation of Professional Websites with several years of experience serving companies and individuals around the world. Consult our achievements by CLICKING HERE

Some Recent Achievements of LocalHost Digital: Best Web and Digital Agency in Cameroon