By Michael Kanaabi Dollar
Competition for customers among both small and large retailers plus SMEs locally is on the increase. In order to help small businesses keep up, online retailer https://nofeka.ug/ has come up with a new innovation to help improve the prospects of sellers looking for customers and open new previously out of reach markets to them.
Through its recently unveiled new platform called ‘Sell on Nofeka’ that has been added to the company’s e-commerce website, sellers can now access buyers directly and reach more customers far and wide since the platform is accessible nation wide unlike the physical locations of most sellers and retailers that are in one place according to Nofeka founder and CEO Daniel Kiyega.
Over 50 new retailers have been signed onto the platform since it’s launch recently and Kiyega says they target an average of at least 60 new sellers coming on board monthly.
“ This will ensure customers have a much wider variety of products and service providers to choose from and will also result in more affordable pricing as the competition will push sellers to offer better prices to the advantage of customers.”
100,000 customers a month is what Kiyega has set as a target for his team going forward as he prepares his company Nofeka to take on the big boys in the market like Jumia having already been named among the Top 30 websites in the country in terms of traffic last December by ranking site Alexa.com.
Other benefits of the new platform
One of the key challenges that has been persistent among online retailers for a while now has been the difference between the pictures of products they upload and the actual products the customer gets when they order.
“To solve this problem we have hired a professional photographer to take the pictures of the products of all sellers we enter into agreement with and we upload them ourselves first to ensure it is well done and secondly to make sure the product matches with the pictures” Nofeka CEO Daniel Kiyega says.
In addition the physical address of a seller and related details are also verified to ensure products are genuine and there can be easy follow up in case of a complaint.
On the seller’s side, they get to have their money paid with in a maximum of 2 days from the time a sale is made which is a step ahead of other players in the sector that take up to a week or longer to forward money to their sellers.
Growth
The range of products is set to expand and cover new areas like food delivery and real estate too in the next 1 to 2 years giving the retailer a product range of about 2000 products in the medium term.
That is coupled with a plan to expand their reach beyond Uganda’s borders as the company’s vision is to become the most trusted and reliable online retailer across East Africa and beyond.
You can access Nofeka through their app on Google play store, all social media platforms and through their website to benefit from the affordable prices, great delivery service and increasing number of products they are offering.
