By How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria (2020)
What Is Ecommerce?
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
Ecommerce simply involves the process of buying and selling online.
As the world we live in is growing more and more digital everyday, stores tend to move online to provide an easy way to selling their products to their customers and at the same time, provide an easy way for customers to order their products at the comfort of their homes.
Nigeria isn’t left out in this wonderful development as we have many online stores, Like:
- Jumia – Click here to visit
- Jiji – Click here to visit
- Storenig – Click here to visit
And hundreds of more E-commerce websites!
Seeing all those established Ecommerce stores going well doesn’t mean it’s an easy business to start and to run.
Nope, it requires your time, hardwork and money of course.
And that’s why I’m writing on How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria to give you insights on how to go about it!
In this article, we’d be taking a look at the below things.
- Proper Research
- Choosing a Niche
- Creating your Online store
- WordPress / Shopify
- Woocommerce
- Paystack
- Advertising and Making Sales!
Without further ado, let’s get started!
Proper Research
In everything you do, always make sure you carry out a very thorough research.
You can’t decide ‘Oh yes, I wanna be selling stuffs online’ and just jump into it with carrying out a deep research about buying and selling online.
Okay, “I want to carry out my research, but how do I go about it?”. Carrying out research might be tedious but it’s not that hard. You can:
1. Get a mentor who’s vast and knowledgeable in the field that you’re about to join, learn from him, pay him to teach you if the needs be.
PS: If you’re interested, I know someone who could teach you, contact Mr Timothy on whatsapp (+234 817 068 1455)
2. Buy courses!!! Yes! This is important too, not necessarily compulsory but I’d help a lot when you buy Ecomm courses.
3. Google Is Your Friend. LOL! You might think, ‘No! Google isn’t helpful’ but it actually is, maybe you don’t know how to utilize it well, read blog posts! Watch video courses!
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
Choosing A Niche
After you might have carried out all the necessary research, gotten the tutor that you need to proceed and you’re ready for the business, you gotta choose a niche.
A niche, like I always like to define it is like a ‘Course Of Study’ in the university where you are taught nothing more than the ‘Course’
Niche(s) in Ecommerce are simply the categories (if that’s the right word for it) of the products that you want to sell.
- Phones and Gadgets
- Electrical Appliances
- Furnitures
- Laptops
- Clothes and Accessories
- Books
- Foods / Food stuffs
Etcetera are popular Niche(s) in the Ecommerce world, though some online stores deal in selling all but since you’re just starting up, it’s advisable to stick to a niche.
I can decide to start selling Clothes and Accessories on my Online store, that makes Clothes and Accessories my niche.
I wouldn’t sell anything other than that except if the business is growing larger and I decide to add some products outside my niche.
But before choosing a niche, you should’ve carried out extensive research on Hot in Demand products.
That is, the products that people are buying most. Though all niches have hot in demand products.
It’s up to you (with the knowledge you’ve gained in your research) to choose one.
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
After choosing a niche, you should know the next thing is buying your products and setting up your online store.
You can buy your products from wholesalers to resell it.
Again, you can contact Mr Timothy to tutor you (+234 817 068 1455)
Creating Your Online Store
Now this is beyond the planning stage, it’s the acting stage!
I’ve created online stores several times and I know what it takes.
To create your online store, you need two main things at first;
Domain Name
This is the name that your online store would bear.
Since you’re planning on creating an online store, you’d have a brand name in mind right, now your brand name should be your domain name.
It should be something simple and precise, easy to pronounce and it shouldn’t be unnecessarily long. Your domain name would be purchased.
Hosting
As I like to explain it, hosting is like a land where you build your house! It’s like a space that accommodates your online store.
This is not needed if you’re planning on using Shopify to build your online store but I’m mainly focusing on WordPress, so you need it.
You can purchase both your hosting and your domain name on Harmonweb.
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
WordPress
Yesss!!! I feel mostly excited anytime I hear WordPress, LOL.
After buying a host and domain the next thing is installing WordPress.
You can easily install it yourself or ask your hosting provider to do it for you if you’re a complete noobie.
What Is WordPress?
WordPress is a CMS (Content Management System), the most popular one actually that powers more than 30% of the websites on the internet.
WordPress is used more than just creating blogs, it’s used for building standard websites which include Ecommerce websites.
You don’t need to code! All you need is install a theme, plug-ins and do the set up, Boom! You have your website ready!
Since you want to create an online store, here are two vital things on WordPress you should know about.
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
Themes
Themes are the life of your website, when I say life, it is the design and layout of your website or blog, the look and feel.
Normally, to build a website, one needs to code the templates to use to beautify it but in this case, it’s not necessary.
There are hundreds of ready-made E-commerce compatible themes, both free and paid.
That’d give your E-commerce website a mouthwatering look!
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
Plugins
Plugins are like scripts that extend the functionality of your website.
The less plugin you have, the less things you can carry out on your website.
Plugins are compulsory if you’d create your own online store cos the main thing you’d use is a plugin, wocommerce.
I mentioned shopify above but I’m not really going to touch it because I don’t really use it.
Just like the name implies, shopify can only be used in making Ecommerce websites.
Like WordPress, it also has themes to beautify the store and plug-ins to extend the functionality.
But people use WordPress + Woocommerce more than any other Ecommerce software.
WooCommerce
Woocommerce is a free WordPress plugin for building E-commerce websites.
There are other E-commerce plug-ins but Woocommerce has everything you need which makes others less popular.
This is the main thing you’d be using to build your store.
To install WooCommerce on your website, Go to:
- Plug-ins
- Click on Add New Plugins
- In the search bar, enter WooCommerce
- Install WooCommerce and then activate it.
Upon activation, a message would appear that you should visit the set up wizard, click on it.
The setup wizard is just a quick way of getting your store ready.
You’d have to enter some information, choose from options that are suitable to you and your upcoming business and then save.
Well, you’re not done yet.
WooCommerce is just a plugin but it has hundreds of extensions which we call Add-ons to extend what you can do with your store.
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
To know more on what to do after installing Woocommerce, you can read the plugin’s documentation.
Since you’re a Nigerian, you’d have to set the currency of your store to Naira (₦).
Go to your WooCommerce General settings, that’s where you’d change it.
I’d have love to teach you A-Z on how to build your Online Shop but this article is meant to show you how to start.
In Short, WooCommerce is the engine of your Online Store.
- Receiving Orders
- Sorting Orders (Completing, pending or canceling them)
- Adding new products
- Editing existing products
- Setting up your payment gateway
The above and more is done with the help of Woocommerce.
When adding products, you can enter:
- The name
- A short and long description
- The price
- The product image and a gallery that showcases more of the product
- The price
- The product data (weight, length etc)
- SKU Data
And more! Especially If you install an extension.
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
PayStack
Paystack is so far the best Payment Gateway in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
Paystack is a simple software which allows you to receive payments through debit cards easily.
Since you’re going to be receiving online payments on your store, you’d need paystack.
Now, how do you go about it?
- Visit the website – Paystack
- Register
- After you’re done with your registration you can ‘Add a business’
- Add your business, giving them the necessary details
- You’d have to verify the business before it can go live
- For verification, you’ll need a means of Identification.
- You’d verify your BVN and also Identity using ID Card
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
To learn more on how to verify your paystack account – https://support.paystack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360009972779-How-do-I-activate-my-Paystack-Starter-Business-
After you’ve been verified, the next thing is to connect your paystack account to your online shop to receive payments.
First, you have to install a plugin. ‘Paystack For WooCommerce‘ after installing and activating,
Navigate to WooCommerce settings
Go to Payment Gateway and Enable Paystack Gateway.
There are also other gateways like Bank Transfer, PayPal etc, you can enable them (especially bank transfer) to enable multiple payments methods.
Enable PayPal Payment Gateway only if you have PayPal account.
Now after enabling paystack, click on manage and it’d take you to another page where you’d configure it.
Go to your paystack account and find settings, click on APIs and Web Hooks.
Copy the live secret key and public secret key and paste them into the suitable fields in your paystack payment gateway settings on your online shop.
Don’t forget to disable ‘Enable Test Mode’ and then save your settings.
Boom!!! Your payment gateway is set!
If you enable Bank Transfer method, you need to set it up, Go back to the payment gateways and click on manage next to bank transfer.
Fill in the right details and save!
This way, the money for orders paid for through debit cards on your store would reflect on your paystack dashboard and after 24 hours, it’d be sent to your bank account.
Paystack charges just about 0.5%
If you can’t go through the stress of all these and you need an E-commerce website, you can contact me (+2348146962224) on whatsapp preferably.
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
Advertising and Making Sales
Finally, after doing the set up of your E-commerce website, you have to upload your products and then advertise to make sales.
Currently, the cheapest forum of advertising is Facebook Ads.
You can run an advert for as low as $1!. But as cheap as It might be, you can waste your money if you don’t know how to effectively run advertisements.
Since your store is ready, it needs to be opened to the public, it needs publicity and there are many ways you can do that. You can choose to
- Run Facebook Ads
- Run Google Ads
- Radio Advertisements
- TV Advertisements
- Sponsored on Websites Etc
Whichever advertising method you use, it’s going to cost you money but you’re going to get it back and more when you are able to run a successful ads and make enormous sales.
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria (Conclusion)
We’ve finally come to the end of this article.
E-commerce is a very good and profitable online business, only if you know your way around it.
Just like selling physically, sometimes you’d make profits, sometimes you’d make a loss due to some situations.
But all in all, it’s really profitable and I advise you to go into it (with proper mentorship of course).
How To Start Ecommerce Business In Nigeria
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