Jumia Vs Konga — Comparing E-Commerce Shopping Experiences in Nigeria
--
So I didn’t start out with a plan to compare shopping experience on the two biggest e-commerce sites in Nigeria. But because the experiences have been hugely different, I began to pay attention. Then when I needed to buy two shoes urgently last week, I couldn’t wait for ASOS delivery, so I decided it was the perfect opportunity to do my Jumia Vs Konga shopping experience comparison, complete with receipts. Here it goes.
First, both companies seem to get their advertising right. After I searched for shoes on Google and then ASOS, I suddenly started getting shoe adverts on virtually every webpage I visited from both Konga and Jumia.
Because I wanted to use the shoes for something quick, I wasn’t going to splurge the usual N30k–N40k so I searched for shoes inside N15K that would look okay. What’s more, as I visited the two sites and I indicated in one of the searches I was looking for a shoe below N15,000 both sites refined the adverts they presented me on all subsequent webpages to shoes below N15,000. So no real differentiation (beyond inventory) at this point.
On Thursday May 18th at about 4:50PM, I placed my order on the Jumia site. 5 Minutes later, I got an email with my order number and purchase details.
Almost immediately, I got a second email which they called Confirmation, by which I presumed indicated that they had confirmed that Jumia or the Jumia merchant selling the item has it available in stock. The email promised that since I was in Lagos, the maximum time it would take to deliver since they aren’t shipping from abroad is 2days.
The next day, Friday May 19, I finally found a shoe that met the budget on Konga so I placed my order at 7:20AM. Like with Jumia, I got a notification email with my order number and the like. I observed that Konga included the Konga Merchant’s name in their own email.
As the email came in from Konga, they also sent me an SMS to confirm the order at 7:26AM
So, while both sent two messages to me about my order, Konga sent on two different channels, while Jumia sent on the same channel. At this point, some differentiation was beginning to emerge.
Since I counted ordering at almost 5PM on Thursday 18th and about 7:20AM on Friday 19th as ordering on the same business day, I waited to see who would deliver first of the two, who would deliver items in good condition and to the quality shown in the pictures and even if one delivered before the other, if they would both meet the timelines they communicated for delivery.
Hours later, at 2:16PM on Friday the 19th, I had received a further email from Konga notifying me that my package had just been shipped with a link to track where it was at the moment. I also a received the same information in an SMS.
By Monday morning at 9:48AM, I got another email from Konga notifying me to prepare to receive my package on the same day, along with the name and phone number of the driver who would deliver it. An SMS also came from them with the same details.
Both Konga SMSes below
In all this time, the only communication from Jumia was their usual SMSes advertising Jumia on Friday May 19. See Below:
Clearly at this point, the service experiences were very different. I however said “all the communications and co are good, but let’s see who delivers the product first and who delivers the product that meets expectations”
I decided to try out the tracking portal of the two sites while waiting. Here again, the experiences were different. For Konga, once I clicked on the tracking link from within the emails they sent me, it took me directly to the portal and showed me a detailed journey for my package and where it was. See below:
For Jumia, when I clicked on the tracking link from within the email, it took me to the tracking portal where I first needed to enter my email address and then I had to click a “Check Now” button.
This then took me to a page that didn’t display a lot of information about the journey of my package beyond that it has been shipped.
On the second page, there is a small “See More” Link to click to see further details. In order words, I have to do data entry, go to another page and go through at two more clicks than I had to with Konga and the Konga first page still had more details.
At about 4PM on Monday May 22nd, almost 48hours after I placed my order (I discounted the weekend) I got a call from the driver Konga communicated to pick up my package. I inspected it and it was okay so I paid with their POS which also worked fine. It’s 2PM on May 23rd, well over the 48hours Jumia promised. Not only has their communications been abysmal, they are yet to deliver my item.
So my conclusion? Konga clearly wins this one. Jumia needs to up their game seriously.
![My Interview Experience at Google [L5 Offer]](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1358/1*cefmG5nMryckZvBXfO3RDQ.gif)
