Did you know that the first secure online sale ever happened on 11 August 1994 with a selling of the, wait – for – it, selling of a Sting CD? Interesting, right? That’s not all… Ever since then the e-commerce/online shopping industry has grown to account for more than R20 trillion in sales globally and it is expected to reach more than R26 trillion by the end of the year.

While things like lack of connectivity and expensive data costs (when compared to the rest of the world) have hampered the growth of e-commerce in South Africa, the industry has continued to see rapid growth. In fact, we’ve seen more than R6 billion in online sales in South Africa so far and the industry is rapidly ballooning at between 25% and 35% year-on-year.

You don’t have to look further than Zando, Takealot.com, Yuppiechef, Mantality or Poetry’s online store for it to become evident that South Africans are taking to online shopping in a big way.

Thanks to an online shopping survey conducted by UAfrica.com, we’ve got everything you need to know about e-commerce in SA right here (and fresh off the press, we might add, with these findings having only been released a few days prior to the writing of this blog):

  • Most of SA’s online shoppers are between the ages of 18 and 39
  • People generally spend between R250 and R1000 online at a time
  • 28% of the survey’s 90 000 respondents indicated that they used their cellular phones for online purchases
  • One third of these respondents said that they make as many as 10 online purchases per year
  • E-commerce platforms in SA are at their busiest around the 25th of every month
  • 70% of people pay for their online purchases with their cheque or credit cards

While these results look very optimistic, there are still many challenges that the e-commerce industry will have to overcome, such as:

  • Costly delivery charges
  • The misconception that many people hold that they cannot shop online without using their credit card
  • The concern regarding safety and providing personal and payment-related information online
  • Lack of clarity regarding how to return products purchased online
  • The fact that people cannot touch and feel the products that they would like to buy often hinders them from doing so

Even though there are unique challenges in the e-commerce space in SA, the industry is here to stay – in fact, it’s growing every day. The team at MoneyShop is keen to “watch this space” and will be keeping a close eye on developments on this front so that we can of course report all the important stuff back to you.