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Opinion: Factors that will likely shape ecommerce in the second half of 2020

July 8, 2020June 8, 2023 Editor

As we enter the second half of 2020, Dan Barker examines the key trends that are set to shape ecommerce, and how retailers can respond to them. The first half of 2020 has been eventful for ecommerce. Of course technical innovation has progressed: Shopify launched a marketplace, Google relaunched organic product listings, Facebook introduced ‘shops’, and thousands of other changes. But much of the first half of 2020 was shaped by a disease named after 2019. The effects of ‘SARS2’ on ecommerce are tough to overstate. Tens of thousands of…

COVID-19 is Transforming E-Commerce Globally

June 4, 2020March 7, 2023 Dianne Jacobs

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Just over 306 million Americans are affected by stay-at-home orders, nearly 95% of the U.S. population. COVID-19 will forever change retailing, and its initial impact on e-Commerce is creating challenges to online selling & service no one imagined in January. The following graphic from COVID-19 Commerce Insight, an Emarsys initiative in cooperation with GoodData show how year-over-year revenue growth comparing the last seven days to the same period last year: Mobile devices are the most popular device for online shopping by a wide margin. 72% of consumers are using mobile…

PayPal rolls out a new QR code feature in its app to enhance contactless payments

May 26, 2020June 2, 2023 Editor

PayPal Becomes The First Foreign Payment Platform In China

Cash is out and touch-free payments are during the coronavirus pandemic, this Paypal has taken cue and announced a new feature in its mobile app that will let customers make payments at stores, farmers’ markets and just about anywhere else using QR codes. You can scan a code — either from a printout or on a screen — using your phone’s camera. Payment QR codes are already fairly common, with a bunch of companies providing similar features, including Visa, Mastercard and Walmart. The biggest difference is that many existing QR…

Malicious Trojan app terrorizes users with fake reviews

January 13, 2020 Dianne Jacobs

Kaspersky researchers detected a Trojan application that terrorizes users with unsolicited ads and boosts installations of online shopping applications. This malicious app visits smartphone app stores, downloads and launches applications and leaves fake reviews on behalf of the user, all while hiding itself from the device owner. As sales are hitting the stores, both users and brands need to be wary. When choosing shops, users rely heavily on reviews, while retailers increase their promotion and advertising budgets. As it turns out, neither can fully trust what they see online, as…

Jumia’s stock has reportedly lost more than half of its value since its NYSE public IPO

October 18, 2019 Staff Writer

Jumia, the ‘African’ ecommerce company that has its corporate headquarters in Dubai and operations in 14 African countries including Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, continues to struggle after an initial good run at the New York Stock Exchange. It’s stock closed at $6.68, an all-time low, on Friday, with the market cap going down to ~$520 million. For the sake of context, the Rocket Internet-founded Jumia had become a unicorn (with a valuation of $1.08 billion) in 2016 (when it was known as Africa Internet Group or AIG) after raising…

Jumia hits US$196-million in landmark New York IPO but investors may regret funding an elusive dream

April 17, 2019April 17, 2019 Editor

Jumia billed as Africa’s first “tech unicorn”, is a venture-capital funded company valued at more than $1bn on the New York Stock Exchange. Its lack of a profitable model didn’t seem to matter much on the first day of trading on Friday, as the stock surged by 75%. Jumia filed S1 documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month to launch its IPO, which was underwritten by banks such as Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. The stock went on sale on Friday 12 April 2019, initially valued at…

Digital now makes up 51% of US advertizing spending – Magna Report

April 8, 2019 Editor

Magna released a bullish assessment and forecast for US ad revenue in 2018 and 2019. The report covers all the major advertising and media categories including both digital and traditional media. Ad sales up, especially digital. Magna says that “net advertising sales” will grow by 6.9 percent this year to reach $207 billion, which is “a new all-time high.” And, for the first time, digital ad revenues surpassed 50 percent of total ad spending in the US. The company said that digital ad revenue in 2018 will reach $106 billion,…

How AI could bring a difference in 2019

January 18, 2019January 18, 2019 Staff Writer

In 2019, artificial intelligence (AI) will increasingly become a mainstream presence in our work and personal lives, inspiring our purchase decisions and digging deeper into business outcomes and events. At the same time, expectations surrounding AI will also grow, as calls for transparency and fair play become too loud for businesses to ignore. Here are four ways we see AI making a difference in our lives in the new year: AI gets warm and fuzzy. Conversational AI is fast becoming a fact of life; already, 20% of U.S. adults have access to smart speakers in their homes. Google…

Sky.Garden: Revolutionizing Kenya’s E-Commerce Sector

June 14, 2018June 18, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Upon noticing that the economic sector in Kenya only caters for the top tier in the economic pyramid which leaves little room for individuals and businesses that exist within the lower segments of the economy to reap the benefits of online transactions, Sky.Garden decided to come up with a sophisticated eCommerce platform that they can use to expand their geographical reach. ITBusinessDirect spoke to Isaac Hunja the Chief Marketing Officer about their work. How can you define the technology sector in Kenya? I would describe the technology sector in Kenya…