What products are suitable for the African market?

Africa is a magical continent, where the countries need to import many products, such as daily necessities, fertilizers, building materials, mechanical and electrical, machinery, hardware, auto parts and so on. Therefore, it is a good place for doing import and export trades. And Amanbo CEO Mr. Liao Xuhui has 16 years of experience in trade between China and Africa. His brands Leadder and My leadder in Africa have been very famous and sales are very good.

Compared to the election of the product, the African people are different with many countries. How different? For this question, Mr. Liao Xuhui can answer for us. And this is related to its e-commerce business.

He told us, “Amanbo’s suppliers are mainly the domestic original factories. According to our analysis, there are four categories of products are very necessary for the current stage in Africa. The first one is the infrastructure products, most of the African countries are now building houses, bridges and roads, so the products are related to the infrastructure, building and electrical materials are our main recommendation. The second one is the infant products, because the proportion of infants in Africa is very high. The third one is the young people consumer products, the young people under the age of 16 accounted for 60% in Africa, so the consumption of young people must not be lost, such as electronic products, digital communications, etc. The fourth one is the daily necessities, the consumer goods are growing quickly throughout Africa. Such as shampoo, in five years ago, the people in the West Africa, Central Africa and other poor countries were not used, but in recent years people have begun to use shampoo and shower gel. So as long as the four categories related to the market in Africa is very popular.”

At present, Amanbo has set up six overseas warehouses in six countries in Africa, Mr. Liao Xuhui plans to complete more than 10 overseas warehouses at the end of this year. A lot of suppliers in China want to import their goods to Africa through Amanbo, but based on the situation in Africa and the consumption of African people, Amanbo will select the products which suitable for African market to send to Amanbo overseas warehouses in Africa, if the products are not   suitable for African market, Amanbo will not accept them. And according to Mr. Liao Xuhui’s analysis, the infrastructure products, infant products, young people consumer products and daily necessities will be preferred to be selected and sent to the African market.

How to start an online business

If you're ready to be in charge of your own destiny, but don’t have the capital to buy a franchise or open up a storefront, consider starting an online business. When your store is online, you can reach millions of customers instead of whoever happens to wander in - plus, you don't have to pay for retail space. However, like with any business, you'll need an excellent product and a solid marketing plan. See Step 1 to learn what it takes to start your business online.

Part 1: Setting Up Your business

Define your product or service. Starting an online business gives you the benefit of having access to millions of customers, but you also have a lot more competition. No matter what you're trying to sell, you can bet that hundreds more online retailers have a similar idea. What differentiates your product from other similar products? To help your product stand apart from the rest, you'll need to find a niche.

1,Offer expertise in an area. Even if the product itself isn't very unique, your expertise might be a strong selling point. If you're selling a line of skincare products, for example, it helps if you have a degree in a field related to skin health.

2,Check into the competition. Figure out what isn't already being offered, and find a way to fill the hole with your product.

 Part 2: Creating your online business

Register your business.  Your online business needs to be registered according to your state's laws. Choose an official business name and fill out the appropriate paperwork to make your business official.

1,Before you register your business. it can help to have a business plan laid out. Consider your production costs, shipping costs, taxes, and web hosting fees.

2,Know the business regulations in your state. and be sure to comply when you get things up and running.

3,Name your shop and goods.Like the name of any other business, go for something short and catchy that will be easy for people to remember. Visit the website of a registration company and test out some of the names you're interested in to determine whether they're available. Once you land on a good name, go ahead and register it.

Part 3: Selling your products

1,Be social. Whatever your business, whatever your venue, keeping your name in the the air is key to internet success. Have a business account on Facebook, Twitter, and Linked-In. If your business is graphically oriented, Whenever there is news of any kind—a new contract, a new page, a new entry, a new photo—cross-post it to all your social media sites. Also make sure those sites link back to your main website, and that your website has links to all of them.

2,Become an wholesale marketer. There are many companies and webmasters who use online wholesale programs to boost their online sales, and most of these wholesale programs are free to join. When you sign up for an affiliate program, an affiliate link with a unique affiliate ID will be assigned to you. The affiliate link is used for marketing the products of your merchant. When a visitor buys an item through your wholesale link, you earn wholesale commission.

   For example, if you are an distributor partner In Amanbo E-commerce platform,As an online clothing wholesaler you can advertise your products on their site. If a person visits your shop page, and clicks on the link that takes them to the Chinese Clothing page, and they purchase an t-shirt within a certain amount of time, you get your order profit on the sale.

7 steps to Build an eCommerce Website

In the age of the internet, eCommerce is attracting more and more customers. An online store is becoming a crucial element to any business plan, but starting one can seem to be a monumental task. This article will give you some simple steps to get your store up and running in no time.

Amanbo is an international e-commerce platform that focuses on China and Africa two-way trading, this online mall provides African buyers a wide range of high-quality Chinese goods. The first branch - Amanbo.co.ke was set up in Nairobi,

1.Decide What You're Selling. You should consider narrowing your scope to capture a niche market, however, not so narrow that it's hard to find customers. For example, if you are thinking of selling books, selling vintage books might be a better option. On the other hand, only selling 17th century Mongolian ghost stories probably won't take you very far. If you are serious about your online store, you will probably spend a lot of time constructing and tweaking your website and especially marketing it, so choose something you have some interest in.

2.Select a shopping cart. The shopping cart software allows you to set up your products and services for sale on the Internet. There are many commercially available shopping carts available to choose from. You will want to select the cart that offers the functionality you are looking for.

• You will want to look for a cart that offers merchant tools, supports many payment options, offers configuration for shipping and taxes, offers real-time statistics and reporting, and has the appropriate security.
• You will also want to select a shopping cart that is compatible with your payment gateway. This will illuminate the cost associated with integrating your shopping cart and merchant account.

3.Choose your Ecommerce platform. There are a ton of options out there, so before you choose you should sit down and decide exactly what features you do and do not want in an online store.

4.Set Up Your Store. This is where the work comes in. You'll need to get all of your details together and sit down and fill out all of the necessary information. All of the above mentioned sites are easy to use and don't require much tech savvy.

• Enter all your products, payment options, shipping options, applicable taxes, etc first. Check and double check them; it doesn't matter how good your site looks if the customers can't use it. That being said, it is extremely important how your site looks. Obviously, you need to make sure it is professional and aesthetically pleasing, however, you also want to make sure it is easy to navigate and find products.
• You should organize all of your products into intuitive categories and sub categories. If your hosting site has "featured products" or "best selling products" options, you should set those up as well. You should visit your store front often and try to navigate yourself frequently during the set up process.
• Having friends and family test it out can also be quite helpful in figuring out any problems with your layout or checkout process.

5.Set up your payment gateway. The payment gateway is the application that connects your website shopping cart to your merchant account. The job of the payment gateway is to collect the credit card information from the customer, encrypt it and sent it to the merchant account for processing.

• When selecting a payment gateway you want to select one that is compatible with your shopping cart, offers good pricing, has the ability to facilitates all 
• payment functions (payments, voids, refunds, etc), offers robust fraud protection, is PCI compliant and has an interface for you to run reports on your sales.

6.Select a merchant account. The merchant account’s job is to authorize the card that is being used for payment and then deposit those authorized transactions into your bank account. It’s important to choose a merchant account that offers good rates on processing, has 24 hour turn around on settled transactions, offers live customer support, has high approval rates and low merchant attrition. You want a processor that stands behind your account and consults you as to the very best way to set up your eCommerce website.

7.Market Your Store. There are a lot of stores out there, so make sure to market, market, market. An online store is not like physical store where people will just pass by on their way to other things even if you aren't advertising.

• You will need to make sure to use a lot of keywords in your store text and create many back links (links to your store from other sites) in order to drum up traffic and move your way up the search engine results.
• First you should research keywords by searching for them in Google or Yahoo! or your search engine of choice and gauging the popularity of the keyword. If it gets millions of hits in .25 seconds, it's going to be very hard to climb up the results and get your store seen. At the same time, if it gets 4 hits, odds are you aren't going to drum up much business that way either, so be sure to choose a happy medium.
• Once you choose your keywords, be sure to use them! Blogging is a great way to do this, especially if you are posting relevant, interesting posts and not just advertisements. For example, if you have a vintage book store, you might have a blog where you discuss interesting passages or tidbits or articles about vintage books with links back to your store. #*Make sure to use your target keywords in your blog frequently. You'll also want to get as many subscribers as possible and try to get as many people as possible to link back to you.