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.

Build An Online Store Like A Pro

 It is a quite common misconception that if you build an online store on your own, it will end up looking homemade and unprofessional. That might have been the case a handful of years ago. But these days, there are web-store building tools at your disposal that are extremely powerful and fairly easy to use. A person who is not a programmer can in fact build a professional-looking online store. All you have to do is follow a few tips and

guidelines:

  

Tip #1 When preparing to build your online store, consider that most modern, high-end websites are relatively wide in size format. A lot of this has to do with site owners and programmers taking advantage of increased screen real estate as the prices of wide monitors have dropped. I've found that 960 pixels is just about the perfect width. It's a very balanced size and you'll find that many of the huge sites out there, such as Yahoo and MSN, hover right around the 960 pixel mark. Yahoo is actually a little narrower and MSN is a little wider. So, if you build your online store with a 960 pixel page width, you'll be in a range that your customers are likely both familiar and comfortable with. Interestingly, most of the store building tools that are intended for non-programmers come with a default page width setting of around 720 pixels. So, be sure to change that before you start any of your design and layout work.

Tip #2 To help you choose the colors of your online store, utilize one of the many free color scheme guides and utilities available online. There are professionals out there who have thoroughly studied color usage and combinations. So, there really is no need to make any guesses at what colors work well and are visually appealing on a computer screen. People have already figured that out for you... Just search online with a phrase like "web color scheme" and you will soon find some great palettes to use as is, or to modify a bit with your own personal touch.

   The other thing to keep in mind about color choice is that you want the palette to appeal to the majority of your targeted customer base, and not just to yourself. So, it's important to enlist the help of a friend or two to review potential color palettes with you. Also, note that research has shown that women and men literally perceive colors differently. Therefore, if the online store you want to build is geared more towards one sex or another, definitely obtain color opinions from people of the most pertinent gender.

   Tip #3 For many people, one of the most daunting aspects of building an online store is the challenge of designing artwork or graphical page elements. But luckily, there are many "stock photo" sites on the web where you can purchase professional artwork and photography for as little as $5.00 per image. Try to stay with "royalty free" artwork and photos so that you don't have any recurring fees or copyright licensing complications. Also, it helps tremendously if you stick with a series of art elements or photos from either one artist or one photographer respectively. This will make your store look more pulled together and coordinated.

  Many of the stock photo companies sell their artwork and photos in varying sizes and resolutions. For online stores and websites, you only need 72 dpi images. So, you can usually get away with buying the less expensive, smaller images. But, if you have access to software such as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, and can therefore re-size artwork and photos as needed, you might want to invest in the more expensive, higher resolution images. This gives you more flexibility with respect to potentially re-using the artwork or photos in future projects.

  Tip #4 If at all possible, try to obtain professional photographs of whatever products you are selling. Oftentimes, you can build your store using product images provided by either your products' manufacturers or distributors. This will save you a considerable amount of time because it can take quite awhile to properly stage items for photography. But more importantly, the product images supplied by manufacturers or distributors will help give your store a professional look and feel. Of course, if you are a talented photographer, or have a friend who is one, take advantage of that and produce your own custom set of product images.

  Tip #5 If you have some dollars budgeted towards helping you get your store kick-started, you can certainly find some very affordable online graphic services. There are several companies online that will professionally design a logo graphic for you that you can then easily paste into your website. I've spent from $65 up to about $300 with a few different online logo design companies and I was happy with the end result each time. I think it's very important to have some type of logo in your store header, even if it's just a simple graphic. It makes a site look so much more polished than if you were to just type HTML text in your header with your store's name.

  Summary If you build your online store while following the above tips and guidelines, you will very likely be proud of the end result. You will have basically benefitted from the support of professional graphic artists, photographers, and color specialists. But, you'll still have bragging rights because you will have built your own online store.

Products To Sell Through Your Online Store

 An obvious first step to starting an online store is figuring out what you are going to sell. Perhaps you already know what that product is. And, maybe it is an item that you manufacture yourself. If you have your product choice all figured out, you may want to skip to the next section. But, for those of you who are still trying to figure out what to sell, I have some pointers to offer you and I also have a few things for you to think through.

Is There a Market Niche That Interests You?

 

 Start off by thinking about things you know well and that are of interest to you. Carefully consider your area of personal interest and try to remember whether you have ever felt that you were in need of a particular product that you couldn't easily find. If so, you may be onto an underserved niche and therefore a step closer to figuring out what to sell. Operating within a market niche has a meaningful advantage when it comes to selling products through a website. This is simply because there are so many people selling on the web these days. So, if you pick a type of product to sell that is very common or mainstream, you are going to have to work extra hard to effectively compete.

What Product Price Range Should You Target?

  Give some thought as to whether you will sell expensive products or inexpensive products. Though this may seem like a trivial discussion point, there are very important ramifications based upon which way you go. Specifically, it can take a long time for a new website to garner a meaningful amount of traffic. So, if you are selling low-cost products, it may take a very long time before you are achieving enough sales volume to be generating a reasonable level of cashflow. On the other hand, if you are selling a more costly product, you might be able to sell just one or a few items each month and still be making a decent income. Of course, this is all highly dependent upon your personal budget and the timeframe within which you are wanting or needing to become successful with your new online store.

Can You Sell Products That You Don't Have to Buy in Advance With Your Own Money?

  Consider if you are going to buy bulk product stock in advance and do your own packaging/shipping. Or, are you going to be more of a virtual retailer who markets and sells products that you don't actually carry, but rather, that get shipped from a third-party distributor directly to your customers, on your behalf, whenever your online store makes a sale? You may already know that this process is called "drop-shipping". Both of these online store operating methods have pluses and minuses. And, there are lot's of people out there who've been successful with either method.

 Going the drop-shipping route provides the obvious financial benefit of not having to front money to acquire products that you then have to store somewhere in advance of making sales. But, a significant downside is that you are putting a critical aspect of customer service in the hands of a third-party. Specifically, by having a distributor ship product directly to your customers, you are trusting that the distributor will properly package the goods you have sold and that they will ship the items in a timely manner to your customer. Proper packaging and fast order turnaround times are both highly critical aspects of getting repeat business and referral business from your customers. So, if you do go the drop-shipping route, be sure that you are working with a reputable, efficient distributor. After all, by shipping directly to your customers, the third-party distributor is controlling a tremendously important part of your business. Basically, it is a bit of a downside to the drop-shipping method in that you are giving up some control of the customer service process. However, you can mitigate this by being highly selective of your drop-ship partners.

  In addition to not having to front money to acquire and store products, the drop-ship operating model also has a huge advantage in that it allows you to build a seemingly gigantic online store, even if it's really just you operating in the background at home. Specifically, you could literally list thousands of products in your online store and then spend your days coordinating with multiple drop-ship distribution warehouses as customers make purchases through your site. A friend of mine started doing this with consumer electronics several years ago. Initially, his company was very small infrastructure-wise. However, from almost day 1, it looked huge online because he was seemingly carrying hundreds of different products. But now, after years of steady sales growth, his company truly is big and he has over 50 full-time employees working for him.

  As a final note about drop-shipping, there is yet another downside to mention. It is the fact that the vast majority of products that are available for drop-shipping are already being marketed by hundreds (if not thousands) of websites. This is simply because there are a lot of people who like the idea of selling products that they don't have to purchase and store in advance of sales. So, it somewhat challenging to identify a product niche, without a lot of competing sellers, that is available for drop-shipping. It's challenging, but definitely not impossible. And, if you have the resources, timeline, and strategic cunning to be able to compete with other businesses, it might actually be acceptable to you to sell drop-shipped products in a competitive market segment.