The physical walk-ins, the enquires, and the subsequent buying of products and services in shops and companies in the country are gradually giving way to online requests for product information and orders following the official launching of an online fair last week.
The Ghana Sales Fair, with domain name as ghanasalesfaironline.com is a customer centred online business exhibition platform that brings to the disposal of customers registered Ghanaian businesses and companies.
This, therefore makes it possible for the customer to enquire about products and services of his/her choice, order for the needed products using computers, iPads, mobile phones as well as other Internet powered tools. The products ordered are then delivered to the customer at his/her door steps.
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| Philp Gamey, CEO, Web and Software Limited |
On how the online fair operates, Mr Philip Gamey, CEO of Web and Software Limited, a local IT company and architects of this first ever online sales fair explained to the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that registered businesses and companies are set-up in booths to exhibit their products and operations to prospective online customers.
These booths designated to individual businesses, he said are given catch phrases with which they can be accessed by visiting customers upon a click. “People can easily get in touch with needed businesses or companies through a lead form (an imformation request form filled by the customers requesting for a particular service or product from the respective company or business organisation) for estimates, orders or further information about the product or the company’s operation”, the CEO added.
The site, prior to its official opening had recorded close to 60,000 visitors, with about 67 per cent of them being within the country.
According to Mr Gamey, the site's campaigns on facebook, yahoo, google and other search engines were yielding positive results. He mentioned that over 120 businesses and companies had registered to exhibit their products and operations on the Internet powered platform with most of them already recording numerous visits and leads.
Competitions among corporate institutions the world over have taken an IT-based dimensional shift from the age old man-powered way of doing businesses.
This operational shift has helped reduced the workload of companies and business institutions, eased their operational costs while making more hands available for fresher jobs and expansions within these companies.
But while the business community in the Western world is embracing the ever increasing potentials of IT and the net in particular, their counterparts in the Africa continent are yet to take full advantage of this technology.
Internet searches in Ghana for products and services, business opportunities and companies’ operations in most cases turn to foreign-based information companies which the Vice President, Mr John Dramani Mahama says "that is not good for businesses in Ghana".
This absence of indigenous online businesses can, however, be attributed to the lack of requisite IT trained professionals in the country who can create, maintain and periodically update websites with information on their operations.
It is incredibly true that most business institutions and companies in the country still do not recognise the need for online presence and are therefore absent in this all rewarding, yet free medium.
The little companies that have online sites do not update them frequetly, a situation one can easily trace to the lack of in-house IT trained persons to carry out these updates.
In a speech read on his behalf by the Employment and Social Welfare Minister, Mr E. T. Mensah at the official launch of the fair, Vice President John Mahamah observed that such a situation was unfortunate to corporate Ghana.
"One of the challenges we often hear from our colleagues in the business community is the difficulty of getting consistent business. Regrettably, however, most businesses in Ghana have not even considered the establishment of an online presence to make it easier for their customers to find them", Mr Mahamah bemoned.
He was however, optimistic that initiatives like the Ghana Sales Fair would enable customers to find products and services on one platform, cause Ghanaian businesses to develop partnerships between industries and customers and further position "Ghana as a technologically ready nation eager to collaborate with the rest of the world in business partnerships.".
But even before businesses and customers reap the full potentials of this online fair, industry experts and prospective customers fear the information provided by customers could as well be misleading and therefore cause customers to waste yet another precious time requesting for products that barely exist.
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| Philip Gamey, CEO, Web & Software stressing a poit during the launch |
To address this situation, management of Web and Software, however, explained that its online exhibition fair is only available to registered companies in the country who have the requisite certificates to prove that they are actually into business. "We inspect their office location to ensure that they are actually into business. Once that is done we take the company’s value proposition and other details for the booth and set them up", Mr Gamey said.
In Ghana today, looking for estimates or proposals from companies mean spending hours if not days visiting one place or the other in search of the companies and business institutions that meet one’s needs.
And with traffic situations in the capital Accra amd other cities become intensed, go on a shop to shop request for information is indeed time and resource wastage
The number of working hours spent on the Internet by customers is meanwhile on a consistent increase and Mr Gamey insisted the "Ghanasalesfair.com presents a unique platform that would enable customers to connect with Ghanaian businesses right from where they are without any lost to man working hours".
The average exhibitor, he said has six leads per day and the highest lead since the fair was launched has been 28 by a real estate company.
About the customer, Mr Gamey said instead of spending time and fuel driving around in search of business or product information in shops “that time and revenue should rather be diverted to address pressing business issues”.
On the challenges of the fair, Mr Gamey said some companies would still have to develop their internal capacities to enable them meet growing demands to be generated from the new online customers.
Explaining further, the CEO said "a decoration company turned down two online clients asking him to provide wedding decoration services through our fair because the company could only service one client a day.
The successful online exhibition coupled with high patronage among customers and businesses means that any moves towards electronic payment for goods bought online would be easily embraced.
And the CEO of the company running the ghanasalesonline.com says "we are in talks with two banks on the possibility of creating an electronic payment storefront for each exhibitor and will soon come out with information on how companies can take advantage of this service too".
But for now, Mr Gamey says "the fair would remain an exhibition platform for registered businesses in Ghana."
Good story out but that website mentioned is not worth the purpose. It's so that I wish u shd extend the message to publishers to work on it seriously either that it's an embarrassment to the visitors of the site.
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