How To Get Your Business On The Internet

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So you heeded advice or you just decided on your own to get your business on the internet, good job and be prepared to enjoy the benefits soon. You may probably be facing challenges on how you can do this; relax, it is not a difficult thing to do and there are various ways to go about it too.

Getting your business on the internet does not require a huge budget but it does require little planning. While building a website for your business is important and very alluring (there are quite a number of articles on the internet detailing how to do this), it is not the only way you can get your business online. You can also build a space for your business on social media by creating an account or page for it but you should also consider online business listings (there are various business listing websites in Nigeria e.g. Vconnect, Nigerian Yellow Pages, SMEToolKit and so on). All that matters is for your business to appear on search pages when potential customers search for companies providing services your business offers on search engines. Getting your business on the internet alone does not guarantee this but doing it right does. This is what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about. Don’t worry much about this at this stage; just go ahead with your decision to get online.

It is important to get advice from experts in the field at different stages as you go about getting your business on the internet. This is to avoid making mistakes that most people make and believe me these mistakes make you spend more than you planned for. So do not in a bid to save cost end up spending double or more of what you budgeted. You may even be lucky to find someone to help out for close to nothing.

Per adventure you decided that it’s time to build a website for your business (it is very important anyway), you need to ensure that it is done to perfection. You need to ensure that you do not overload your website with too large files to avoid snail-slow loading website – you do not want your customers to be put off by that because nobody wants to spend even minutes waiting for a website to load. Also ensure that you have a pleasant colour mix and not some 1990 Nollywood-style colour patch. Most importantly, you need to ensure that your website works well across board that is either on computers or mobile phones regardless of the screen size or resolution. People browse the web on the go these days, so your website needs to be mobile-compatible.

No matter what you decide to do, be it building a website, creating a social media account/page or listing your business online, you need to do it well. You need to have good contents on all these channels as this will ensure that you attract potential customers to your business. And before you know it they would have become paying customers, meaning more patronage and higher earnings. This is what you want after all.

It is a good thing that you are getting your business on the internet but it is not enough. Doing it right is what matters most. Get it right and you would have unlocked a whole world of opportunities for your business to thrive excellently.

Benefits of Getting Your Business on the Internet

Perhaps the greatest invention in human history, the internet has really altered the shape of the universe from an egg-like sphere to a flat entity (do not start thinking a ship or an object is going to drop and fall off any time soon like ancient sailors thought a long time ago). All barriers to communication across borders have been leveled; you can just sit in your house and reach out to a friend or crowd across the world and be sure to be heard.

The internet has also reshaped the way business is done. Now you can easily source for materials and even man power from the comfort of your office with just a few clicks. You can also put your business in the faces of potential customers all around the world without necessarily leaving your domain. All you need to be able to do this is be aware that you can do it. Once you are aware, bang!

Growing up through the 90’s and early 2000’s in Nigeria I remember very vividly how cumbersome it was for one to ordinarily check an e-mail (owning an e-mail account itself was a thing to show off with). You had to book a space in a cyber café and to get it cheap it had to be overnight. Access to the internet was more difficult than gaining admission into your choicest Nigerian university. Now fast-forward to the second decade of the 21^st century, internet access is the easiest thing; much easier than having access to public electricity in Nigeria.

Statistics have shown that of the almost 180 million folks in Nigeria, over a hundred million have access to the internet and be rest assured, it can only get more plenty. So what does this translate to for your business in Nigeria? Easy access to potential customers! Of course it does not matter if you already have enough customers, more customers to meet their needs only means more income for you as a business owner and who doesn’t want that?

To make it even more compelling for businesses to join the internet band-wagon, the world has already gone cashless (well Nigeria has just started embracing this), meaning most transactions are now done over the internet and I promise you it is a sweet experience. In few years from now almost all transactions in Nigeria – local or international – would be initiated and concluded on the internet (mind you it has already started happening). It’s not me soothsaying; it’s Nigerians (and Africans) following the global trend. You must have noticed that Africa is always the last to catch in on trends. Remember the mobile phone phenomenon? Or the paradigm shift from dictatorship to democracy across the world? These should give you some belief.

As it were, the internet was built for a different purpose but it is meeting a whole lot of needs today. Businesses are getting huge patronage from online customers and it would only get better in the future. And with the internet the future is never too distant; it is now!

Do not say you were not warned; get your business on the internet. 

An Unending Crave For Foreign Goods In Africa And The Impact On Local Economies

No country can be self-sufficient; there needs to be a level of trade between countries to enhance international relationships and ensure sharing of ideas and innovations. But a problem arises when a country solely depends on others for the availability of almost all goods needed to keep its citizens.

It is understandable (though not tenable, in my opinion) that not all countries possess the expertise to produce certain heavy goods; it is also my opinion, however, that certain consumable goods do not require much technical know-how for their production. As such, these goods can be produced locally from locally sourced raw materials. This can go a long way in improving the economy of countries that engage in such local production. While it is important to engage in local production, it is equally important for citizens of a country to appreciate such locally made goods.

Unfortunately, this is not the case in Africa. There is this insatiable taste for foreign-made goods here in Africa. This is evident in every facet of our lives; from the clothes we wear to the foods we eat, from the movies we watch to the music we listen to, and, as a matter of fact, in every area of our daily living. It has become knitted into our fabric; it is now a culture. Looking through a gathering of Africans, it is almost impossible not to see a trace of an imported item. Even imported used clothes are not left out. It has been given different fanciful names by different communities e.g. Okirika, Akube, Bend-down-select, Bosikoro, etc. Asides from clothes, foods are no exception. A very appalling situation in Nigeria recently is a case of alleged importation of Garri (a staple and the most affordable food for the common man) from India. Garri is produced from cassava, a major food crop in Nigeria and it may not be surprising to learn that India imports cassava from Nigeria. One only wonders what would happen to the thriving local Garri industry in Nigeria and the women (and men) who have had this trade passed on to them for generations if the story of Garri importation were true. Sadly, it only emphasizes our inability to learn from history because one can readily recall the not-too-distant past when cocoa was exported cheaply to countries that processed it into chocolate and other products and imported these products back into Nigeria at a much more expensive rate. If that does not ring a bell, surely the case of crude oil would buzz our memories.

Undoubtedly, no nation can develop its economy by being a dumping ground for other technologically-developed countries. Instead, such developed countries would grow in leaps and bounds at the expense of the lesser “dumping-ground” nations. This has been the tale for Africa. But still, Africa has remained blindfolded by the short-term benefits of importation and there does not seem to be any remedy to this quagmire anytime soon. Even when there are local alternatives to imported goods, Africans still go over the moon for foreign options. It was somehow a general assumption that this phenomenon was a way of showing off affluence by the super-rich, it seems the common man has also caught the bug. What explanation can one then possibly give to this mind-boggling trend?

It is my belief that if Africa is to attain the level of development it seeks, African leaders must be ready to tow the paths of famous Asian leaders (like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore among others) in making tough and uncompromising time-bound decisions on economic policies that would ensure an appreciation of locally made goods. Unless this is done, Africa will continue to be a distant shadow of itself and a ridicule among the committee of nations.

Power Drunkenness among Politicians Amidst Calls for Restructuring

Recent events in the political sphere of Nigeria among immediate past and sitting governors and other high ranking political office holders reveal a misunderstanding of the concept of leadership. Very few put in mind the idea of state servant; rather, they perceive themselves as all-in-all emperors in a medieval empire. Political leaders have become so power drunk that they fail to recognize the people that ensured they attained that office in the first instance. This is a far-cry from what obtained in the first republic and around the world.

Leaders in the first republic were in all aspects altruistic. Little wonder they became engraved in the hearts of their followers even many years after. They very well understood what leadership entailed. In the face of upheavals, they had the right words to quench any looming wildfire; when the economy was a bit gloomy, they knew steps to take to rekindle the people’s hopes; and when the people’s hopes seemed to be burning low, they knew how to use the right words to keep them hopeful again. Such were the prowess of the leaders then. They were well grounded in the business of politics.

Unfortunately, today’s politicians leave so much to be desired. Not quite long ago, a governor in one of the southwestern states of Nigeria met with protesting students of a state-owned (co-state-owned in fact) university in the state. Apparently, the students were expressing their frustrations in a peaceful manner after seven months of sitting at home owing to the indefinite closure of their school. The governor’s remarks in that particular meeting could be compared to a slave master’s address to slaves in a plantation being warned of the consequences of trying to ferment trouble.  He went ahead to urge them to respect “constituted” authorities. Videos later emerged of police shooting at the students. To this governor, the students are mere trouble makers even when they chose to openly express their feelings peacefully without guns and machetes. This is just one of many such anomalies in the politics of Nigeria today. Citizens are supposed to respect constituted authorities while leaders are to disregard constituted laws and rights.

As many observers have noted, politicians in Nigeria literarily lick the feet of the citizens when they seek power, and when they get it they soon become lords over the same people on whose backs they rode to attain power. With these high levels of power drunkenness among governors in a central government, one begins to wonder what will become of these same politicians in a regional government when much more power is available at their disposal.