subject: Wantitall Vouchers And Discounts [print this page] South Africa is still lagging quite substantially behind many countries, as regards their development, use and sophistication of ecommerce. The main reason provided for this is the unreliable Postal service, expensive internet bandwidth cost and the slow nature of the actual bandwidth available. However, things are changing, and are changing fast.
Just a few years ago the only ecommerce websites that were operating in South Africa, and were actually making sales, were those selling flowers (online florists) and the online budget airlines, like kulula.com. However now a full range of ecommerce sites are available, and sell a broad range of retail goods, from electronics, to clothes, to food items and books. One of the most well known online shopping sites in South Africa, is called Wantitall.co.za. The way that they operate is that they dont actually carry any stock. They have formed a partnership with the worlds largest online shopping site, Amazon.com, and offer all the same products that one could find on there, in South Africa. So basically, when you are ordering from Wantitall, you are actually ordering from Amazon.com, but you are billed in South African Rands, and they handle all of the shipping and customs issues, delivering the item to your door.
The reasons why wantitall have been able to survive and grow, include: The cost of broadband is becoming lower and lower, so more people are able to stay online, for longer. In addition, most people in areas not serviced by ADSL are able to connect via 3G which is also an affordable alterative. Another issue in the past was the Postal service being very unreliable, and packages getting lost or damaged before they reached the customer. Now, most online stores, including wantitall, use courier services. These do have an additional cost factor, but it is negligible and now deliveries are more reliable and fast.
