Online shopping in South Africa

Interesting facts about the shopping habits of South African internet users

Although there is no denying that online shopping has brought much convenience to people’s lives, the issue poses a great challenge for retailers as there is a number of points to consider. What kind of devices do South Africans use to shop online? How much money do they spend? How does the shopping activity change across the year? Is online shopping more popular among men or women? To look for answers, Picodi.com analysed last year’s data and presented the results in this report.

Smartphones far behind

Although mobile commerce is booming globally, it turns out South Africans still prefer desktops over smartphones. According to our internal data, 1 out of 3 transactions was made with the use of a mobile device last year.

What is more, South Africans tend to spend less when using smartphones. When they did shopping with the use of a phone, the average order value was only R428. It’s about R294 less than when using desktops (R722) and R416 less than using tablets (R844). iOS users spend more than Android users — R501 vs R417 on average.

The important question is who shops online more — men or women? Our data shows that there were more purchases made by South African women than those made by men, 67% and 33% respectively.

Unsurprisingly, it’s the young generation that prefers online shopping. Almost half of all online shoppers (42%) are people between the ages of 25 and 34. They’re followed by people aged 18-24 (21%) and 35-44% (19%). The remaining 18% are consumers who are over 45 years old.

Busy end of the year

According to our research, the average order value of a South African shopper is the highest in December (R625), followed by November and September (R619 and R489 accordingly).

If you look at the shopping activity, it turns out November has the highest number of transactions — almost one-fifth (19.2%) of all the transactions made during the year. The second busiest month when it comes to the number of transactions was July (9.7%), followed by August (9.3%). The lowest number of transactions was noted in January (5.1%) with the average order value amounting to R269.

Consumers in South Africa shop more on Wednesday and Sunday (desktops) as well as on Monday and Friday (mobile). The most popular time of the day to shop online using computers is in the morning (6 AM to 12 PM) — that’s when half of all purchases were made. In case of mobile devices, the peak of sales occurred between 6 PM to 12 AM.

The most popular categories for online shopping among South Africans were: clothing, food on delivery, grocery, home & garden and sport.

Online shoppers around the world

We analysed data from 35 countries and compared the devices people use to shop online and the average order value. South Africa, with 32% of their orders made on mobile devices, is among the countries where desktop shopping takes the lead. Peru tops the ranking with 76% of online purchases made with the use of smartphones. Close behind are Nigeria and Thailand (62% and 56%).

When it comes to the average order value, South Africans with their US$46 (R634) rank lower than the world’s average, which is US$79. Emiratis spent the most money per order — astonishing US$218. And it looks like Hungarians and Turks don’t like to spend a lot in one go. They are at the bottom of the ranking with US$32 and US$38 respectively.

Online shopping in numbers:

• 1 out of 3 transactions was made on a mobile device last year,
• there were more purchases made by women than by men (67% vs 33%),
• almost half of all online shoppers (42%) are people between the ages of 25 and 34,
• the average order value in South Africa is the highest in December (R625),
• the highest number of transactions was noted in November — 19.2% of all annual transactions,
• clothing, food on delivery and grocery are the top 3 categories for online shopping

Wish, Ubuy and AliExpress are the most popular marketplaces in South Africa, however, not many users know that shopping in those places can be made even better with cashback. All you have to do is activate it in Picodi before each purchase.

Methodology

This report uses the internal data of a global e-commerce platform Picodi.com for 2018. For currency conversion, we used the average exchange rate for March 2019.

Public Use

Are you willing to share the information and infographics about shopping online in South Africa with your readers? Feel free to use all the data and infographics presented in this report for both commercial and non-commercial purposes as long as you indicate the author of the research (Picodi.com) with a link to this subpage.