September 04, 2012

e-Business Review: Konga

Konga. Do you know Konga? I got drawn to this site following the 'pleasant noise' about Konga's delivery time.  What I  heard in very simple terms was that Konga delivers fast. 
Following my experience shopping online on a different Nigerian e-business portal
I decided to check Konga for myself. Mind you, Konga currently delivers within Lagos only so I had to route my delivery to a Lagos address just to get a first hand experience of shopping on the site. Here is my review of www.konga.com

So, how good is Konga.com?



Pricing - 9/10
Pricing is a major factor for me when shopping, especially for groceries. You see, groceries are everywhere, they're not luxury (and maybe it's the accountant in me speaking) but I do not see the need of paying exorbitantly for items I can get very easily and at reasonable prices too.
That said, I really do like the pricing of items on Konga. I decided to randomly select some items on Konga to check pricing and the result; the pricing of items on Konga is very reasonable. 
PHOTO: Konga Pricing

For instance, I selected a very common item, Peak Milk. The powdered 400g sachet sells for N750 at my local store so seeing the quote of N700 on Konga was really encouraging.

The trick with grocery shopping is that these SAME items can be easily purchased without hassle. You rarely hear of a "scarcity" of these items and most importantly, they are available everywhere. Same brands, everywhere.
In my opinion, Konga gets the pass mark here. With these prices, anyone and everyone can shop on Konga. It's NOT a class thing.

WEBSITE FEATURES - 8.5/10
Konga is set on a white background which makes the site look really pleasant and navigation is really easy. For instance, you can check what you have in your shopping cart/basket without leaving the page you are currently on because this feature (the cart preview) pops up within your current page. 
Also, I like what I believe is a decision to use terms that are easily recognisable "Cleaning" which appears as one of the categories would be termed "Household Items" in other instances.

That said, there is one section of the Konga website I don't like and it's my reason for not awarding fullmarks in this section; the header is TOO busy. I get this rush of information whenever I look at the header of the site. The following is an image of Konga's header.

PHOTO: www.konga.com Header
After trying to describe this to a friend (who reminded me I'm not a techie, whatever that is), I decided to play around with an image of the header to arrive at the following  which I believe is neater. The facebook fanpage link, now serving Lagos and the contact number items all make the header look really untidy. See the following image of what I will describe as a neat header;

PHOTO: Neater www.konga.com edited Header. See my point?
Also, Konga's phone number appears right under the header so I don't see the point of repeating it again at the top.

Ordering - 7/10
Konga created and placed a new order on my behalf. How?? The ordering process started out very clear. I simply did a search for the items I wanted to order and added them to my shopping cart. However, things got a bit out of hand much later.
Konga has a "Wallet" payment option which I decided to try out. The Wallet function allows you to pay in money to your Konga account which you can use at your own convenience to pay for items on the site.
PHOTO: Konga Wallet/Cart
This involves making a deposit to designated bank accounts  and the amount you deposit gets credited to your Konga Wallet. 
The items I wanted to purchase totaled N2,250. I deposit N2,500 at the bank and emailed Konga as advised on their site to get my Wallet credited (or recharged) with this amount. Few minutes later, I decided to return to Konga to complete my order. Instead of seeing the N2,500 I paid in at the bank as my Wallet balance, I found a balance of N250 (as shown in the photo above - Wallet:250). 
As you can see, the shopping cart was still showing that I had shopped for items worth N2,250 and the Wallet showed I had a balance of N250 only. My immediate assumption was that Konga had wrongly credited my account with N250 instead of N2,500. I decided to send an email but on getting to my mailbox, I noticed an order confirmation email from Konga. Obviously, I decided to change the tone of my email to ask why their system completed my order because I had received an order confirmation email for an order I was yet to complete.
Konga responded "The system does not complete the order on your behalf. What we did, however was to place a NEW order on your behalf, making reference to the incomplete order. This was done to save you the stress of having to go back to the system to complete the pending order." 
I replied to Konga that it doesn't seem right to have a system that could place an order on someones behalf. I understand Konga's focus on customer satisfaction however there should be a limit to how much a system can do for customers. I wondered if I wanted to amend my order and the system had already concluded things on my behalf; the supposed convenience and idea to save a customer stress of completing an order would have been totally lost.
After sending the email, I  asked a couple of colleagues on their thoughts on this and they shared same opinion as I did and clearly stated that they'd prefer to complete their order by themselves.
Following my email Konga wrote : "We sincerely appologise for the mix up. We can assure you that we have your best interest at heart. For future purposes, we would inform you once your wallet is funded to complete your order yourself" RESOLVED!

Contacting Konga - 9/10
This was very easy for me. I sent Konga emails on all occasions and got immediate response (within 30mins). The email response was prompt enough and I did not need to dial their phone number. Excellent service.

Range of Stock - 9/10
Good range. Body care (soaps, perfume), beauty (make up), hygiene (cleaning items), Food (Rice, Pasta, Poundo) and I noticed other new categories Office & School and Home Appliances. Konga appears to be expanding to cover more product categories.

Payment Option - 7/10
The payment options, Wallet and Pay on Delivery, are user friendly. However, Konga would have scored better if the Wallet payment option functioned differently from my experience as show above. Konga also has the Card (credit/debit) payment option.

Delivery - 10/10
EXCELLENT! My items were delivered within 24hrs. Konga quotes 1-2 days delivery which is one of the tightest delivery times I have ever across. They currently deliver within Lagos only hence to test this aspect for my review, I routed my order to a friends place in Lagos (I stay in Abuja). 
Delivery is free for orders over N2,000.


Should you use Konga?
Our overall score for Konga based on issues raised above is 8.5/10

Should you use Konga? The speed with which Konga delivered my items is a lasting memory I have of my experience with the site. 
The bottomline is Konga delivers promptly and I hope this inspires other e-Businesses out there to follow suite...Deliver! It can be done.


11 comments:

  1. Good work! I have a question is the Wallet feature now fixed for all users or just for you? Your review has sold Konga to me but I think I'll prefer to complete my order myself.
    You seem to be business smart and I hope you do reviews beyond online biz. Cheers

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  2. This is nice. Quite long on the Ordering part though but well done.

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  3. I will definitely shop with Konga, not too many sites can score this high, especially in Nigeria. Konga here I come.

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  4. 8.5 no wonder Konga retweeted lol. This is a nice review. Properly done and I agree with your analysis on the issues raised. Thanks for sharing.

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  5. Fair and articulate review.

    Jordy, all Konga.com users have the wallet feature and yes I agree that I would want to completer my order myself.

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  6. Ah! Konga is troubling the waters. I'd have given them 10/10. I used pay on delivery and had no issues whatsoever. I wish you scored them on their packaging too.

    Jane

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  7. Interesting! Nigeria is getting there o!

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  8. Hi everyone. The issue with the completion of the order was just the Konga team being proactive and is not the norm. All shoppers have the option of completing their order themselves or requesting it be completed for them (this usually happens when customers have connection problems).
    Glad you're all happy with Konga and we look forward to serving you all.

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  9. Good review. I just feel you could add a section suggesting what they could do to improve their services.

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  10. Good scoring technique. I hope Konga can maintain this standard.

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