New e-commerce-in-a-box offering set to transform SME landscape

“While we have been planning this product offering for some time, the pandemic economy highlighted the need for a simple yet powerful solution like DPO Store. For many small businesses the cost and complexity of designing and developing an e-commerce website can be prohibitive. We are allowing even the smallest of businesses an opportunity to explore what the online world has to offer,” says Brendon Williamson, CSO of DPO South Africa.

Williamson says many businesses have been forced to take their offerings online in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. This move is reflected in the 129% year-on-year e-commerce growth in North America, compared to a decline in traditional retail figures for the same period. According to IBM’s Retail Index, this has accelerated the shift away from physical stores by five years. Williamson says DPO South Africa’s transactional data also shows a big shift towards e-commerce over the last five months and says this is set to continue into the future.

DPO Store builds and hosts the websites and, with the help of pre-built templates, tailors each design to the branding guidelines as provided by merchants.

The four-page website, with space to sell 250 products off the get-go, is built using WooCommerce on the PayGate Plus platform, which gives the merchant immediate access to the most popular payment methods including credit and debit cards, Masterpass, Zapper, SnapScan, Mobicred, PayPal as well as SiD Secure EFT and MoMoPay.

The merchants benefit from DPO South Africa’s round the clock support and site maintenance as well as all the security requirements so necessary for safe online trading.

With DPO Store Merchants doesn’t have to outsource developers or require design skills. All websites are scalable meaning customers can shop from any device, at any time.

The entire experience has been designed to be as painless as possible and once the merchants provide their design input and inventory lists, the sites are built and ready to accept transactions in just five working days.

Williamson points out that ensuring products are delivered quickly and safely can make all the difference when it comes to building repeat business and a loyal customer base. For this reason, DPO South Africa has turned to its extensive partner base and DPO Store websites come with integrated logistics built in.

“We have ensured that our DPO Store merchants have all the support they need to grow their business. More than just reliable delivery, we are able to link the DPO Store websites to the merchants’ social media accounts allowing them to easily promote deals across the various social channels. Merchants can also choose to take search engine optimisation and marketing (SEO and SEM) services through one of our partners, or they can choose to do it themselves,” Williamson explains.

While an e-commerce website can cost anywhere from R10,000 from a standard site to R60,000 for a robust website, the DPO Store offering comes in at just R349 per month, including monthly hosting and maintenance.

“The DPO Group is committed to supporting the growth of business in Africa. We have already had a good response from our merchants in Kenya and we are certain South African business owners will jump at the opportunity to leverage the extensive DPO merchant network and our global reach.”

Interested business owners can apply immediately and will also receive training on how to maintain their sites, although there is a dedicated help desk for ongoing support, should they need it.

About DPO South Africa

DPO South Africa (previously PayGate, PayFast, Setcom/SiD, VCS and PayThru) is a subsidiary of the Pan-African DPO Group. It offers online retailers of all sizes instant access to simple, effective and secure online payment services, including PayGate Plus its newly launched fully managed payments solution. DPO South Africa has connections to multiple acquirers, fully managed relationships with banks, card, and payment networks, and sophisticated risk management with PCI-DSS Level 1 compliance. It processes payments for merchants across SA, Namibia and Botswana. With DPO, local business owners can now accept all major payment methods in 19 African countries through a single integration into the DPO Group.

For more information please visit www.paygate.co.za