For close to a month, Jumia, one of Nigeria’s largest online retailers, sounded their Black Friday bonanza virtually through every available medium. But when Friday came, and Nigerians came enmasse to their platform as urged, they blanked out.

 Jumia’s  Black Friday was so disappointing, they will be wishing they never tweeted this

With Nigerians salivating for the advertised 50 percent discount on the Blackberry Passport, a 50 percent cheaper Samsung Galaxy S5, 30 percent price slash on the Play Station 4 game console and several other mouthwatering deals, Jumia’s website received shoppers too much to handle, and crashed.

Jumia's Black Friday quickly turns blank
Jumia’s Black Friday quickly turns blank

At first, the online platform tooted its horn about the record site visits and claimed sales were progressing tremendously, but the said buyers were already flooding their social media pages with frustration.  The complaints ranged from the inability to buy an item – any item – to the website not opening at all. It did not take long after that for Jumia’s PR stunts to switch to crisis management; at first they admitted they were struggling with “minor” glitches but soon after, admitted the Black Friday for that day has crashed.

To their credit however, Jumia had its site back up and running and extended their Black Friday sales to Sunday, but the mega deals that attracted Nigerians were no longer there, so too the previously attracted Nigerians.

So what can we learn from Jumia’s Black Friday Blunder? Well, here are three lessons Jumia and every other platform out there must do to avoid this brand killing gaffe.

If you must copy, at least paste properly

Black Friday is originally an American tradition, coming up a day after the country’s most important holiday- Thanksgiving. While there is no harm in replicating such a nice idea, efficiency demands that at least it is done wisely – Jumia did not do that.

Perhaps in a bid to copy US e-commerce giant Amazon, the Nigerian online mall rushed into the bonanza, but did not do the necessary background planning, at least not intensively. For example, it did not sort out how it would handle the multiple buyers of just one product, or how the “fastest finger” model would work. The result of these unanswered questions were a public bashing about carts turning up empty after buyers had reached check out, or certified vouchers been labelled invalid.

Jumia copied, not bad. But failed to paste well, that's bad
Jumia copied, not bad. But failed to paste well, that’s bad

Jumia was not the only Black Friday blunderer in the world however; even renowned UK retailer  Tesco flunked their planning as police had to be called in after customers invaded stores for cut price TVs. Regardless of similar occurrences elsewhere, the Nigeria online retailer should have prepared better. The tons of apologies they have had to send out has taught them that it’s better to stressfully prepare than to painfully plead for forgiveness.

It is not just about attracting attention, but making use of it

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Jumia broke customers’ hearts. Mending them won’t be easy

Jumia crashed under the attention it craved, and failed woefully to live up to the high expectation it had set for itself. It’s a brand killer to leave your customers hanging especially when you have done a lot to lure them in. A Friday that began on the back of a hugely successful publicity campaign quickly turned into a show of shame for one of Nigeria’s most reputable e-commerce site, all to the platform’s making. They realised the hard way that although gaining audience’s attention is critical, the real task is in making a positive use of it.

Don’t Promise what you cannot deliver 

Perhaps in the bid to be the pacesetter in Nigeria’s keenly contested e-commerce space, Jumia attempted the extraordinary. This is good. But never set the bar so high when you know you can’t jump, exactly what Jumia did. Regardless of the platform’s claim that the mega deals was delivered, many of their customers believe no one did, and nobody has come out to say he or she did.

Jumia claims Black Friday was a sell out, but customer allege nothing was on sale.
Jumia claims Black Friday was a sell out, but customer allege nothing was on sale.

Personally, I would love to believe that a couple of people were lucky to buy the select discounts, but products, I think, were extremely few. You don’t promote such few products to a massive population and then tell them minutes after the sales began that the products are finished. Had Jumia disclosed the total number of each of their mega deals, the situation would have been better. They could have reduced the level of discount on their mega deals, and provided more of such items. But the platform intentionally, I believe, gave the public the impression that the items were many; that stunt has now backfired. Key lesson there, it’s better you didn’t promise, than you didn’t deliver.

Despite their blunder however, the Jumia team still deserve some respite, at least for their management of the crisis. Admitting their blooper was the first thing they did right, followed by the unending stream of apologies that they flooded out to the disgruntled customers. Although extending the Black Friday sales to Sunday did not have any significant impact in appeasing or attracting shoppers, it showed the brand’s will to stick to its promise of discounts.

That said, no amount of crisis management schemes will undo Jumia’s Black Friday blunder, except perhaps doing a Black Week of free shopping. The best action for the e-commerce giant now is to ensure that such gaffe never re-occurs and that all promotions are well thought out before they are embarked upon. It’s always better safe than sorry.

Tangerine
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Tangerine

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