Another Look at the Nigerian Classified Advert market

August 8, 2010 by Albert Njoku

The Nigerian classified adverts market continues to expand with a new website launching everyday. I was surprised to find some have been around since 2005 and yet are relatively unknown. Granted we have problems of access to the internet in Nigeria, these underutilised services have the big task of creating awareness about themselves. I have to agree there has been a lot of improvement over the years. As at this morning a massive 4 million Nigerians are registered on facebook alone (Recent estimates put facebook at 500 million users. Alexa.com estimates users from Nigeria to be 0.8% of this). Effectively, Classified advert websites have at least more than half of these 4 million active internet users to sell their services to.

The following are probabaly the most prominent of the classified adverts websites in Nigeria today:

Website	Description	Alexa Rank	Google Rank
Nairalist.com	Nairalist started in 2008 and rapidly gained popularity due to massive publicity on nairaland, the popular Nigerian forum. Nairalist may not have the best designs but is certainly attracting a lot of hits. Adverts are arranged according to the Nigerian states. Only Lagos and Abuja has a substancial amount of advert placements. A confirmation that these two areas are the main internet market of Nigeria. Correct me if am wrong.	52,454	3
	Whogobuy.com has been around since 2005. To date they have 123,12 registered Members who can place up to 10 different adverts at one time. Users generally spend about 6 minutes on the website on each visit. They look through around 6 pages during this time.	333,464	3
Bunchbay.com	Around 22% of this website's traffic comes from search engines. Bounce rate is approximately 57% (not so bad but needs work). Visitors spend on average 2 minutes on the website per visit. Bunchbay may need a good redesign but they have since notched up a good Google page ranking.	582,390	3
	GboGbo.com gets 15% of its visitors from search engines. With a bounce rate of around 61%, they need to engage visitors more. Generally, users browse through around 3 pages per each visit.	500,614	2
	This website is a classified advert site with a difference. Customers send in their adverts via phone text message. The only issue I found here is the lack of photos. Otherwise its a brilliant idea. Users typically look at 2 pages on each visit to the website. They stay for around 4 minutes during this time. Only 2% of thier visitors come from the search engines (needs work here). They have a high bounce rate compared to the other websites.	74,702	0

Next I have compared these websites using information from alexa.com: