Jumia Express is a value added service by Africa’s leading online shopping destination, Jumia, to ensure fast and cost effective shipping for its customers in Nigeria, Kenya, and across Africa. The Jumia Express service is also one of the online store’s weapon for fighting substandard products at the store as the items are directly handled and shipped by Jumia.
How to Identify Items qualified for Jumia Express
Items that qualify for Jumia Express are pretty easy to identify. There is a badge clearly indicating that they are qualified below the item’s price in the category and search pages.
On the product page, you will see the badge on the right sidebar.
On mobile, the label very prominently placed and hard to miss on the product page.
Jumia also now has a direct link where you can access all Jumia Express items. This is more or less like a one stop shop for Jumia Express items, Click Here. The downside of this page is that you cannot filter by category for easy access.
However, there is a search box on the page, which means you can do a search of an item or item class to see results of those that qualify for the Jumia Express service.
Also, when you are on a category page, you will find a Jumia Express filter on the left sidebar. Clicking on it will show only products that are Jumia Express qualified.
On Mobile? Tap on Filters on the category or search page. Then, tap on Free Premium Services and tap on the Jumia Express filter and then tap on the Apply button.
How Jumia Express Works
Under the Jumia Express service, the merchant sends the items to Jumia’s warehouse for both physical inspection and storage before the items are listed on the online store. This means that items labelled as Jumia Express are checked for quality and physically located at Jumia’s warehouse when you order, which results in faster and cheaper shipping.
How Jumia Express Benefits Online Shoppers
The fact that Jumia directly handles your orders comes with five major benefits, I list them below
1. Cost Effective Shipping
When you order products labelled Jumia Express, your shipping cost is consolidated, which is more cost effective. Let us say you want to buy three standard items labelled Jumia Express, you pay almost the same cost as if you are ordering just one item. Say the shipping cost is 1000 Naira, Jumia will likely charge you 1000 Naira for all three items.
Of course, there are exceptions like for bulky items, but the cost will never cost anywhere near what you would have paid if you ordered 3 items that were not labelled Jumia Express. To compare, the same order could cost 3000 Naira (or even more) without the service.
But why is shipping cheaper with the service? The answer is simple. Consolidated shipping. Because all the three items are in Jumia’s warehouse, they are packaged together, and you pay the appropriate fee depending on weight and bulk.
For products not labelled Jumia Express, especially when you are ordering from different merchants, each merchant will ship each item independently resulting in higher shipping cost.
2. Faster Shipping
Jumia is more efficient at handling and shipping than its independent merchants. Since Jumia is directly responsible for fulfilling orders of Jumia Express items, they tend to be delivered faster.
In fact, Jumia promises next day delivery for items ordered in Lagos and from 2 days delivery for items ordered outside Lagos. Sometimes, you can even get your order same day in Lagos if you order before 11am.
In my own experience, I have also found out that items that are directly fulfilled by Jumia arrive faster. Independent merchants take longer to deliver, and in a few cases, they even end up not delivering the item. Jumia is even offering free shipping in Lagos, if you order items labelled Jumia Express worth 10,000 Naira or more.
3. Receive all your Orders at once
Say you ordered a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a pair of shoes from different independent merchants on Jumia. Each merchant will be responsible for shipping one item.
So, three days after you placed your order the shirt arrives, then a day later the trousers arrive and two days later the shoes arrive. Say these items of Fashion are to be worn together, you will have to wait 3 days from the delivery of the first item to see how they all fit together.
With Jumia Express all three items are shipped together by Jumia, even though they may be offered by different merchants. You can get them as fast as the next day if you live in Lagos. You can start trying all the items on immediately. This is the very definition of convenience.
4. Buy Quality Products
Jumia physically checks items offered by independent merchants who subscribe to Jumia Express before listing them on their website. This ensured one, that the product is available and two, is of good quality.
Ordering items from merchants who subscribe to the Jumia Express service is one way to protect yourself from buying substandard products at Jumia.
5. Better Customer Service
Jumia offers better customer service than its independent merchants. Buying on Jumia Express is like buying from Jumia directly and results in a better shopping experience.
Free Shipping in Lagos
Jumia is offering free shipping for Jumia Express orders worth 5,000 Naira and above in Lagos, Abuja, and Ibadan. This means that if you place an order for qualified items, Jumia will deliver them at no delivery cost to you to any location in Lagos within one or two days.
However, there seems to be a caveat: “Large items are not qualified for this offer”. Though it is not clear what Jumia’s definition of a large item is but am thinking like Refrigerators. This means that items like Mobile Phones, Laptops, and Fashion are qualified.
Why Join Jumia Express as a Merchant
Am sure if you are a merchant, these benefits that Jumia Express offers to customers is already enough to convince you to subscribe as a Merchant.
However, I am going to add two more here. Jumia is now optimising placement of items at the store to favour Jumia Express products. Visit any category or search for any item on Jumia right now, items with the Jumia Express badge are usually at the top of the results.
This may not be obvious for some items, but for popular categories like smartphones or Android phones it is quite obvious. What is happening to the smartphone category today could eventually happen to all categories including the one you sell. Joining could mean more visibility and by extension more sales.
Jumia also has a good reason to prioritise Jumia Express products, because it enables them streamline their service and offer an overall better customer experience to their customers. So yes, expect Jumia Express to become more popular. Your only move is to join now.
Another reason to join is that Jumia will offload the tedious work of fulfilling orders. Jumia will warehouse, package, and ship your orders allowing you to concentrate on other more important areas of your business.
How to become a Jumia Express Merchant
To become a Jumia Express Merchant, first you have to be a Jumia merchant by registering for the Jumia Seller Centre account. Once your application is approved, you will have to upload the product you wish to sell on your Jumia Seller Center account.
When the products are now live on the Jumia store, turn them off then contact your vendor support team requesting to join Jumia Express by sending an email to [email protected].
Jumia will then schedule a day that you will deliver the product for warehousing. Of course, before accepting the product, the Jumia team will check the products for quality and authenticity. Once you are approved your products will now be shown on the online store with the Jumia Express badge.
Jumia charges you 3 Naira per item per month for small items, 8 Naira per item per month for medium items, and 14 Naira per item per month for large items as storage fee for warehousing your items. When the product is shipped, Jumia charges you ₦400, ₦700, and ₦2000 as shipping fee for per small item, medium item, and large item respectively.
Your products will be stored by Jumia for three weeks within which they are expected to have sold-out. If there are still unsold stock after the first 3 weeks, you can decide to get them back from Jumia. However, Jumia will still hold and sell your products for another three weeks with no additional cost, but you will be required to discount the product in order to boost sale.
After the second three weeks, you will be required to take back the products. You will have another three weeks to do this or the products will be deemed forfeited to Jumia.
To become a Jumia Merchant visit the online store and to learn more about Jumia Express and how it benefits you as a merchant as well as learn how to use Jumia to boost your business, visit the Jumia Vendorhub Here.
That ends our comprehensive guide about Jumia Express. If you have any comments or questions, we would love to hear from you.
