Last updated 1 November 2026
What is your conversion rate? Out of ten online enquiries, how many become sales?
Above seven out of ten and you are doing well. Below seven and it is worth working out why. Is it the pricing, the availability of the product, or is it the question of nitalipia ikifika? Conversion is the metric worth watching, because it tells you both how well you close and how well you keep people.
Where the friction actually is
Look at the shape of an online business. There is you, with a product — and a product is best thought of as the answer to a customer's itch. You market well, and the enquiries arrive.
Ni how much. Ni original. Unaeza deliver. Do you offer a warranty.
How you answer those determines how many you close. And here is the thing about them: besides the price question, almost all of them come from the same place. An online business carries a trust deficit. Warranty, payment after delivery, whether it is genuine and whether it will last — these are not product questions. They are the customer asking whether you are real.
Answering them so the conversation continues
Ni how much. Lead with the price. Every customer asking this wants a number, not a paragraph. What follows is either an attempt to bargain or a walk-away, and the counter to both is the same: the quality of what you are selling is worth every shilling, and it will last as long as they need it to.
Ni original, do you offer a warranty. This is the customer working out whether the product justifies the money. A testimonial from previous customers and a clear warranty buys you another inch of trust.
Then delivery, which is where the sale is actually lost
Once price and product are settled, delivery is the only choke point left in the process.
An online business with no more than a pick-up spot and a social media presence does not inspire much confidence, and the reason is not mysterious: there are enough people posing as online businesses that a customer is right to be careful. Trust and a credible reputation are not optional extras — they are the product. That means collection points a customer can verify, and deliveries that run the same way every time.
Because your business is, in the end, your ability to deliver what was ordered, when it was ordered.
And then the last question. Naeza lipia ikifika. Payment on delivery blocks more sales than almost anything else, and it blocks them from both sides at once. You have no way to know the customer will pay when the parcel arrives. The customer has no way to know you will send it if they pay first. Neither of you is being unreasonable.
What closes that gap
A delivery that both of you can watch, and a payment that neither of you has to take on faith.
Pinned tracks the parcel from your counter to the customer's door, so neither side is guessing. And it handles payment on delivery without the rider touching cash: the runner only completes the handover once you have confirmed the money reached your till, paybill, Pochi or bank account. The customer gets proof the parcel is real before paying. You get proof the payment landed before the parcel leaves the runner's hands.
Which removes the one question you could never answer convincingly on your own.