Jumia.co.ke, arguably Kenya’s leading contender for the ‘Amazon.com of Kenya’ moniker today shared a report whereby they indicated their mobile traffic had reached 37% of all online traffic. I found this number surprisingly low given that in my experience, mobile traffic in Kenya is almost always on par if not higher than desktop traffic. What is even more impressive is that Jumia.co.ke saw a mobile traffic spike of 13% compared to the same time in 2014 so the mobile traffic growth is definitely surging ahead.

Jumia.co.ke shared other interesting insights on their online traffic metrics such as the fact that the current mobile traffic is comprised of 33% from smartphones and 4% from tablets on average. I was highly skeptical that they did not capture feature phones in these metrics initially but on calling a representative and trying out Jumia.co.ke on a feature phone myself, its probably accurate as the site does not seem to work well on feature phones – period. On the other hand, as expected, 63% of their online traffic came from desktops based on nearly 4 million web visits across various product categories, including fashion, electronics and home appliances.

Desktop traffic on Jumia.co.ke peaks between 9.00 am and 5.30 pm from Monday to Friday which suggests that this happening via users at work. However, over the weekends, desktop traffic drops off massively and shifts to mobile at a larger percentage.

In terms of the Jumia.co.ke mobile apps that were launched over the last couple of years, the Android mobile app is driving three times the iOS (Apple) app traffic followed by the Windows Phone app and then the Blackberry app trails. These metrics are spot on given that Android is by far the most popular smartphone ecosystem in Kenya due to inexpensive mobile devices and a well stocked app store in Google Play.