eCommerce are growing day after day in the whole world, as long the internet quality and the connection is increasing, this will directly reflect on eCommerce growing because sell products over the internet has a common intrest between the buyer and the seller, on the first hand the seller will save a lot of costs instead of a real store and on the other hand the buyer will have available service with special price and also it will save his time. Iam not going to word about the benefits from eCommerce and its types as long you can easily find many articles through search on any search engine, but the target from this blog is to foreseeing the future of the arab region and the main aspects that would help you to enter the market and create your own online store
MENA Region
This is the promise region, the eCommerce demand is growing year after a year with high rate more than 25% each year, therefore the sales over the internet recorded 15 Billion dollars at the end of 2015 for the region. However each of Saudi arabia, UAE and Egypt are the head of the eCommerce at the current time.
exception to many other countries to enter while increasing the internet users, furthermore the current generation age between (26 to 35) is the most about get eCommerce, this generation has the ability to take buy decision and he has the culture of the eCommerce. This is why its a promising market.
However enter the market early will give alot of precession, but we should know the important aspects and the nature of the market before, we mention the follow:
First: How to get customers into your online store
There are too many ways to bring customers into your online but we mean here to bring them to enter your store not continuously enter it, as this is part of customer relationship management, after sale service and the quality of your products and this for sure are important things you have to keep it in your store, but here we mention the best ways to bring people in MENA region according to statistics.
The SEO and the Social media are playing important role in bring the customers, the SEO help your store to display in the first search results, thus its important to add featured description with special words or writing blogs with special content to support search engine to bring your site in the first results.
Regarding social media each of facebook, instegram and twitter are occupation the head of social media in bring the people as you can see in the below figure.
Second: the COD are still demonstrating until yet
yer this is the nature of region culture and for sure its a big challenge specially in managing the orders, but its effective. With related to Paypal the percent is not increase than 5% of buyers as mention in entrepreneur.com this means we have to think of develop the COD. But this might change specially Mobile users are increasing which will let the people buy through.
Third: There is a different between an official online store or just create a social media account
This issue conflict to many people as they think just creating account on any of social media that would cost effective than an independent platform but this is too wrong as we can imagine the account as street vendors while the website is official store and you can estimate the difference.
Fourth: The nature of the collectibles that people buy in the region
Women apparels (include child) are the head of the sales over eCommerce in the region, therefore Apparels include clothing and accessories are first then the beauty and finally the tools and shoes according to Aramex statistics in 2014.
Fifth: Smart Phones are Dominate
Your online store must be suitable for smart mobile phones and for sure having an app will be an advantage, thus many people are browsing day and night through it. Furthermore it will save a lot of cost regarding knowing the address and the way of the delivery in the future, that will save connect to the client and request the address and phone and vice versa.
Our Experience in Loqta.ps
We are in Rozn.org group of professionals work together for many years, we develop many eCommerces include their mobile applications and the related applications like managing the stores transactions and warehouse. This what allow us to do our own experience in lunching loqta.ps in palestine at Gaza specially, therefore its the first official eCommerce in Palestine and we were surprised with how much orders we get in the first months as it exceeded 2000 request at the first 4 months and this indicate the importance and the need for the people in eCommerce even in place that its not exist before.
We have face too many challenges and we still face it, like people still request their products through customer service and facebook page and not do it through the site automatically.
But things going good, specially with featured description and the manuals of how to buy and encourage the people to fulfill orders automatically. We will write a full blog according to the experience.
Best Wishes,
Until the next Blog.
References
http://www.ecommerce-europe.eu/news/2015/menas-e-commerce-turnover-grew-by-30.3-to-16.8bn-in-2013
https://econsultancy.com/blog/66940-ecommerce-trends-in-the-middle-east-stats/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247836
http://news.arabnet.me/ecommerce-mena-market-2015-insight-aramex/
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mena-b2c-e-commerce-market-2015-300051080.html
