eCommerce in the Middle East has seen rapid growth with more than 45% of shoppers beginning their purchase journey online. With the rise of accessibility to smartphones, high-speed internet and an overall choice of shopping from the comfort of their homes, the percentage of shoppers shopping online has increased in the eCommerce ecosystem.

If you are a retailer and selling only offline in the current times you may face the issue of selling in-store Inventory first due to the low footfall in malls and stores as more and more shoppers are choosing to shop from the comfort of their homes, without going through the hassle of stepping out. And so, by going online, you will not only be able to rotate the stocks on a regular basis but also increase the sales, improving your overall unit economics.

To make the switch from offline to online, this is the right time because not only will you find superior assistance in making the transition, but you will find a rather larger audience to make your mark on.

Going by the reports of Go-Gulf, online shopping is shaping up to be a big deal in the Middle Eastern countries with the biggest amount of shoppers coming from UAE and KSA at 60% followed by Egypt at 43%.

48% of UAE and KSA consumers explore hundreds of online shopping sites to know the price range and variations in products to get the right ideas and inspirations before making a purchase.

These numbers show a positive future for eCommerce in these regions and that makes up for a crucial factor to strengthen your online presence even more than that offline.

This article has been designed to help you make the right decision with a complete understanding of all the aspects you need to consider before and after making the switch. Read on to get useful insights on how to become a top eCommerce seller in the Middle East.

How to Take Your Retail Business Online?

If we look at the statistics, the audiences of the Middle East region accounts for 60% in terms of internet usage and has the highest social media engagement of 99% in the UAE and Qatar alone.

The consumers of today prefer more options of buying, delivery, payments, etc making it necessary for a retailer to not just limit their audiences to offline channels where the only way to make a purchase is by visiting the store in person, making payments and then taking the product home by themselves

Incorporating online selling creates a more flexible environment for your customers and that has become a major factor in deciding your overall profits and growth as a business. 

But even if you decide to take the route to online selling, the biggest concern you as a retailer will face will be about the right ways and strategy to start your eCommerce journey and what all you’ll need to be prepared for in the process?

Here are the top 5 requirements to sell online in the Middle East that will help your business make the shift, start the sales and maintain growth

1. Website Creation and Marketplace Integrations

Numbers show that over 56% of shoppers prefer to search for products on different marketplaces and or on the own website of a brand so it is a fundamental step towards building your eCommerce business.

If you wish to kick start selling without waiting up for too long, you can list your products on various marketplaces such as Amazon, Noon, Jollychic etc., but it is always better to have your own website while being present on these platforms as well because then you will have multiple options to cater to your audiences with and will not be restricting your online presence. 

Platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento., etc can help you create a unique website and promote your business in the way you want to. They provide you with hundreds of templates or personalized formats to choose from along with many other plugins to ease your process of selling online. 

2. Personalized Shopping Experience

Going by the reports of Go-Gulf more than 52% of shoppers in the Middle East buy products based on their popularity on social media platforms, making it essential for an eCommerce business to give their customers a sense of personalization when recommending or pitching products to sell them.

Over 42% of customers in the region prefer to shop from platforms that provide them with options based on their previous purchases or interests in a more personalized manner. To ensure that your customers connect well with your products, work with local language experts to revamp your website to have an Arabic version.

You can change the interface of your website as per the Arabic language, show more local faces and products preferred by the audiences, etc.

3. Payment Gateway

Once you have built your website or listed your products in any of the popular marketplaces and carts, the next big thing to ensure is the safety and security of your customers when they purchase products from you and this can be done only with a trusted Payments partner. 

In the Middle East, 62% of the shoppers still prefer Cash on Deliveries due to the very reasons of theft and fraud but with more and more advanced security features being added to several Payment Gateways, users have slowly started to place orders using credit or debit cards, prepaid, wallets etc.

4. ERP and Accounting Systems

Not only for payments but having a stronger system than can evaluate your total earnings, keep track of all payments and provide you with useful information on your accounting processes is also necessary. 

These are no tasks to be done manually and require precision and attention to detail which cannot be achieved fully using manual efforts.

Apart from these, the VAT system in the Middle East, effective from January 1st, 2018 makes it even more crucial to have a robust ERP and accounting system onboarded to handle your taxes, better understand the VAT laws and be aligned with government regulations.

Utilizing the expertise of technology, you can provide your business with the right tools to maintain, manage and keep records of all your payments, get error-free calculations on profits and always be one step ahead of your competitors.

5. Logistics and Delivery

When all the shopping is done and the payments are made, the next thing to take care of is the delivery of products on time and without errors.

Shipping products on time and making sure they reach the last mile is what will set your eCommerce business apart from all others. Onboarding third-party logistics and shipping providers that have strong local ties to ensure your orders can reach the farthest of the end, will help you create a happier and bigger pool of customers.

Look for partners that provide multiple options for delivery such as same day, next day, etc. This will allow your customers the convenience of getting orders at their own time.

Your eCommerce platform will need to have complete automation of services to tackle the demands, sales, deliveries and much more, all at the same time and that can be achieved only when you have all of these 5 crucial aspects in place to ensure a seamless transition, better management and overall higher profits for your business.

Establish your Business With the Right Solutions!

Accomplishing all 5 of these highly important aspects to take your business online may be difficult if you do not have the right support by your side but with Unicommerce you’ll be able to check all the boxes and scale up your eCommerce business in the most successful way possible.

Unicommerce is a leading supply chain technology solutions provider that ensures complete simplification of all your eCommerce needs be it managing your inventory, orders, warehouse, returns and much more!

Unicommerce has been catering to hundreds of sellers, retailers and brands emerge as thriving eCommerce businesses and create new opportunities of success for them. 

To know more about our services, technology solutions or to get a free demo, speak to one of our experts right now.

Start your eCommerce journey with us today!

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Businesses will need to adapt to the new reality of consumers taking on online shopping, and expecting doorstep deliveries, to restructure their operations that’ll help them bounce back to maintain flow of profits and avoid any more distress than there already is.

Once eCommerce operations resume, companies would require strict and rapid processes to ensure no more disruption is caused in their order processing and delivery. Any more delays will straightaway shift consumer focus to competitions, making the situation much worse. 

Analyzing the situation of over 500,0000 retailers represented by Retailers Association of India (RAI), CEO Kumar Rajagopalan said “If somebody does a Rs 500 crore of turnover, the loss of sales is expected to be in the range of 50-60 percent, which could be around Rs 250-300 crore. This could be that deep”

Consumer Behaviour Indicates a Strong Need to go Omnichannel

Customers have constantly been moving to the digital databases as shopping offline is not an option due to the lockdown in place, making them rely on online platforms until the lockdown is over.

But even after the lockdown is lifted, consumers are sure to avoid physical retail due to the high possibility of being infected by a simple handshake.

And so, as customers find the online arena full of options and easier to handle, they are moving on to eCommerce more than ever and so the need for omnichannel solution has grown exponentially worldwide in the past few months.

As per a study released by Deloitte, consumer behaviour analysis indicates that they would most certainly want out of store shopping experience, increasing the trend of no contact demands, boosting online sales further. 

Source: Deloitte

Public gathering may still be avoided to eliminate any possibility of contracting infection fueling delays in offline shopping and further increasing the need for integration of offline stores with online marketplaces.

 All of these and the constantly changing customer expectations cannot be managed if your business serves only via a single platform. 

Why is Omnichannel retailing going to be the future of offline retailers?

The changing customer preferences are necessitating the offline brands to consider their omnichannel strategy seriously and invest in omnichannel technology and supply chain.

One such case that has been seen is of the giant offline supermarket Big Bazaar, that transformed its two decade old format of offline sales into an online marketplace. 

In an article by the Economic Times, Bharati Balakrishnan, senior VP, digital commerce, Future Group said that “We were able to launch BigBazaar.com within ten days and since then we’ve scaled it to about 10,000 orders a day. We’re running online wherever we’re allowed to operate stores. Some of the stores are adopting online orders faster than others,”

At a smaller level, even the Kirana stores have transformed their day to day operations by tying up with local brands for inventory, to fulfil the demands and provide doorstep deliveries of orders.

They have enabled methods of keeping the flow of business intact by successfully merging their offline operations into an online business model.

All other brands need to learn from these examples, similar for a big retailer or small Kirana stores, that understood the importance of how a low footfall can cause inventory turnover to decrease, making it difficult to justify running stores and so, with omnichannel, they got to drive higher utilization of their outlets by shifting their business online.

As the consumption of internet grew rapidly, brands that have adapted omnichannel solutions in their model of business operations, have been able to put that need of consumers into perspective.

They managed to revamp retail behaviour and went on to engage consumers by creating an online presence via own websites or mobile apps as well as listing on omnichannel marketplaces, that provide store like experiences ensuring customers to not only stick around but also to keep the sales afloat.

How Businesses Around the World are Dealing with the Lockdown?

Businesses all around the globe, especially in the US, China and European markets have gone through or undergoing similar circumstances and the solutions that they turned to can serve as leading examples for your business to manage and better operations post the lockdown period is over to minimise losses. 

As one of the biggest retailers in the world with a huge dependency of supply from the Chinese market, Nike CEO John Donahoe threw some light on their initiatives to cope up with the outbreak and how they plan to take on the economic challenges about to occur in the next few months.

The retail outlets of Nike have been closed around the world and they currently depend on digital sales. As the operations were on hold, Nike tried to connect with the customers and incorporated a shift of inventory via technology to serve consumers demands.

Nike determined a strategy that included a 4 step process based on the impact it saw in China soon after the Coronavirus outbreak. The steps included 

• Closing retail stores until contamination due to virus stops
• Focusing on eCommerce marketplaces till the lockdown continued
• Changing business practices keeping in mind all the restrictions
• Ensuring consumer engagements digitally to increase retaining growth

How to Adapt the Omnichannel Retail Solution for Your Business?

The omnichannel retail solution is designed to not only manage sales on multiple channels but to integrate the channels together so that customers experience an uninterrupted shopping experience with businesses being able to fulfil all demands from each of their stock keeping areas.

Building an omnichannel strategy helps the brand with 360 degree operational management including focus on technology driven solutions, complete supply chain management, and organizational processes that require proper training of store staff to help be able to handle online orders, and rerouting demands by analyzing all stock keeping outlets.

With this solution, you can manage all your business operations via retail as well as online sources, increase inventory turnover, run operations with higher efficiency and experience better unit economics, reducing the damage to a significant low.

What business specifics can you get out of Omnichannel retailing?

Well, integrating your business to Omnichannel retail, can offer you a plethora of support, some of which include:

•  Integrated Communication and Analytics 
•  Maintaining Customers Relations intact no matter the mode of shopping 
•  Obtaining consistent and useful Data via every transaction 
•  Customized creation of the products as per target audiences 
•  Experienced and Service Focused Shopping 
•  Strong customer support & communication management 

This lockdown has pushed brands to emphasize on being omnipresent, and that can happen only when you have Omnichannel solutions by your side, but you don’t need to go too far to find a platform that offers you all that and more!!

Unicommerce has been a pioneer in cloud-based technology platforms that offer a highly robust OmniChannel Solution through Uniware. With Unicommerce’s omnichannel solution, your business gets an instantaneous and centralized cross-channel order and inventory management system.

These solutions empower your retail brand to engage customers with a consistent quality service across various channels of markets; online marketplaces, physical stores or a company website.

Renowned brands like Being Human, TCNS, House of Anita Dongre are managing their online and store sales through Unicommerce and have seen significant growth in their overall business.

Unicommerce’s omnichannel solution is a sophisticated retail software with key features to optimize and maintain the scale of growth for your business that includes: 

• Dynamic Order Allocation to ensure routing of online orders to nearest offline store
• Endless aisle to enable store to store transfer for avoiding lost sales
• Enabling “Deliver from Store” or “Click & Collect” for reduced logistics costs
• Seamless integration with the brand website, Point of Sale as well as ERPs to ensure full data visibility
• Ability to capture customer journey across all touchpoints for improved customer experience
• Comprehensive omnichannel returns management (Buy Online, Return Offline Or Buy Offline & Return Online)
• Centralized inventory management across offline stores, website and marketplaces
• Point of Sale solution to cater to basic retail use cases

Our Omnichannel offering aims to reduce your operational and manpower costs and help you increase your business profitability.

Learn from the experience of other businesses- 

• How Chumbak streamline retail over 100 categories across 50 stores pan India, a web store and 5+ marketplaces, all via Unicommerce’s robust omnichannel solutions

• How India’s leading eyewear marketplace is enabling Omnichannel Retailing across 400+ stores 

• How Fashion Brands AND & Global Desi are improving their Warehouse Operations experience

Know how Unicommerce can help your brand manage Online & Offline operations efficiently.

Request a Demo, now! 

The post Why Retailers Want to Implement Omnichannel Retail Strategy in COVID-19 appeared first on unicommerce.com.