This article is a transcript of a presentation that I made to the Arab Ecommerce Summit in Dubai this week. It is a wake up call to merchants who are still making excuses for not selling online. Read Part 1.
EXCUSES
Why is this region so far behind when it comes to Ecommerce? Is it behind? Or is that just a perception?
There are some very interesting and successful ecommerce companies in this region. Careem and Souq, while copy-cat businesses have got people transacting online. There are several food delivery apps that connect consumers with local food shops. Insta-shop allows people to shop for groceries from their phone without having to park and deal with endless checkouts.
The region also has some innovative online shopping experiences, like Mr Draper.
But the figures show that online shopping as a percentage is smaller here than in other parts of the world, and many traditional retailers still make excuses for not offering their customers an online shopping experience.
EXCUSE 1 – Customers are not ready.
Some retailers firmly believe that people want to choose their own produce and touch and feel clothing. They continue to build brick-and-mortar stores in malls in preference to ecommerce.
Wrong. Every hand went up in this room when I asked who had used Ecommerce recently. Talk to Fetchr – deliveries are growing. Talk to Payfort – transactions are growing. Talk to Amazon – they must see that the number of transactions from this part of the world are growing enough to invest half a billion dollars into a local marketplace.
There is nothing to suggest that customers in the Middle East are any different to customers around the world. They want convenience. They want transparent pricing, they want choice.
If they can’t find a local online shop, they will buy from overseas, either through a merchant who provides free global shipping, or Shop and Ship.
EXCUSE 2 – Deliveries
There is no doubt that a merchant in the UK who wants to sell can provide a half decent delivery service through the mail – although it will not be same day!
The lack of address systems is regularly brought up by retailers who say they are not ready to do e-commerce,
But let’s face it – if your local curry shop can sort this out, then so can you.
There are challenges, and there are negative perceptions brought about by too many delivery horror stories. But there are also solutions. Fetchr is one of them, working on technology to overcome challenges around delivery. There is also no reason why solutions that have been developed in other countries can’t work here – from lockers to networks of collection points.
For those of you with stores, “Click and Collect” doesn’t have to be hard, with many ‘turn-key’ solutions available.
EXCUSE 3 – Payments
While cash on delivery might be a pain, it does work for those of your customers who don’t have access to credit cards and bank accounts.
As far as I know, you can’t buy a cash on delivery ticket through the Emirates App, so they must have taken a decision to focus on customers who do have cards and trust Emirates enough to use them. We will come back to trust later.
Many retailers are offering incentives to discourage Cash on Delivery – from bonus loyalty points to withholding certain products from sale.
FINTECH is growing fast. From mobile wallets to blockchain. Perhaps we need to look East instead of West here. AliPay is an incredible example of cash being replaced by the phone.
From the merchant side, there are several payment gateways, including Payfort that have integrated across the GCC to support payment methods such as KNET or SADAT.
Some of these gateways also provide merchant accounts for start-ups who cant come up with guarantees demanded by banks.
EXCUSE 4 – Internal Issues
For some companies, this is a a real excuse. It might be legacy systems, it might be lack of talent, it might be leadership – or lack of it, it might be cultural paralysis. But guess what – your customers don’t care.
If you cannot sort yourself out, then your customers will go to competitors. See excuse 1.
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