How to Adjust your Retail Strategy & take it Online During the COVID 19 Pandemic?

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic businesses in the MENA region are facing uncertainty in terms of selling inventory and generating revenue. To stay profitable during these tough times, today’s post discusses how businesses can apply certain strategies to provide their customers with relevant, frictionless and helpful shopping experiences.

1. Prioritize Business Challenges

Prioritization is key when it comes to addressing aspects that impact your site’s performance.  Evaluate whether or not your messaging or design is resonating with the target audience. One may also look into ways to optimize customer support and promotions while managing volatility in site traffic and transaction volume.

2. Optimize Site Speed

Due to strict regulations amid COVID -19 in regards to ongoing store closures, people are now more inclined towards shopping online. Observing online traffic spikes, it’s critical for your official website to be as fast as possible to provide a seamless experience to users, enabling them to make purchases with least hassle.

One way to do this is checking your content delivery network (CDN) providers (for example., Akamai, Cloudflare, Google Cloud CDN) for settings that can allow faster requests. Another method one can opt for is implementing HTTP-caching methods that improve load times for returning users and reduce server load. You also optimize images, delete unused tags from your tag managers, clean up bloated CSS and JS code to provide a faster experience.

3. Make the Checkout Process Simple

76% of smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies whose checkout and payment processing system is fast. Also incorporating personalization enhancements such as saving recently explored items and critical information, can help increase sales volume.

Also Read: - Google’s Search Insights Reveal How Brands Can Help During the COVID-19 Pandemic

4. Leverage AI to Augment Customer Support

Since the beginning of 2020, consumer searches in MENA region for “Customer Service” has grown by 43%, making businesses shift their priorities towards making the experience seamless. Leveraging AI, brands can address customer service concerns while being transparent about expectations and deliverables.

Related: - Chatbot Development Company Dubai

5. Show That You Care

A recent survey revealed that over 50% of U.S. shoppers want to hear how brands and companies are reacting amid the corona pandemic. Businesses in the MENA can apply this learning and use their site’s homepage to share information in regards to how they are supporting customers. Remain authentic, avoid corporate crap and ensure your communication and other site notifications are simple, yet distinct, with soothing colors and fonts. Also, remember to allow users to easily close any banners at any point of time they wish to.

6. Rethink your Creative & Media Campaign Strategy

As routines change to meet the demanding needs of social isolation and shelter-in-place orders are also altering shopping behaviors. Businesses need to ensure that campaigns and creative assets reflect according to the situation. Brands should focus on updating their content, explicitly mention locations that may be closed, discontinue campaign where operations aren’t possible, be relevant and empathetic, use automated solutions to respond to real-time signals and optimize digital campaigns based on scenarios.

Related: - Digital Marketing Agency in Dubai

7. Consistency across Channels

During these turbulent times, people struggle to find information they can trust, and they’re browsing online to find it. In MENA, specifically, searches for “opening hours,” have drastically increased by 75%.5. So, taking this online behavior into consideration, make sure to properly communicate product availability, shipping times and other brand messaging across all entities.