The digital ecosystem has developed a lot in recent years in Pakistan; however, it is not mature enough when compared to other countries. The road to success in online ventures in Pakistan is like a bumpy ride.
The socio-political unrest is making most people wait for the right time to launch an online business. But the business community knows, that better times never come if you wait, stay idle and remain stagnant. Somehow, you have to take the step and keep on moving and growing, let it be slow but steady and constant.
We greet your selfless efforts if you are still pushing your store forward and finding new ways how to grow your business. Business Recorder reports that Pakistan eCommerce Market is projected to generate $7.7 billion in revenues in 2022. It reflects that you have enough space to grow and expand your business online. To help you further, we have compiled a list of effective tips to let you achieve growth targets. Give them a read to try and evaluate how they helped you.
How to Grow Business Online – 11 Effective Tips
1. Choose or switch to the right platform
Pakistan is rapidly growing in the eCommerce arena where technology services companies and eCommerce marketplace are providing great opportunities for online businesses to grow. If you are facing difficulties in tapping the Pakistani eCommerce market, you might have committed a mistake in selecting an eCommerce platform that is right for your business. Dealing with the questions about how to grow a business is easier if you are on the right track.
Developing an online store on platforms like Daraz.pk, FB marketplace, Instagram Shop, OLX, ShopHive, and HomeShopping can give your business a kick start, but these cannot guarantee a continuous stream of income. Your listings are in their control. Your products may get delisted or unranked at any time you never know. As soon as your products get traction, more sellers will appear with the same listings in low quality and low price. Thus the growing competition may limit your growth on such platforms. It is better to have an identity of your own by hiring reliable eCommerce development services that build you a virtual space that syncs with your business niche, scale, and nature. Professionals choose the right eCommerce platform that is suitable to your business needs, let it be WooCommerce, Shopify, or Magento, and mold it to your requirements.
2. Simplify User Experience
Online users of Pakistan are not tech savvy so they expect the simplest, user-friendly, and guided design of an eCommerce website. Use color psychology with a local perspective to highlight important facts and objects so they can easily recognize how it works.
Work on varying design factors to make it look natural and logical. It will help you explore different design ways how to grow your business. Let the customers use common sense in navigating through the different design objects. You need to modify and improve:
- Typography
- Spacing and margins
- Color and images
- Logical flow
3. Try speed and performance optimization
Online users don’t like to give a second thought to online stores that are slow to low or have poor performance in their browsers. Different factors affect the speed and performance of your online store.
If your webshop is based on a marketplace then you have limited resources to improve web page loading speed. However, if you run and manage an eCommerce website, you can try different techniques or hire a leading eCommerce development company for it.
4. Acquire organic traffic
Online stores in Pakistan still depend largely on search engines as few of the multivendor stores are there to cater to their needs. By default, most buyers refer to search engines to search for a product by name, relevant keyword, voice note, or image.
To appear on top of search results and acquire organic traffic, you need SEO. Search Engine Optimization aims to help search engines understand your store and index it against relevant search queries. Doing it all yourself may be a daunting experience therefore it is recommended to hire a competent agency for SEO services that know the best practices and have a sound portfolio of serving similar online stores.
5. Take advantage of social media
Pakistan Today, a prominent news agency reported in one of its articles that Pakistan has 71.70 million active social media users as of January 2022. Reach out to such a massive and lively audience to make the most out of social media. Start crafting useful and interactive content around your business to share and engage users on social media.
Start with YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter as it is the most commonly used social app in Pakistan. If you are finding ways how to expand your business, it is time to ensure your presence on these top three platforms. People also like to spend time on short-form video-sharing apps like Tiktok, Snack videos, Likee, and more. They are easily be targeted with ads, influencer collaboration, or short and interactive videos of your products.
6. Try digital advertisement
Google and Facebook are the top contenders to consider when it comes to exploring different platforms as to how to grow your business online. Appearing in top searches the organic way is competitive and time-consuming. A quick way to top the ranking is running a PPC – pay per click – campaign.
Sign up to Google Ads, set up promotions, and reach out to a targeted community. As soon as you set aside a budget for it, your ads start appearing on the mobile and desktop screens of the concerned users. Choose a platform where most of your potential customers reside.
7. Project Social proof
Use social proofs to gain trust and credibility. It is your customer reviews, testimonials, and feedback they submit to your online store, Google My Business profile, and other third-party reviews and rating networks.
Encourage your happy customers to share a word about their shopping experience and project their thoughts on the store or on social media to attract more customers. You can also exhibit the social signals such as likes, shares, comments, tweets, watch hours, etc as social proofs. It is among the most effective tips to grow business both on and offline.
8. Offer flash sales
We all love to avail of deals and discounts on our favorite stores. It is the most result-driven business growth tip as most people await special events like a clearance sale, Ramadan offer, and Eid gala to get discounts. You can boost sales and conversions in your store by offering discounts when customers are expecting the most. As Daraz has a tradition of 11.11 and black Friday sales that is appreciated the most by online buyers. You can invent a similar opportunity or go with the flow for ultimate business growth.
9. Make yourself available
Offer around-the-clock or prompt customer service to encourage customers in reaching out to your support team. Just like in other countries, the online buyers in Pakistan also have a number of queries to ask before they place orders. Let them contact you with the easiest methods. It can be on call, email, or chat. However, you can install widgets to connect your WhatsApp Business or FB official page to the website so that customers can interact easily using their social accounts.
10. Help your community
The youth of Pakistan is eager to take on any challenging task, however, they lack guidance. If you are successful enough in making a decent income out of your online business, it is time to move a step ahead in your niche. If you are selling cloth, start educating the youth to join you and sell your products on commission as an affiliate. In pursuit of learning and earning a livelihood for their families, they will boost your business, which is not bad at all.
You are helping the community, and it is paying you back in terms of higher sales and public relations. It is an effective strategy if you start it for the sake of helping and growing the people around you. Are you still eager to know how to grow your business online? Extend this idea to social groups on WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and Facebook, online forums, and discussion boards to expand our business across the country.
11. Build an Email list
It is better to form a community of loyal customers, who are ready to try any of your new products with email updates. Regular customers of your online store are more likely to convert in comparison to new users.
In addition to the marketing efforts for hunting new customers, you can take steps to retain and reconvert existing customers by building an email list. Explore different techniques as to how to grow business with email. It may require you to collect emails with their consent and agreement to receive the newsletter. You can create different lists of customers according to their order history and preferences to make the marketing efforts more effective and fruitful.
Final words
These were some of the tried and tested tips to help you grow an online business, as we have been into it for more than 15 years since we are a dedicated eCommerce development company. Though we accept the fact a tip or strategy does not fit all. You can review the tips shared in this post to implement and trace their effectiveness for the specific niche you aim to grow in. you will get to learn to modify the same tips a bit or coin new ones. If so, share them with us too.
