Mobile Commerce Set To Skyrocket In South East Asia

My previous article mentioned China’s ecommerce and mobile commerce spending power which they showcase to the world come every November 11th during Singles Day making more than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

South East Asia Is The Next BIG Mobile Commerce Powerhouse

Not far behind with tremendous huge growth and development status would be South East Asia (SEA) which is made up of 11 countries (Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam).

SEA have a total population of 648 million (and growing fast!).

The top countries in this region that is leading the way in massive digital ecommerce spending would be Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Here’s a glimpse of their digital population. If taken as a single bloc, SEA’s large population of digital users can stand in comparison with leading global markets like US, Europe and China for all digital activities (internet, social media, mobile and mobile social) :

According to eMarketer, digital ad-spending for these 6 countries will increase by double digits in 2017 and 2018 while mobile ad spending will more than double during the forecast period surpassing $2.20 billion and accounting for nearly 69% of digital ad expenditures by the year 2021.

Heavy Smartphone Adoption Spurs Mobile Commerce Growth

Thanks to heavy smartphone adoption, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam will see the strongest growth in mobile ad spending among SEA.

Why are companies willing to invest so much moolah into mobile ad spending in SEA? Because the region has such a HIGH volume of mobile users which presents a HUGE opportunity for mobile commerce, hence the massive amount allocated for mobile ad spending.

Mobile commerce is skyrocketing in South East Asia as more consumers there are getting more familiar to spending online with their mobile devices.

It’s no wonder that Alibaba bought over Lazada (SEA’s largest ecommerce marketplace) for $1 billion. And not to be left out from a piece of the SEA ecommerce pie, Amazon recently launched in Singapore.

With such tremendous ecommerce growth opportunities, many online businesses have been scrambling to improve their mobile site experience and to ensure that their business is omni-channel to cater to the growing consumer segment from developing countries.

Omni What?

Omni-channel. It means having a multi-channel sales approach providing consumers with a smooth integrated shopping experience.

The customer can be shopping online from a desktop or mobile device where they can easily locate the product from your site or social media with the ability to make payment seamlessly.

With omni-channel, your online business is available and integrated with your brick and mortar (if you have one) where customers can call in to place an order with the phone or complete the checkout process via social media like FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

The omni-channel sales experience is crucial to ensure that your customers have a good buying experience be it in person, mobile, desktop and social media.

What Do Businesses Need To Do?

For a start, make sure your online business have a mobile friendly and responsive site so consumers can have a good mobile shopping experience with your site.

Ensure that your business is found on social media like Facebook where visitors can complete their purchase directly in FB without being bounced all over in the checkout process.

If you’re selling items that are :

Fashion related stuff : clothing, accessories, sport wear, eye wear, watches, jewelry, etc
Beauty : skin care, cosmetics
Food & drinks
Baby products
Pet products
Crafts
Consumer electronics
Auto accessories
(I may have missed out some other categories as these are the main ones)

Please have an Instagram and Pinterest account to upload images of your product being worn and used in every day life scenarios to make it easily shareable.

 

The new generation of mobile shoppers rely on image heavy social media recommendations from friends.

And they love to share and communicate via mobile.

We have a WhatsApp share feature where visitors can easily share your site and product page to their friends on WhatsApp which is great tool for product recommendations.

If you need help getting your online business to be mobile friendly, omni-channel with a good marketing strategy, contact us and we’ll be more than happy to help.

From the team at InstanteStore to you, Happy Selling as you prepare for the holiday shopping crowd.

Google My Business To Be More Visible

If you own a small business or have a store location, getting your business listed on Google is easy. Google My Business aims to be the one stop place integrating Google+, Google Places and all of Google’s suite of tools together. So if you already have a Google Places (previous article about it here) or G+ account, just login and click on My Business.

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Is Your Site’s Color Scheme Helping To Convert?

For those who’ve been selling consistently online, there’s always the need to find out what else can be done to further improve conversion. I’ve mentioned before on how important it is to have a good site that’s able to bring out or complement the type of products that is being sold and citing some of the top sites that we can learn from. Click here if you haven’t read it.

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5 Popular Ecommerce Questions, Their Less Popular Answers & Mistakes To Avoid

With Google updating its search algorithm practically every month, web store owners have not been too sure if what they have been doing all this while is still applicable. And so, here’s a list of question commonly asked by ecommerce merchants.

Google, SEO & Social Media

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How To Create And Use Videos For Your Store

Sony video camera

Videos are fantastic tools to help you garner a dedicated following, improve your authority ratings, turn your page into a resource and help you sell your products.

In this post, we’ll look at:

  1. The tools needed to create videos
  2. Uploading your videos to YouTube
  3. Sharing videos
  4. Using videos made by others

You do not have to be Steven Spielberg to make useful, entertaining and effective videos. All you need is a simple though-out plan, a decent video camera and a couple of other tools listed below. Naturally, you’re not going to be able to make videos with full-blown CGI effects displayed in Pacific Rim. But fret not if you have actors who are not able to display emotion in front of the camera; look how much Twilight made at the box office. 😉

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Automatically Social Media Your Blog Posts For Free

Any online business should have a blog not just for SEO purposes but as an avenue to offer valuable advice and tips to customers who want to find out more about your products or services. It’s also a great place to highlight some of the latest happening trends that’s related to your business so that customers and online visitors could gleam some useful information. With social media being vital, you’d want to make sure your blog postings are distributed to important places like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.

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Why Isn’t My Store Ranking On Google Search Results?

News Flash for Newbies! Your store is not the only one on the web. It’s true. There are thousands of others which were there way before yours. And all of them are trying to get on the first page of search results so if you’re expecting to see your store on the first page within a few months then you need to bring it down your expectation level a couple of notches unless you…

Pay For Traffic (Pay Per Click)
Paid ads are an easy and possibly a good way to get your site’s link on the first page of search results. But use this method only if you’ve done your research on which keywords convert and which do not. Otherwise you could be looking at lots of traffic headed your way but with no sales to show for it. You could end up burning a hole on your pocket.

Here are a couple of articles to give you a heads-up on this.
http://ecommerce.instantestore.com/when-should-you-use-ppc/
http://ecommerce.instantestore.com/loads-of-traffic-flowing-in-from-ppc-but-still-no-sales/

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Offer Discount Coupons For Father’s Day 2013

Father’s Day 2013 is just around the corner. Hope you’ve all gotten your promotions set up along with some awesome gift suggestions for dads. Don’t forget to factor in something for grandfathers and would-be-fathers as well. And of course, it’s always a great time to take advantage of the sales and promos that are happening now to get a little something for your brother, boyfriend, fiancee and hubby.

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Design Tips From The Top Online Shopping Sites

What do some of the top online shopping sites have in common that draw tonnes of shoppers to buy from them? Nice pictures. Lots of nice, clear and colorful images. Less text. The design of their sites were made in such a way to put all the focus on the products. Whatever that is on the main page of their sites were placed there to capture the attention of shoppers the moment they land on the site. I’m not saying that everyone’s web store should all start looking like these top shopping sites as it would very well depend on what your own online store is selling but there are clear pointers that we could all learn and pick from these top sites.

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Shopping Search Engines To Compare And Place Your Products

Getting your products more exposure will help spread the word about your online store. Normally, merchants will have their products added to the popular shopping search engines like Google Shopping and Amazon. However, there are a few other top comparison search engines that one could consider.

Most of these sites have major categories like Electronics, Computers, Clothing, Accessories, Appliances, Sports, Jewelry, Furniture, Health and Beauty, Home and Garden, Children, Games, etc.

Depending on the type of products that you are selling, you could check out the categories listed on these sites to see whether they are offering similar products as your store along with the pricing to compare.  If you’ve got a better price to offer, then by all means go for it.

If you’re on a tight budget, stick to the free ones. Otherwise, you could check out some of these popular shopping search sites that consumers normally go to when they want to look for specific products. I’ve listed the tops ones here. Most of them will charge a cost-per-click (CPC) rate.

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