eCommerce Success in Pakistan: Doubling Conversions and Tripling Orders

In the last quarter, EGO's cost of customer acquisition has fallen by 70%, with conversions rates nearly doubling, and monthly orders tripling. This makes Ego's online store its best performing store (offline or online) on a Sales AND ROI basis. These outcomes are of course no accident. Renowned game designer and performance marketer, Hamaad Ravda (formerly Howzat Cricket; Shopistan.pk), has been driving e-commerce and online marketing efforts at Ego and is the force behind creating a rapidly growing revenue stream for EGO. Hamaad was kind enough to share the keys to achieving these results.

What's the uncomfortable truth here? Offline is more amplified online, given resources are in place. Like for bricks-and-mortal retail, online sales are a function of selection, allocated store inventory and marketing/ foot-traffic/demand generation. The main reason why fashion retailers are not getting the ROI they expect is that they have set up online stores without allocating the bare minimum resources towards it.

Can you add more color on resources and ROI expected ? One question we often hear is "How big can this get" ? There is evidence worldwide that online retail now accounts for up to 15% of total sales for top fashion retailers like Gap. When you look at our next door neighbors India, it is being projected that the e-commerce market will be $22 billion by 2019—comparable numbers for Pakistan could be as high as $2.5 billion by 2019. Even today, there are players in the local market running online stores with sales volume of PKR 2 crore to PKR 8 crore monthly (including 2 leading bricks-and-mortar retailers!).