eCommerce Case Study
In recent years, the eCommerce market in Romania has started to grow significantly ...
How do we know that?
From personal experience.
You see, from the last quarter of 2019 to the end of the first quarter of 2020 we have managed to test a number of campaigns for different clients in different eCommerce domains.
And we have come to the conclusion that the market is still growing, but cannot yet approach the western part of Europe.
Statistics Romania and Europe - eCommerce
I want to exclude the countries of Europe for a moment ...
And let's talk more about Romania and the huge potential of the online environment in our country.
Until the summer of 2019, Romania had a rate of around 26% for online purchases, and now, with these recent developments, the rate is starting to triple.
How far will it grow?
Our guess is that it will increase by a minimum of 60% from the current time once this chaos is over. We believe that in this crisis period the consumer will become more educated in buying products online and will realize the ease with which he can do all the shopping processes.
Most of the time, people are sceptical about online because of trust, speed of delivery and payment security issues. But all this can be solved with good marketing, establishing customer relationships and online authority.
About Eastern European countries ...
The online connection rate is around 72%, and 50% of them go online to shop.
In 2018, 20% of the population shopped online, while 2019 saw an increase of 2-5%.
What happens in 2020?
In 2020, the percentages have started to explode across the board and more and more people are starting to trust buying products online.
Regarding people's desire to see a product before they buy it, statistics say that 48% of people want to see a product before they buy it, and their preferred method of payment is cashback (70% of buyers).
About devices used in online sales
By the end of 2019, statistical reports on devices used for online shopping show the following:
Sales by device: 36.4% PC/Laptop - 63.6% Mobile
Sales value by device: 42.9% PC/Laptop - 57.1% Mobile
Average sales by device: 289 RON PC/Laptop - 205 RON Mobile
Percentage of clicks by device: 28.1% PC/Laptop - 71.9% Mobile
Conversion rate per device: 2.10% PC/Laptop - 1.43% Mobile
Percentages of clicks and sales by time of day
The highest activity on mobile is recorded between 20:00 and 00:00, this period being responsible for 29% of traffic and 26% of sales.
Statistics also say that ...
People are generally active on their PC/Laptop between 10:00 and 14:00, which means that 27% of traffic and 30% of sales are generated between these hours from these devices.
During the day, statistically, the conversion rate is better on PC/Laptop than on mobile, and most sales are recorded between 22:00 and 23:00 (4.6% of total sales).
The evolution of the online environment in recent years in Romania
To make things easier for you, we have chosen to divide your topic into a few sub-topics:
1. The rate of buying products online has increased significantly in recent years.
2. 50% of online stores in Romania were launched in the last 5 years.
3. The number of online shops is growing, especially in this period of crisis.
4. More than 40% of urban shoppers say they shop online increasingly often and at least once a month order online.
5. Approximately 40% of online purchases are made from mobile.
6. Reimbursement is the preferred method of payment (for now).
7. The most popular combination for mass selling online is long term SEO combined with the creation of quality video and photo/text content and the use of both short term and long term advertising.
8. IT products and electronics/home appliances are the most sold products online at the moment.
Case studies on the Romanian market for two online shops from 1 September 2019 to 31 March 2020.
Online clothes shop
The first subject in our case study is an online clothing store, an affordable store for the common man with a very good price/quality ratio.
The promotional campaign started with ads and content creation on Facebook and Instagram in the form of photo-text as posts. With this start we were able to study people's reaction to the posts from the organic side, our client has over 5,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram.
Unfortunately, the response to organic posts has been quite poor due to Facebook's updated algorithm, as it has chosen to no longer prioritize business pages in users' newsfeeds.
What happened next?
At the beginning of December we started paid campaigns on Facebook and Instagram with a promotion budget of 5.000 RON per month. Considering that the courier companies had a break during the holidays, sales were pretty good until December 18th.
At our suggestion, the client started to cut prices throughout the Christmas period, and by the end of the month managed to sell about 33,000 RON, with only 5,000 RON invested in ads, with a ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) rate of over 6.5.
How did we continue in January?
In January we decided to adopt a different strategy ...
Because campaigns have started to go downhill.
As a strategy we chose to focus on quality video content produced by our photo-video team and readjusted the budget to invest in online ads.
In the next period we decided to use a budget of about 3.000 RON per month to test and scale new campaigns using the information gathered so far.
As you can see above, the campaigns have started to go better and better and the profits have started to increase.
As calculations, subtracting the costs on products, transport and advertising, the client got a profit of 20.000 RON in the company.
Food Shop
The second subject of our case study is a grocery store.
How exactly does the business fit into the market?
1. The shop is newly established.
2. No online marketing was done at all.
3. Had not performed SEO.
4. Has few products.
5. Delivers throughout Romania.
What was the promotion strategy?
Starting with a budget of 2.000 RON for online ads in January, we chose to focus on different promotions and test campaigns.
By closely following the market globally, we were expecting this period of staying in house and the strategy was implemented based on the information we had ...
With over 3 years of experience in the field and over $1,000,000 spent on online advertising campaigns globally, we decided to adopt an aggressive content strategy.
We used methods such as SEO, Chat Boti and email marketing to LinkedIn campaigns and paid campaigns on Google, Facebook, Instagram and Messenger to maximize the effectiveness of the campaign to promote the products of this store.
How did we start the campaign?
By warming up the cold hearings.
We started by doing this to figure out how to reach people with information, using the most optimal budget for ads.
You see, ads are the most effective way to start a campaign, as the SEO part takes time to grow in Google and other search engines.
It has been a month of work in which we collected data and thus managed to gradually start several sales campaigns.
January brought us sales of about 2,000 RON, the store was slightly down.
The overall profit of a product is approximately 30-50% of the total value of the acestua, and as a calculation we refer to the lowest percentage profit to ensure risk coverage.
But let's go back...
Although sales were only 2,000 RON in January and the store is not in profit, we managed to gather a lot of information about the audience and still knew where to target potential customers.
Making a rough calculation, the store made a profit from sales of about 600 RON from which we subtract the 2,000 RON paid to the platforms, resulting in a loss of about 1,400 RON for the month of January.
How did the campaign continue in February?
In February, the sales were worth more than 3,700 RON, the profit was around 900 RON.
By deducting from these the cost of advertising ...
We arrive at a minus of 1,100 RON, to which we add the 1,400 RON of last month, resulting in a total of 2,500 RON.
What does March have in store for us?
March was the month we reaped the rewards.
You see, given the chaos generated with the emergence of the coronavirus, everyone started shopping online. And this has been felt in Romania.
With the data collected in the past, we managed to generate sales of over 22,000 RON by the end of the month, using the same ad budget as in previous months.
But what was the advantage?
We had a lot of data collected from previous campaigns and thus managed to create warm, profitable audiences.
We draw the line at the end of March and get the following results:
Sales: 22.000 RON
Investment in ads: 2.000 RON + 2.500 RON from previous months
Profits on products without reducing the investment in advertising: +6.600 RON
Actual profit: + 2.100 RON
Conclusion
If you are planning to open an online shop or move your business online ...
Now is the time to act!
What's more, if you have a new idea and money to invest, this is the ideal time to make the most of the circumstances.
If you know the potential of your business and partner with people who know the online business, it's almost impossible to fail, whether selling products or services, especially online.
But you will need two things: patience and perseverance.
When you decide you want to grow your business online, we are here to help you with the greatest pleasure!