Welcome and hello…

2 4 T H O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3

Laura Farrant Insight Director

Laura.farrant@digitaslbi.com +971555297123

INS IGHTS : LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP

Intro  slide  featuring  huge  picture  of  my  face  

Meet Me

•  8 years of research experience

•  4 years of research experience in the region

•  Specialisms include user research.

Why we are here today…

We want to give you: •  A better idea of the region from a digital perspective

with a round of up of current trends and behaviours. •  To help you understand how you can improve your

online offering to truly appeal and engage your target demographic.  

We hope you enjoyed the coffee…  

And remember…

Audience participation mandatory!  

Q. Which country in the region has the highest Internet penetration rate?

The highest penetration rate in the region can be found in the United Arab Emirates with 75%, followed by: Kuwait – 64% Qatar – 61% The lowest are in Egypt (26%), Morocco (35%) or Iraq (23%)  

Q. What percentage of the Middle East’s population is currently using the Internet?

In the Middle East there are around 110 million Internet users, which is 40.2% of the total population.  

Such is the importance of the Internet in the daily lives of the region’s residents that it overtakes television and other traditional forms of media. 80% of consumers in the region would rather live without a television than live without the internet.

Q. What percentage of web content is currently available in Arabic?

Just 2%. Research proves that Arabic speakers prefer to use Arabic keywords when starting a search for local products and services. It’s crucial for them to see relevant search results in Arabic but with only 2% of content available in their language the user journey is often a disappointing one.  

Q. How digitally social is the Middle East internet user?

Quick answer - very. As of 2012, social media penetration is the highest among internet users worldwide with 70.2%. For 2013, it is predicted that the Middle East will have 71 million social network users.  

Q. What social networks are used the most?

 

58M GCC users

10M GCC users

150M users

285M daily video views

Q. Which country in the region has the highest amount of Smartphone ownership?

KSA. Saudi Arabia currently leads the Middle East by smartphone penetration level, achieving a level of 63%, and is closely followed by the UAE with 61%. In real terms this means that over half the total population of these two countries are connected to a smartphone device.  

Q. With such a high amount of web users, how many Middle East businesses are currently online?

15% of businesses in the region have an online presence. Why is this when the estimated number of internet users in the region/business reach is 90 million?  

Q. What age is the average online shopper in the Middle East?

The highest proportions rest in the 35 and up age range – closely followed by the 26-35 age group. Men are more likely that women – 46% compared to 32%. B2C eCommerce sales in the region are predicted to reach an estimated $15 billion in 2015.  

Q. What is the biggest barrier to shopping online in the Middle East?

The risk of credit card fraud, closely followed by the fact that over 1/3 of people are worried about not being able to return/exchange a product.  

Nearly finished…

Q. Do Middle East based consumers prefer regional or global brands?

The quick answer? Although Middle East consumers are warming up to the idea of eCommerce, they still prefer locally focused sites over the regular international giants.  

In Saudi Arabia, the top four eCommerce sites are all local providers; Souq, Sukar, Namshi and Markavip. In the UAE, Amazon makes it to third place in the top four (11%); trailing behind local offerings Souq (20%) and Cobone (13%), but coming ahead of Markavip (9%)  

So that’s the basics covered…

And it’s all very interesting stuff. No doubt. But if you notice these stats very much group the region as one.

They are general.

And this is the regional challenge. They are plenty of stats out there to tell us what the Internet penetration rates are or how many people own a phone but there is a real lack of information on tangible behaviour.

A further challenge is that this is not a region made up of one type of person. There are huge variations in demographics.

Consider this…

81% 19%

75% 25%

Psychographic

Geographic

Demographic

Behavioral

So when it comes to designing for your business we need to be much more specific about target audience and their actual behaviours. You can’t design for the region. You have to design for your audience.  

Some organisations are well aware of this and have tested and adapted an offering to work for their target

The end result of being able to craft interfaces to meet your end user? Being better able to deliver specific messages to specific types of people. Moving from just selling to conversing  

How we get there…

Research  

The barriers…

A question for you…

What objections/concerns does your organisation have when it comes to

conducting research?  

Some common ones we come across: Statistically significant? Expensive? Time consuming? Artificial? Logistical nightmares?  

But are these really valid?

Some common ones we come across: Statistically significant? Expensive? Time consuming? Artificial? Logistical nightmares?  

For example…

The Traditional Approaches  

The Focus Group  

The one-to-one  

The online survey  

And there are other research techniques to consider as well…

What did we learn at the beginning of the session? A. The high degree of social engagement that defines the behaviour of users in this region.  

This behaviour creates a great opportunity for us all…

We can target specific groups and really get to the heart of who they are, what they are talking about and how they engage in their natural environment.  

This is social listening.

Meet Me

•  Ex-DigitasLBi Belgium

•  Social addict •  5 years professionally

& Brand Advocate for my clients ;-)

58M GCC users

+20%

~10M GCC users 76% Arabic

+100%

70M users

150M users

285M daily video views

Drivers to eCom

+66%

Social usage is growing fast in MENA

50% More than 50% of all social traffic and activity in the GCC comes from Mobile Phones.

Who is using social media?

41%

Approximately 41% of the total MENA population has internet access

88% of the MENA online population use social media sites regularly

88%

65% 35%

Female

Male

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

16 - 17

18 - 24

25 - 34

35 - 44

45+

Avg. age of a social media users in MENA

80% of GCC social users

What do they do? The average person in MENA “LIKES” 5 brands on Facebook. These are the reasons why:

Of people who are online: ª  85% have at least 1 social media account

ª  61% have 2+ accounts

ª  60% visit a social network daily

ª  34% are very active and post often

ª  41% search in both Arabic and English

ª  21% post to social in both languages

From brands I “LIKE”, I will engage with the following content types:

“I’m a customer”

“I want to be first to know

about the new offerings”

“I want the insider

knowledge”

“I like to read the brand

posts”

I am registered and I contribute more than once a week to:

58%

15%

26%

3%

23%

Average time spent on Social Media 14.3 hours/week

KEY FINDINGS: Facebook

A traditional audience will not post photos of themselves. This is changing with some audiences now willing to engage. These audiences will often also comment in both English & Arabic and sometimes uses Arabizi.

Arab expats are often bi-lingual or even trilingual. Photos of

new purchases or looks they are proud of are common

KEY FINDINGS: Instagram

Kuwait has been tagged in over 9 Million photos. More than the USA with only 7.7 Million. Dubai has about 6 Million tags. This indicates a very high degree of usage of this platform in the Middle East.

KEY FINDINGS: Instagram

‘Pinkfudgegirls’ are two BFF's who sell authentic High-End designer pieces via Instagram.

KEY FINDINGS: Twitter

•  Twitter is the fastest growing Social Network in the MENA region.

•  The estimated number of tweets produced by Twitter users in the Arab world in March 2013 was 335,792,000 tweets or 10,832,000 tweets per day.

•  76% of all tweets in the MENA region are in Arabic.

•  21% of tweets in ‘Arabizi’

•  #hashtags will be in both Arabic and English regardless of the language used for body text.

OPPORTUNITIES OF LISTENING

Why listen?

Analyse & track discussions

Identify trends & key conversation

topics

Discover priority channels

Identify online influencers and

advocates

Understand brand sentiment

Compare competitors

and campaigns

Listening helps you understand how consumers are using digital media as part of their decision journey, and enables us to engage in a relevant and appropriate manner.

...an encounter of my own

They were listening!

Another example

Me vs Nespresso advocacy

Douwe Egberts’ response

Brand Advocate identification

Customer listening & engagement journey

Stage 1 Traditional

•  Customer understanding occurs via focus groups, quantitative surveys, or phone channel/support

•  No concerted effort around social listening; possible skepticism about the benefits

Stage 2 Experimental

•  Dabbling in social listening occurs

•  Initial understanding of conversation landscape: what/where/who/why

•  Perceive potential benefits of listening

•  Still disconnected to business operations

Stage 3 Operational

•  Share learnings/insights broadly

•  Key players/responders identified (i.e. product, marketing, support)

•  Develop initial response process & start engaging

•  Listening becomes more embedded in business operations

•  Executive sponsorship

Stage 4 Impactful

•  Social listening and engagement drives real business results

•  Cross-functional teams partner to listen, engage, take consistent and timely action, and make changes based on insight

•  Listening data matched with traditional data to provide real-time overall health of the brand

Stage 5 Fully Engaged

TOOLS: Free(mium)

TOOLS: Paid

What this looks like

Channel overview

Detailed channel insights

So there are options for data gathering…

Explicit data + Implicit data = Strong insight  

What do we do once we have the data?

Formalise it within documentation

…and when we say documentation we don’t mean producing insight reports  

We mean bringing your target customer types to life…

…as a persona

What is it?

Persona A model of current human behaviour that is: •  Derived from contextual research data •  Described as if it were a real person •  Used to promote shared understanding •  Used in stories to envision the future  

How do you sell that internally…?

It’s probably best to describe it another way…

Personas are not the same as market segmentation  

Gender

Age

Income

Attitudes

Behaviours

Goals

Think of it like this: If I was to describe myself as a type for an e-commerce proposition would it be..?   •  White female

•  30-35 •  University educated •  Household income of $xxx  

It would be more along the lines of the following:  

Motivated by: •  Being able to find a great deal •  Getting access to exclusive products Goals: •  Search according to specific designers •  Seeing what’s new

Frustrations: •  Sites that don’t allow her to filter results •  Being forced to register for an account before

purchase

 

•  White female •  30-35, •  University educated

 

It’s about understanding needs and behaviours in order to design something that is going to engage me

So to get to this point…

We have to do some targeted research  

And we have to ask the right questions  

Exercise

EXERCISE TIME

How many people have seen or used Dubizzle?

Let’s imagine that Dubizzle are redesigning their site. They need to research with target users to understand the needs and wants their audience has so that they can craft a new design that will really work and engage.

Work with the person sitting next to you – assuming they fall into the target audience – and each take turns to act as participant and researcher. Each write down and ask the type of questions that you think would be important to ask when trying to conduct persona research. Then once you have each written your list, work together to formulate a final question list that you think would allow Dubizzle to get to the heart of their user’s needs.

You have 10 minutes to discuss.

You have 10 minutes

 

Lets discuss.

Good questions to ask would include: •  What does a day in their life look like? •  What are their pain points? •  What do they value the most? •  What are their goals? •  Where do they go for information? •  What other sites of a similar nature do they use and why? •  What kind of experiences are they looking for? •  What are their common objections to Dubizzle?

So where does that leave us?

At DigitasLBi we spend a significant amount of our time going direct to the user and wading in with them in their online experiences and behavior to allow our clients to make well-informed decisions. It’s the right thing to do and you will benefit in the long run.  

The insights gained from following this process will give you…

1. Focus 2. Empathy 3. Consensus 4. Efficiency 5. Decisions

Before I go, I’ll leave you with one question…

How many questions do you have about your customers and how confident are you that you have the answers to them?  

And if your are in any doubt, it’s not too late.  

Research is the

answer.  

Thank you.

THANK YOU

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