Overview
A leading Turkish marketplace offering a wide range of products — from fashion and beauty to tech accessories and home goods — had gained massive momentum locally. Backed by strong logistics, supplier networks, and brand equity, the platform set its sights on expanding into the Gulf as its next major growth frontier.
The opportunity was clear: the GCC was showing record-high digital adoption, mobile-first consumer behavior, and a growing appetite for international shopping. But success in Turkey didn’t guarantee traction in Riyadh or Dubai. The company needed more than Arabic translation — it needed a localized growth engine grounded in data and cultural fluency.
The Challenge
Initial experiments with cross-border campaigns into Saudi Arabia and the UAE led to high traffic but poor conversion. Bounce rates exceeded 70%. Users spent time browsing, but cart activity was minimal. Payment failures were common, and customer service flagged recurring complaints: unfamiliar sizing charts, lack of Arabic reviews, unclear shipping policies, and no cash-on-delivery.
The platform’s product offering was solid — but the experience felt foreign. Gulf users weren’t seeing their needs, tastes, or lifestyle reflected in the journey.
The question shifted from “how do we promote this store?” to “how do we make this store feel like it was built for them?”
Our Approach
1. Market-Cultural Repositioning
We began with a full customer journey audit focused on user behavior in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Rather than guessing, we used session replays, heatmaps, and event tracking to identify exactly where users were dropping off.
The brand’s original messaging — minimalist, trend-forward, and pricing-focused — was reframed to speak to Gulf consumer values: reliability, exclusivity, lifestyle elevation, and family-centric use cases.
Landing pages were rewritten to include:
- Local lifestyle visuals (home settings, modest fashion, etc.)
- Arabic testimonials and reviews
- “Top Picks in Riyadh / Dubai” collections
- Custom shopping journeys around gifting, Ramadan, weddings, and back-to-school
2. Data-Driven Decision Making
We integrated GA4, Meta Pixel, and Mixpanel to track user flow from ad click to checkout. Key insights included:
- Mobile users from Saudi preferred bundles over single SKUs
- Conversion rates increased by 62% when Arabic product descriptions included real user tips
- Ads that featured “localized product curations” had 2.3x ROAS compared to generic collections
- Regions like Jeddah had higher cart values than Riyadh, but lower retention — signaling a UX trust gap
These data points guided us to:
- Launch city-based ad sets
- Adapt pricing displays (SAR + inclusive of VAT)
- Offer COD (Cash on Delivery) and Aramex shipping at checkout
- Reduce image-heavy category pages to boost loading speed on mobile networks
3. Retention & Reactivation
Post-purchase communication was entirely rebuilt. Instead of email-heavy flows, we used WhatsApp broadcasts in Arabic with curated offers based on browsing behavior.
We also deployed winback campaigns for users who viewed a product multiple times but never purchased — offering tailored bundles with expiry timers.
Customer LTV increased by 38% within the first 90 days of launch in the Gulf region.
Results
Within the first 10 weeks of localized rollout:
- Conversion rate improved from 0.8% to 2.7%
- Average Order Value (AOV) increased by 22% in KSA
- Blended ROAS across Meta and TikTok: 3.1x
- Customer support volume dropped by 41% after UX localization
- Repeat purchase rate (within 60 days) doubled in UAE
The marketplace was no longer seen as a “foreign site” — it began behaving like a local favorite with international quality.
Key Takeaway
Cross-border growth isn’t just about logistics or language. It’s about making users feel seen — in every word, image, policy, and experience.
By combining behavioral analytics with deep cultural fluency, we helped a Turkish brand build genuine traction in one of the most competitive eCommerce regions in the world.