When people have more leisure time away from work it’s not surprising to see their online habits change. So, during the month of Ramadan businesses online can expect to see a drastic change, specifically in the Gulf.

Tech giants have recently started to publish reports specific to Ramadan and they show how brands can capitalize on the changing behavior in this month. An example is utilizing the hours of high engagement - being able to capture the attention of customers.

Google’s 2016 Ramadan in MENA: The Digital Opportunity for Brands report shows that high frequence searches are ‘promotions’, ‘offers and discounts’. According to Facebook’s 2016 Ramadan Playbook people spend up to twice as much time online during the time between iftar and suhoor. Of the report’s interviewees 76 percent said they are more likely to buy clothes during the holy month.

Anghami, a music streaming company in the MENA region, is gearing up for Ramadan, offering additional content specifically tailored for the month, after their 2016 research showed that the GCC and Egypt recorded a 110 percent increase in content consumption on specific topics including religion, working out and cooking.

To help you leverage this change, market your business, drive conversions and optimize digital spend during Ramadan, Insider, a digital experience delivery platform, and Wamda Capital portfolio company, recently published an e-book of tips and tricks.

They have five customer experience strategies based on proven best practices suggested by their marketing consultants.

The strategies  

1. Deliver time sensitive offers during peak hours to boost conversions

By providing offers only valid until Suhoor of the same day, Insider believes you will encourage visitors to visit product detail pages, increasing conversion rates.

2. Speed up decision making with countdown timer coupons

Insider advises targeting visitors based on specific search words and delivering eye-catching coupons with a countdown timer to energize them to make a purchase.

The benefit of coupon codes is that they are unique to each visitor, hence preventing duplication. They can also be applied automatically at checkout, shortening the path to purchase even further.

3.  Drive subscription revenue and reader loyalty

Delivering Ramadan-related and personalized content based on consumer interests such as news and music immediately catches the attention of visitors, encouraging them to spend more time on a given page and drives subscriptions.

A strategy Anghami is following is offering its listeners additional content specifically tailored for Ramadan.

4. Bridge the gap between digital and physical spaces through geofence push technology

According to Insider a lot of Muslims apply for Islamic loans during the Eid al-Fitr.

It provides a marketing strategy suitable for financial institutions aiming to target customers who abandon online loan applications by using geofence push technology and encouraging them to visit a physical branch, when they are nearby.

Their marketers are convinced that setting up geofence areas around branches and targeting forms abandoners on web, mobile web or apps with mobile push notifications when they enter a geofence area dramatically increase form completion rates and drive acquisitions.

5. Create urgency for special campaigns and encourage faster bookings

‘Social proof’, a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. Leveraging this ‘social proof’ to create urgency is an effective way of reassuring visitors of their choices and alerting them to make faster decisions.

For example, showing how many people might be looking at the same deal at any one time, creating a sense of urgency would drive booking revenue significantly and increase retention rates.  

Feature image via Wikimedia Commons.