E-commerce in Bolivia has been picking up, after entrepreneurs and companies in the country were constrained to do business online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Orders for products are placed online, whilst using home delivery services and electronic payment methods in serving Bolivian online shoppers. The government and banking sectors have also made their services digitally available to make processing of transactions simple and guaranteed.
Internet penetration in Bolivia has expanded, which stood at 65% in January 2020. During the same period, the number of Internet users increased by 500,000, which brought the total number of users to about 7.5 million.
Slow Growth of E-Commerce in Bolivia
Currently however, e-commerce education in the country is inadequate, making it difficult for ordinary Bolivian retailers to reach consumers in their target market. Although they are promoting their products and services at popular social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, not many are aware that there are other approaches and digital channels that can help improve their Internet presence. Apparently, only a few are seeking help from a digital marketing company that knows the local market and the current consumer trends in Bolivia.
While digitalization is an important business strategy, companies and retailers alike should know the importance of making their target audience aware of their online presence, not only through digital advertisements.
Consumers ordinarily use organic search when looking for products or services to purchase or acquire online, Bolivian e-commerce participants therefore should also know that there are applicable search engine optimization (SEO) strategies that help make their business more visible to their target consumers.
What is Organic Search?
In layman’s terms, organic search simply means to seek information about something by using the search query page of a browser, of which Google is the most popular. The results of an organic search are ranked by Google’s search engine based on relevance of the information to the search term used as query.
The results may include articles, YouTube videos, images and maps but exclude those appearing as advertisements.
To be able to generate results in a matter of seconds, Google’s search engine bots constantly crawl and index the massive amount of information available in the world wide web. Those that meet the criteria for relevance and quality are the likeliest to appear as search engine page results in response to a particular query.
What Do Bolivian Consumers Usually Buy Online?
Bolivian e-commerce market reports indicate that the top categories of products and services purchased or acquired by online consumers in Bolivia are the following:
- Electronic devices
- Streaming services
- Payment processing services
- Mobile apps
- Video Game
- Music
- Movies
In knowing these, Bolivian retailers and providers of services not included in these categories will have awareness that most Bolivian consumers are not fully aware that there are local retailers offering consumer products and services online,.To become more competitive therefore, they should seek help from digital marketing experts, particularly those who are knowledgeable in SEO strategies.