The Middle East Ecommerce Report

7 findings

1. 01

   The middle is the problem

   The median store scores 66 out of 100, and half the market sits between 60 and 72. This is not a handful of broken sites dragging an average down: 43 percent of all stores land in a single ten-point band.

2. 02

   99% carry a fault costing money

   Across 15,583 stores measured in full, 61 distinct faults appeared and the average store carries 19.5 of them. Nine of the twelve most common are one-line fixes: a header, an attribute, an aria-label.

3. 03

   Speed and security are weakest

   Median 42 out of 100 on speed and 47 on security headers, against 78 to 83 on search readiness, structure and sharing. The market learned the marketing basics and skipped the plumbing.

4. 04

   43% are trading blind

   Forty three percent run no analytics and no advertising pixel at all, so they cannot tell you where an order came from. Four percent run ad pixels with no analytics, which is buying traffic with no way to judge it.

5. 05

   The strong quarter is heavier

   The top quarter carries a 289 KB median page against 212 KB for the weakest, so this is not a race to be light. They spend the weight on things that work.

6. 06

   Twenty points is twelve faults

   Median score 56 against 76 between the weakest and strongest quarters, and 26 faults against 14. The gaps are widest on the cheapest fixes: social preview, og:image, structured data, meta description, H1.

7. 07

   Only 5% clear eighty

   Seven hundred and sixty four stores of 15,583 score 80 or above. Being good here is still unusual enough to be a competitive position rather than a baseline.