Life as an Asian startup can be especially tricky. There’s little power afforded to new players in their bids to rub shoulders with the region’s elite players, and scant traces of help from respective governments.
Startups, especially those emanating from Southeast Asia, are attaining unprecedented levels of funding for their endeavours. However, challenges are still pertinent
Image: Medium
However, the difficult startup ecosystem in Asia is showing signs of change, especially towards the southeast of the continent, with venture capital funding booming towards the end of the 2010s in relation to the start of the decade.
Despite there being clear evidence of more money available for startups in large areas of Asia, it’s still fair to say that startups face a difficult path to success.
The status quo is a hard thing to disrupt for new players on the market, so it’s vital that startups maximise their chances of gathering momentum and beginning their scaling process in good time.
One of the most effective and overlooked ways that new businesses can boost their presence on the market is through the analysis of the heavy levels of data around them. There’s a significant number of prospective customers to cater towards Asia, and analytics provides an unparalleled level of insight into how audiences interact with your website and its pages.
In an ecosystem built on fine margins, the correct interpretation of data can potentially act as the key to progression or regression for your operation. Here’s a deeper look at the power of data analysis for your business:
Unprecedented website insights
All of your decisions need to be made with customers in mind, so it’s vital that you have as good an idea as possible over what they’re thinking and how they’ll react to changes.
Fortunately, it’s possible to obtain vital information about your visitors’ respective ages, gender, geographic location and interests as a means of understanding better your key demographics.
Significantly, leading platforms such as Google Analytics are capable of telling you more about your prospective customers than perhaps they even know about themselves when it comes to buying habits.
High-quality platforms can even help you gain insights into the types of devices being used to browse your business’ website – enabling you to effectively identify the most important operating systems to offer compatibility for and optimise them accordingly.
Do most of your visitors navigate to your website on mobile devices? Is your website fast enough? Apparently, 53 per cent of users will leave the website if it takes more than three seconds to load. Assess the data available and work on building your website’s AMP compatibility if so.
A small glimpse at the wealth of data Google Analytics is capable of providing. Image: Neil Patel
Asia is the most heavily populated continent in the world, but many customers have a sense of brand loyalty that makes it more difficult for new endeavours to announce themselves successfully on the continental stage.
However, with the wealth of data available to website owners, it’s possible to learn invaluable information surrounding the vast markets of the region and cater to them accordingly.
If you have a significant number of visitors from a specific nation, be sure to create more content with them in mind, and make sure your pages accommodate them well with local languages well covered.
Also Read: Growing traffic through social media marketing for small business owners
Traffic insights not only help you to learn more about your customers, but they can also play a significant role in helping you to learn more about yourself.
For example, what brand mentions are working in bringing visitors to your website? Which pages are causing people to navigate away from your site? Is your call-to-action working? Or are visitors failing to notice?
Life as a startup can be difficult. While established businesses can allow prospective customers to fall through the net and navigate away from their website, for smaller endeavours each sale is like gold dust.
Fundamentally, making the time to analyse the wealth of data available for your website, and using the insights to make improvements to your failing pages and links can make all the difference from attaining 10,000 visitors per month and as much as 100,000. Fundamentally, if your online presence is as slick as possible, you’ll have a significantly higher chance of attracting interest.
If you’re looking to build mentions and exposure, data analysis can tell you what type of website is bringing you the most traffic and you can craft your data accordingly. For example, if you’ve noticed that a Malaysian finance website with a younger audience is bringing you 50 per cent more traffic than your next best link, be sure to work on building more links with similar companies.
Fine-tune your funnel
High-end analytics platforms like Finteza provide rich insights into your sales funnels. Image: Finteza
While websites can build your presence, it’s conversions that can directly bring in the money that your startup will need to develop.
Deep data can help to save you from needlessly missing out on sales in style. The diagram above offers a wealth of analysis through all stages of the sales funnel, from the way visitors interact with your pages to the physical act of filling out forms and adding products to their cart.
Also read: If your website isn’t converting, take action
Advanced web analytics platforms can show you precisely when cart abandonment occurs, so you can go back to the drawing board and fine-tune the way you cater to customers from start to finish.
The power of data can really pay dividends to a fledgling business. For instance, if you’re attracting plenty of interest in your products, but are experiencing a disproportionate level of abandonment on the page where visitors are required to fill out a form – data can not only alert you to the problem but provide educated insights into whether the form may be too long, or if it asks questions that are deemed too personal – or any other prospective drawback.
Life as a startup in Asia is improving, with plenty more venture capital options available for small and ambitious businesses. But despite having a large market to cater to, it’s still difficult for fresh endeavours to break the hegemony of established and trusted brands in the eastern hemisphere.
Fortunately, big data is a powerful emerging tool that enables analytics to swiftly identify your flaws online and enable you to activate them instantly to provide you with the best chance of establishing yourself.
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