Retail and Ecommerce — growth plan

Cash on delivery is not a payment method. It is a returns problem.

Marketing and technology for Nepali retail and online stores — built around the real constraints: COD refusal, logistics cost, and repeat purchase.

How customers find you

Social-led and increasingly conversational. Products are found on Instagram and TikTok, then verified through the seller's page, comments and Messenger. A significant share of Nepali ecommerce is completed entirely inside Facebook or Instagram messaging rather than on a website. Daraz is a discovery channel in its own right, with its own economics. Search demand exists but concentrates on category and price terms.

What usually goes wrong

Cash-on-delivery refusal rates that quietly destroy margin — the order was never a sale, but the delivery cost was real
Every enquiry handled manually in Messenger, so the business cannot grow past what one person can type
A product catalogue with no descriptions, no specifications and no search visibility
Delivery cost and time not shown until checkout, which is where the basket is abandoned
No first-party customer list, so every sale requires buying the customer again
Return and exchange policy either absent or unclear, which suppresses first purchase

The decision journey

How the decision is actually made.

Discovery

A scroll-stopping product video or image. Usually Instagram, TikTok or a Facebook group.

Interest

Profile checked, comments read. Comments are read as reviews and matter more than the caption.

Enquiry

A message asking price, size and delivery. In Nepal this step is frequently the entire sales process.

Decision

Price, delivery time, and whether the seller feels legitimate. COD availability reduces perceived risk.

Purchase

Completed in chat or at checkout. Every additional form field costs conversions.

Delivery and repeat

The unboxing decides the second order. Almost nobody engineers this deliberately.

What a buyer must believe first

Real product photography with scale and detail, not supplier catalogue images
A clearly stated return and exchange policy that a buyer can find before ordering
Visible delivery cost and realistic timeframes by location
Customer reviews with photographs
A verifiable physical presence or registration for higher-value purchases

The plan

What we would actually do for a retail and ecommerce business.

Brand

How the brand should be built

In a market where the same imported product is sold by thirty pages, the brand is the only defensible asset. Build it on service specifics — exchange terms, delivery speed, how problems are handled — because those are provable and copyable only by actually doing them. Packaging is a brand surface and a repeat-purchase driver, not a cost line.

Digital

What the website or app has to do

A store that loads fast on a mid-range Android phone on 4G. Product pages with real descriptions, specifications and structured data. Delivery cost calculated and shown early. Payment through eSewa, Khalti and Fonepay alongside COD, with a genuine incentive to prepay — prepaid orders do not get refused at the door. Inventory that stays in sync with what is being advertised.

Content

The content system

Product video at volume — the single highest-leverage content type in this sector. User-generated content and reviews collected systematically. Category and buying-guide content for search demand. A content calendar built around the festival and wedding seasons, which concentrate a large share of annual retail revenue.

Paid media

How to buy attention here

Meta advantage-style catalogue campaigns for products with a real catalogue feed. TikTok for discovery of visually demonstrable products. Google Shopping and search for considered purchases. Retargeting on cart abandonment, which in Nepali ecommerce is high and recoverable. Budget is judged against contribution margin after delivery and COD failure, not against revenue.

Search, AEO and local visibility

Category pages built as landing pages rather than as filtered grids. Product structured data with real availability and price. Comparison and buying-guide content for considered purchases. Local search for anyone with a physical shop — 'near me' converts far better than category terms.

Conversion

Turning interest into a customer

Reduce COD refusal deliberately: order confirmation by message, prepaid incentives, delivery windows, and a follow-up before dispatch. Shorten checkout to the fields that are genuinely needed. Automate the repetitive half of Messenger handling so a human handles the half that needs one. Recover abandoned carts.

Retention

Keeping them

Repeat purchase is where a Nepali store becomes profitable, because the second order costs almost nothing to acquire. Post-purchase sequences, replenishment reminders, a customer list you own, and packaging worth photographing. Reviews requested at the right moment and used in advertising.

Measurement

What is worth measuring here.

These are indicators, not promises. What they are useful for is telling you whether the work is doing anything — early enough to change it.

Contribution margin per order: Revenue is misleading once delivery cost and COD failure are counted.
COD refusal rate: Usually the largest single leak, and usually the most fixable.
Prepaid order share: Prepaid orders are not refused at the door. Moving this number moves profit.
Repeat purchase rate within 90 days: Determines whether acquisition spend is an investment or a treadmill.
Cart abandonment recovery: The cheapest revenue available to almost every store.

Where we would start

Suggested package

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Retail and ecommerce — frequently asked questions

How do we reduce cash-on-delivery refusals?

Confirm every order by message before dispatch, give a real incentive to prepay through eSewa or Khalti, narrow delivery windows, and stop advertising to audiences that historically refuse. Most stores can move this materially within a quarter, and it goes straight to the bottom line.

Do we need a website if we sell through Instagram and Messenger?

You need one before you outgrow manual selling. Chat selling works up to roughly the volume one person can handle, then it becomes the ceiling. A store also gives you search visibility, a customer list you own, and a catalogue that paid media can actually use.

Is Daraz worth it alongside our own store?

As an acquisition channel, often yes — it has demand you do not have to buy. But the commission and the lack of customer data make it a poor place to keep a repeat customer. Treat it as the top of the funnel and work to move repeat buyers direct.

Let us look at your retail and ecommerce business specifically.

This page is the general pattern. The first conversation is about where your business actually differs from it.

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