Case study · Saudi e-commerce store
The store doubled its spend, and its orders tripled
A Saudi store whose ads “worked” on paper while its growth had stalled. In 90 days we tied every riyal of ad spend to the order that actually reached the store: sales grew 3.5 times and the cost per actual order fell 30%.
- Actual orders
- +211%
- Cost per actual order
- −30%
- Riyals of sales per riyal of ads
- 4.67.5
- of sales came from a new offer
- 42%
- Client
- A Saudi e-commerce store on Shopify
- Period
- February – April 2026
- My role
- Growth partner: from ad to order
- Channels
- Meta Ads · Shopify
The ads looked fine. Sales weren’t moving.
The owner was spending steadily and the ad dashboard showed no obvious problem. The full picture was different: every riyal of ads brought back only 4.6 riyals in sales, almost a third of sales were closed by hand outside the store, and growth was flat.
Any increase in budget would have meant higher cost, not more growth.
| The 90 days before | Figure |
|---|---|
| Ad spend (Meta) | 21,513 SAR |
| Actual orders in the store | ~295 |
| Cost per actual order | ~71 SAR |
| Sales closed by hand outside the store | ~33% |
The problem wasn’t the ads. It was what happened after them.
Decisions were made on platform numbers, not store numbers
What the ad dashboard says is one thing; what reaches the store and gets paid is another. Without connecting the two, every budget decision is a guess.
The purchase journey didn’t finish inside the store
Many interested buyers completed their order in manual chats. That means more time, lost orders, and ads that never learn who actually bought.
The offer gave customers no stronger reason to buy
Spend kept pushing people toward the same offers, so nothing lifted the decision to buy when the budget went up.
What changed
Every decision is measured on the actual order
Ads are judged by the orders that reach the store and what they cost, so we knew where to add budget and where to cut it.
The purchase journey moved into the store
Online-store sales rose +409% and manual sales fell 48%. Buying now happens on its own, without a conversation.
A new offer I designed for the store
A new bundle I proposed became 42% of the period’s sales on its own, taking 141K SAR from zero.
Scaling spend with confidence, not risk
Spend doubled while the cost of a thousand impressions fell 40%, so the store reached a bigger audience for less.
The result in 90 days
Actual orders
Shopify
+211%
Cost per actual order
Meta spend ÷ store orders
−30%
Sales per riyal of ads
Sales ÷ Meta spend
+63%
| 90 days before | 90 days after | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total sales | ~95K SAR | 337K SAR | +254% |
| Actual orders | ~295 | 916 | +211% |
| Ad spend | 21.5K SAR | 45.3K SAR | ×2.1 |
| Cost per actual order | ~71 SAR | 49 SAR | −30% |
| Online-store sales | ~63K SAR | 320K SAR | +409% |
The numbers, from the source
Product names, campaign names and anything that identifies the client are hidden. The screenshots are exactly as the platforms show them; no figure has been edited.
In fairness
The period included Ramadan and Eid, which explains the clear spike in Eid week. But the season doesn’t explain why the cost per order fell, why sales moved from manual chats into the store, or why a new offer became 42% of sales.
Meta’s earlier period was three days longer than Shopify’s, so we costed both on the same number of days. That made the improvement smaller, not bigger. And the earlier Shopify figures are worked out from the platform’s own comparison percentages.
Next step
Your ads say one number and your bank account says another?
I reconcile your ad numbers with your actual sales, and find out why your growth stalled.
- The 10-day Growth Stability Diagnosis: we trace your customer’s whole journey, from the ad to the paid order.
- See where your growth is leaking, in numbers, and what has to change first.
- Then you decide: do it yourself, or carry on together. No commitment up front.
For e-commerce stores in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.