What the evidence says
Google and Visa’s September 2025 analysis combines search signals with observed Visa spending in selected discretionary categories. It reports roughly 10% search growth in both countries and spending growth of 17% in the UAE and 11% in Saudi Arabia for the categories and period discussed. It also highlights category-specific differences between online and physical purchasing.
The Metrix-360 interpretation
Our reading is that marketing plans should distinguish discovery, evaluation and transaction. A customer who researches digitally may still need a store visit, a sales conversation or a service appointment. Treating every click as the start of an online checkout risks designing the wrong landing experience. Equally, a store-led brand should not regard digital content as optional simply because the final purchase is offline. For Saudi and UAE teams, country-level comparisons are useful context, but city, category and fulfilment differences should guide the practical plan.
A proposed 90-day action plan
Our implementation recommendations—not findings from the source study.
- Days 1–30: Map how customers discover, compare and buy your specific offer. Include store, phone and booking journeys rather than limiting the map to website purchases.
- Days 31–60: Match content and calls to action to those journeys. Test product availability information, location pages or a clearer booking step where the evidence suggests friction.
- Days 61–90: Review performance across normal and peak periods. Check operational capacity before increasing promotion and reconcile offline outcomes where consent and systems support it.
What to measure
- Qualified store, booking or sales actions by source
- Conversion at the actual purchase or attendance stage
- Availability, cancellation and fulfilment indicators
- Customer contribution across the journey
Risks to avoid
Visa-observed spending is not total national consumption, and search growth is not proof of additional purchases. Do not apply aggregate category trends to a single brand or infer causality between a search increase and revenue.
Design for the customer’s real next step—even when that step is not checkout.
Methodology & limitations
Published platform/payment-network research, not a Metrix-360 survey. The source’s category and observation boundaries matter; these figures should not be presented as all-market e-commerce growth.
Source dates may precede this analysis. No new fieldwork was conducted, and recommendations are not performance guarantees.