Effective online selling across borders involves more than translating ‘shopping basket’ to ‘warenkorb’. Success in global ecommerce requires extensive localisation of online stores and associated support services – enabling businesses to establish a credible and compliant presence in each country.
by Michael Hechler, general manager at Physical Commerce Group (PCG), Digital River, Inc.
Failure to localise sufficiently can result in basket abandonment and lost sales as customers become frustrated by unfamiliarity and unconventional practices.
Proof that e-commerce solutions need to be representative of the customers they serve can be found in recent global research* that points to a less than acceptable customer experience. Only half of companies had fully localised commerce offerings and more than that lacked fully localised customer service options.
Further to this, 50 percent failed to have payment options fully localised – suggesting a lost opportunity for the business as well as a potentially unhelpful experience for the customer.
Whether handled in-house or outsourced to a specialist e-commerce provider, it is extremely complex to deliver localised services across the globe. The following global readiness checklist can help companies pinpoint the revenue and technology gaps in their global online sales program:
Language. Are your e-commerce sites translated and localised in the languages spoken by your local buyers?
Product catalogue. Is your product catalogue flexible enough to change the products and product descriptions on a market-by-market basis?
Pricing. Are product prices displayed in local currencies, do they consider the exchange rate, and are they appropriate for local consumers?
Preferred payment methods. From credit and debit cards, money orders to wire transfers, can your customers choose from localised and preferred payment methods? Are you offering preferred payment methods that only local card acquirers will authorise?
Operational compliance. Are your business operations compliant with local government and consumer laws, including those outside your native market – environmental regulation for example? Does your online store comply with tax and export regulations both worldwide and locally?
Is your company’s approach to tax nexus and foreign taxes optimal? Although compliance issues can often be challenging – 65 percent of survey* respondents answered as such – it is essential to legal business operation across different geographies.
Logistics and fulfillment. Can you ensure that products are shipped from local warehouses, or downloaded from regional servers to deliver not only the biggest savings and convenience for your customers, but also the greatest efficiencies for your company?
E-marketing. Do your marketing strategies comply with local email and privacy regulations? Are your banner ads and search engine campaigns fully localised to drive ROI and sales by being able to effectively target customers?
Customer support. Are your e-commerce sites supported with 24X7 customer support? Do your customer service personnel speak the language of your local customers? Can you handle email communication, returns and other functions in a way that caters to your local customers?
Sales channel. Have you reached the optimal revenue/expense ratio for your e-commerce sales channel, fully leveraging the global opportunities a multi-channel solution offers? Does your e-commerce operation include a reseller and affiliate management strategy? Are you fully scalable to ensure that even during demand peaks orders are never lost?
Reporting. Do you have the tools to continuously evaluate and optimise your e-commerce sales channel for global markets?
Global operations can represent huge success for companies and the Internet is often the channel of choice to bring products to market. However, the online channel also has made competition fierce as customers increasingly look for familiar, trusted shopping experiences.
Too important to be overlooked, localisation differentiates a company from competitors and truly engages consumers, while failure to localise sufficiently can result in lost sales. By following this checklist, your business will be better positioned to launch profitable e-stores across individual markets as well as the overall global marketplace.
*Research compiled for Digital River by Vanson Bourne in 2012. 250 interviews conducted among companies in Asia, Europe, North America and emerging companies.
Good post Michael, I think there are some really useful tips in here. One area online merchants often fail to address (excuse the pun!) is the seemingly complicated process of capturing international data. With over 130 different postal formats and over 6,000 languages, its obvious why many retailers so often get it wrong. But with the cost of international postage to contend with, the price of getting it wrong can be amplified tenfold. It sounds like a logistical nightmare but it is actually very simple to fix. As Michael highlights in the post, we are all affected by our cultural background, and considering global diversity is not at the top of our minds when we are designing a website, but it is however, one of the steps to improving usability and ensuring high quality international data.