Nine ways to use Magento Enterprise to get ‘global-ready’

One attraction of online retail is the ability to reach an international audience, introducing a brand to new markets. However, creating multiple international storefronts can quickly become costly and complex. 

By Darryl Adie, Managing Director, Ampersand Commerce.

To overcome this issue, a number of ecommerce platforms allow the creation of multiple regional storefronts around a centralised back end.

Here are nine ways in which one of these platforms, Magento Enterprise, can help you prepare your business for global expansion:

1. Theme

Magento Enterprise makes it easy for retailers to have one “theme” or template powering different local store fronts. Magento stores use a theme for the front end which includes layouts, template files, static assets (images and JavaScript) and library files (images, jQuery and Prototype). Changes can easily be made to a store, website or global level.

A designer creating these themes must create a design grid that can handle different lengths of titles etc to allow for different languages. For example, some languages such as German have much longer words than English.

2. Translations

If your business is moving into foreign territories, it’s crucial to ensure the highest degree of care is taken to make the content comprehensible to international users. Retailers need to think about both product and non-product content translations.

Multilanguage functionality is standard in Magento Enterprise and languages can be shared across multiple stores. For example, German can be available in a German and a Swiss store. The standard Magento functionality allows for static text to be translated in template files using a CSV file. A line entry is created for each phrase or word in a CSV file per store view.

3. Tax

Even within Europe there are tax variations that the retailer will need to consider, for example do you need to register for tax in each country that you’re shipping to? What are the thresholds for VAT registration in each territory?

Magento has native support for different tax codes based on the country of origin or the shipping country. Each product has a tax class and the tax amount is calculated based on a combination of the zone (the origin or destination), the tax class and the corresponding tax amount.

A product can have a tax rate which can be configured at a store level and then matched with the customer’s delivery address or the shipping origin to determine the tax rate. The standard Magento order object includes both gross and net VAT prices.

4. Duties

Duties are sometimes liable on transactions in non-European territories.  The retailer needs to establish whether these should be paid at the point of shipment, whether they fall within the tax free threshold for that territory or if customers expect to pay the duties.

Some retailers prepare for this by using different price lists in Magento. As standard, Magento Enterprise supports multiple pricing for each distinct product.

Magento can support ‘special’ price, with display including or excluding VAT or both. It can also support prices specific to a customer group and tier pricing.

5. Payment types

Most retailers think that accepting Visa, MasterCard and PayPal will cover them everywhere, but this isn’t the case.

German shoppers like to use ELV bank transfers, while Japanese buyers want to pay cash on delivery and French customers use Carte Bancaire. There are several other regional payment methods and as a result, a close understanding of alternative payment types in each market is required.

The methods of payment a retailer chooses to offer is entirely dependent on the Payment Service Provider (PSP). It’s important to make sure that the PSP supports localised or alternative payments. And if not, consider switching to one that does to make payments simpler for the customer.

Lastly, be prepared to show approximate pricing in any currency even if you can only accept payments in a few currencies. Make sure there is room in the design for this.

6. Delivery

It seems obvious when considering international expansion, but retailers need to consider whether their logistics infrastructure will allow them to offer competitive delivery times in a commercially viable way in each market.  Warehousing and fulfilment needs to be sited in order to allow this sort of global reach.

Shipping costs need to be clear from the outset. Magento Enterprise natively allows the dynamic display of shipping options and cost based on shipping address and order value, as well as the ability to change the sort order of shipping options.

7 Returns

Returned goods not only place additional stress on long-distance delivery infrastructure, but they are also subject to an array of legislation in different territories. Retailers need to consider local distance selling regulations in each market before deploying regional returns policies.

A returns link can be added to the footer of a store allowing customers that aren’t logged into an account the ability to search for information about an order.

8. Marketing

Simply translating existing marketing collateral may not be enough – local tastes, traditions and linguistic quirks can make a hit campaign in one country turn into an embarrassing flop in another. Retailers need to consider marketing translations for their email, social media, marketing and advertising campaigns in each territory they want to reach.

Magento Enterprise can provide you with that language link for your email marketing. In order to keep continuity for customers ordering from international sites, their transaction is registered against the specific store they ordered from.

9. Product and stock

Sizing charts and international conversions are an imperative product detail from a customer point of view.

For the retailer, it’s also important to have real-time stock levels for international stores, which is possible with Magento Enterprise and a good development team. As a rule retailers mustn’t show stock levels unless they’re absolutely sure the infrastructure in place can honour that stock.

One way to put that infrastructure in place is to create a global product file in Magento that creates products and a local file that sets prices, tax and stock levels for each store view.

The core message is that going global isn’t simply a matter of flicking a switch; you’ve got to build the commercial and technical infrastructure to enable a valid retail operation in each market that you’re targeting. Magento has the ability to get your website global-ready if you consider these issues early enough in the process – ideally whilst you’re replatforming anyway – then you can save yourself a world of pain further down the line.

For more information visit: http://amp.co