International Ecommerce – Have You Started Thinking About Your Strategy?

Trading internationally is a major part of many businesses’ work. If they cannot sell their products and services to overseas markets, there is a very strong chance that they may go into the red. Enabled by improving transport links, trade legislation and technology, trading overseas has never been easier than it is right now.

A big driver of the growth in international trade is ecommerce. Being able to sell goods online to customers all over the world has seen it spike further. To make sure your business is able to take advantage of the estimated $2.2 trillion global ecommerce market, what should you do?

First, look at demand for your products/services in overseas markets. If you sell items that are popular in one particular country or continent, look at marketing said items to those areas. Should you have the means to do it, look at producing a version of your online store or whole website in another language or have a translation tool.

Accepting Different Currencies

To make your business more appealing to overseas customers, consider accepting their native currencies. As a starting point, offer them the choice of the most widely-used currencies. These include the US Dollar, the Euro, the Yen and Pound Sterling.

Depending on where your business is based, you may incur a small fee from your bank for accepting or processing payments in another currency. There may be some exceptions though, especially from international banks such as HSBC and Barclays. Indeed, HSBC have an account for dealing in foreign currencies; something like that can reduce costs of selling abroad.

Delivering Overseas

The next part of your ecommerce strategy should be to organise the shipping and delivery of products to overseas customers. This should involve devising a system where parcels are sent to customers as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Take into account postage and fuel costs in each country when choosing how to arrange this.

Choose an international courier services partner to take on the actual delivery work. This will save your business time, leaving you to focus on the task of selling to customers all over the world. It will also take care of some of the admin work involved, such as planning routes.

Finally, you need to think about tailoring some of your customer service in other languages. If you have customers in, for example, France and want to provide information or support to them, have some of your store’s content in French. If possible, hire someone who is a fluent speaker in those languages to manage sales to those markets and engage with those customers.