Setting your sights on serving customers in other countries represents a HUGE opportunity. A greatly expanded customer pool, increased brand exposure, and the chance to make more profits than ever are just three of the advantages that embracing the global marketplace can bring. However, to maximize your chances of thriving on the international scene, you must supercharge your website with a rich set of capabilities and features that will set you apart from your competitors. Only then will you inspire trust in shoppers from other nations.
One of the best-kept secrets in international ecommerce website practices is that they need to reflect everything you should already be doing for your domestic digital presence. Providing optimal ease of use and clarity for shoppers is a prime case in point. To that end, you should take care to do the following.
Having these characteristics helps to ensure that your international customers will remain on your website long enough to see what you have to offer, allowing them to overcome any initial reservations they may have about doing business with an offshore seller.
With every year that goes by, more customers browse and shop either partly or exclusively on their mobile phones. For that reason, you must ensure that your ecommerce site accommodates screens of all sizes. Other mobile-related characteristics include the following.
As a seller in the global marketplace, you’ll find that incorporating these elements into your website will help to draw even your most faraway customer closer psychologically to your store and the products you sell.
When you want to attract shoppers outside of your own country, it is important to make your customers feel comfortable with every aspect of their purchase. This includes how you accept foreign payments. After all, you are not operating in a vacuum, and there are most certainly numerous competitors who are ready, willing, and able to give buyers the chance to make their payments in the customer’s monetary denomination of choice.
When you accept multiple currencies, you are sending a strong message that you care about the buying experience and are willing to do everything possible to be transparent. That should also mean that you provide merchandise descriptions in your shoppers’ native language and, ideally, that you offer virtual and/or human customer service that is clear and easy for everyone to understand without needing to find a translator.
Additionally, you should provide customers flexibility in the payment forms they use. In addition to standard credit cards, let people complete purchases using other vehicles that are preferred in their home country. Additionally, you might want to provide a “buy now pay later” or “split the payments” option.
Your store might be thousands of miles away from its customers but that doesn’t mean you should be unreachable. Thanks to today’s technology, you can use chatbots that communicate with online browsers in their native languages at any time of the day or night. While these virtual customer service bots cannot answer every inquiry, they can take care of most concerns, funneling the more complex ones to you for direct, personalized, and immediate attention.
While your homepage should be sparse in terms of content, the same is not true of your detailed product pages. These are where you can convince your international customers that they should take the risk of buying from your business even though you may not have a local physical presence.
To accomplish this goal, be sure your product descriptions are comprehensive, including details about materials, origin, size, what sets the product apart, etc. Augment this with high-quality photographs from every angle, and don’t be shy about also providing video content and reviews from satisfied buyers — ideally in your target countries. The more you can bring a potential buyer closer to your merchandise, the better the chances that they will complete the purchase.
This requirement, already important for sites that sell domestically, becomes all the more essential when marketing merchandise to people living abroad. To take the leap of faith that happens whenever someone clicks that “complete your purchase” button in your payment gateway, buyers should be absolutely clear on what will happen next. Therefore, you should prominently display information including the following.
Finally, keep emphasizing the fact that you and your staff are available to answer any questions or concerns that may arise. Then — and this should go without saying — stand behind your promises every time.
As you hover on the precipice and prepare to dive into the deep and turbulent pool of international ecommerce, never forget that it has the potential to bring numerous new customers and pathways for expansion to your business. As long as you set yourself up for success by creating and regularly updating your customer-facing website, you can look forward to a broadened scope and numerous opportunities to expand beyond your wildest dreams.