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Five Tips To Take Your eCommerce Store International
By Partnered Post | Business
When you feel like you’ve started to hit the ceiling as to how much your business can grow, or you simply want to offer it the opportunity to keep capitalizing on its momentum, scaling into new territory is always an attractive option. When you’re scaling to whole new countries, however, that demands a certain level of extra consideration. Here, we’re going to look at five things you need to do to ensure you’re ready to take your eCommerce business international.
When you open the door to new customers, you have to make sure that you are loud about it. Reaching whole new markets deserves an extra level of attention. Aside from increasing ad spend and getting the PR machine rolling with announcements, using affiliate marketing to pair with influencers and affiliates in new territories is a good way to get on the ground and start spreading the word.
Definitely one of the most important steps, and perhaps the one with the most potential for error, is setting up your ability to deliver your goods to international territories. You can establish your own logistics infrastructure with your own drivers on the ground, but a lot of businesses will simply instead rely on commercial delivery services to do most of the work for them. If you need help with storage and packing, as well, then a fulfillment center might be what you need.
Allowing customers to use your site to place orders, and being able to deliver the products they order are their own challenges to face. Being able to complete transactions and receive payments is another thing entirely. Your current merchant account provider might not have the setup to accept international transactions. As such, you should consider looking specifically for payment processing for international businesses. Otherwise, bounced transactions could very much spoil your efforts to break into new territory.
While we’ve gone over the basics for ensuring that you’re able to spread the word to new audiences, you also have to be careful to ensure that those audiences are able to understand your site and your brand. You have to adapt your website, product descriptions, and marketing materials to resonate with the language, culture, and preferences of your international audience. Working with a localization team can make sure there are no cultural or linguistic misunderstandings.
Provide responsive and multilingual customer support to address inquiries, concerns, and issues promptly. Utilize communication channels such as email, live chat, and social media to engage with international customers effectively and build trust. Working with customer support specialists who are based in the countries that you’re looking to expand to can ensure that you always have the right means to provide the help that your customers need to navigate your site and complete their sales.
With an online store, it’s at least somewhat easier to make your products more immediately accessible for customers across the globe to place orders. You have to make sure that you have the infrastructure in place to facilitate it, however.