This month, I was asked to present one of the breakout sessions at the excellent Rackspace::Solve event at the Emirates Stadium in London. On the ecommerce theme, I decided to speak about the challenges that our customers have when they launch their store into a new territory. World Domination – Developing a Cross-Border Ecommerce Strategy was the title. Taking a website international is much more involved than doing a translation, accepting a different currency and having a shipping solution. In order to make things more relevant and interesting, I enlisted the help of Spencer Hudson – Internet Technology Manager at GHD hair. They trade in 13 locations, so he had plenty of examples on what problems come up and how you can address them. This blog post will be a short summary of the presentation we delivered.
People
One of the recurring issues that comes up when people talk about international ecommerce is having local knowledge. Working with people who live within the country you want to sell to (even if you don’t build an office there) will give vital insights. Social normal, local customs, expected services and product competition are all easily uncovered by a local representative. This also applies to customer service, do you build out a service centre in country or do it all from a central location? There is no right or wrong answer here, as long as you put the customer first. Delivering a great customer outcome is vital to maintain customers you have worked so hard to win.
Process
Payments can be very different in other countries. You have to really get yourself in the mind frame to forget all you have previously learned. For example, in the UK 75% of all online payments are made with a credit or debit card. However, in Germany there is a 4 way split between card, bank transfer, online platform (such as Paypal) and cash on delivery. To get better traction with customers you’ll need to deliver the options they are most comfortable using. Reducing the barriers to purchase is another pillar of success. Tax is another important part of the process element and it is something you’ll need to address. No customer wants to receive their delivery and have to pay additional money for sales tax.
Platform
Finally, technology can really help you deliver a great customer experience when you launch in a new geographical location. In an ideal world you would deploy a new hosted platform for each country, but not only would this be very expensive, it is also makes synchronisation and management difficult. CDN (content delivery networks) allow you accelerate the site to deliver improved performance by hosting content on edge nodes closer to the visitor. Having a true understanding of the page load experience of foreign users will help improve this strategy. You must use tools to measure it (something like PingDom for example).
To deliver a great website, service and buying experience for customers in other countries requires a well thought out plan. There are plenty of resources you can use to make sure you are using best-of-breed tools and expertise. Working with in-country partners to help you adopt the most effective plan is a great way to start. Don’t be put off by all the problems and pitfalls, growth markets such as Germany and China are full of opportunity.
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