How to grow e-commerce in markets abroad?
E-commerce in foreign markets is a dream for many of us. The opportunity to increase your sales with a saturated local market is a mouth-watering morsel. For the effects to be meagre, I invite you to an article in which I touch on the steps you need to take to increase your chances of success in selling online abroad.
Benefits of having cross-border e-commerce
In any business, we struggle for good financial metrics, brand recognition and business diversification, among other things. Each of the above comes at a cost. Good as the investment is minimal to maximum profit.
Any investment that involves a physical presence in a particular market will always be greater than e-commerce. Maintaining servers and a few other operational aspects of online commerce is incomparable to launching and maintaining a physical shop.
This is why many companies choose to open e-commerce before there are physical shops. This is because it is quicker to see results in terms of turnover and market penetration through online sales.
When is a good time to develop e-commerce abroad?
A question that often comes up in conversations with our clients is when to go overseas. Or whether there is any point at all. The answer to the latter question is often yes.
In the case of the first, it depends. There are many companies that have the ambition to open up online sales in multiple markets at one time. And there is honestly nothing wrong with that, provided you know and accept the consequences.
If this is your company's first e-commerce, we recommend that you lay out your processes in your home market first. Like any change, adding an online sales channel takes time. The organisation needs to get used to the new customer experience. And the online customer is specific.
If you already have e-commerce in operation and feel that your digital customer service processes are working well then it is worth conducting a survey beforehand. A survey that will answer the question of whether this is actually the case.
I'm talking about an audit, carried out by an independent company that, in collaboration with a public research institute such as Ibris, will identify where the gaps are. It will be easier to go abroad to address these gaps in processes and User Experience.
It all comes down to the fact that a major flaw in customer experience may not be so obvious. Correcting it in several markets may be problematic. If it is particularly visible abroad, it may even affect business performance.
Choosing a market for the cross-border expansion of your e-commerce
When talking to customers about cross-border trade, the first choice of market often turns out to be the wrong one. Intuition can sometimes be unreliable. In order to choose the right expansion direction, it is worthwhile to familiarise yourself with
- research into a country's e-commerce purchasing potential,
- the willingness of the country's consumers to shop in foreign shops,
- studies indicating the saturation of e-commerce in various industries.
With the answers to these questions, it will be much easier to make the right choice.
There is one more aspect worth mentioning here. If you plan to use e-commerce to find out which market will be good for physical expansion, it is worth considering this factor as well.
There is no golden mean. But there is data. Based on reliable information the choices made are always less risky.
A handful of technical issues for developing cross-border e-commerce
When taking your e-commerce sales overseas, make sure your online shop is prepared for this.
- Do you have a payment gateway that supports the destination country?
- Do you have the logistics in place to get your goods to customers abroad within 2 - 3 days?
- do you have content that is translated into the language of the target country? That's right, machine translation is not the way to go!
- do you have the staff and processes to serve your target country customers well? I'm talking about customer service, and complaints.
- does your shop software allow you to manage content very efficiently in all markets where you want to sell? I'm talking about product and blog content, landing pages etc.
- do you know what standard of customer experience your target market customers expect?
These are just a few examples of questions you should definitely ask yourself before expanding. A well-conducted workshop with a consultancy will define them all. Addressing these questions will reduce the risk of failure in developing your e-commerce abroad.
Summary
The development of e-commerce abroad, despite the fact that it is very attractive for business, is also a difficult issue. Without proper preparation and plenty of detailed information, the wrong choice can be made.
To avoid financial fatigue when going overseas, consider hiring a consultancy. This will help you track down what the potential gaps in your current processes are and fix them more quickly. And all this before you cross the country.
Above and beyond all the difficulties and complexities of the whole process of going abroad, I think it's worth it. You will increase the diversification of your business. In addition to this, your organisation will gain invaluable experience, which will then be used for further expansions.