Tips for expanding your ecommerce internationally

For most growth-oriented companies, conquering the local market is only the first step. The next goal is usually to adopt the activity and expand it around the world.

This may seem ambitious, but to scale globally has advantages. Extend the sales time of products, reduce dependence on a single market or expand your business, to generate more revenue.

Although international expansion is not an easy task, companies of all types and sizes can consider it with the web, and for that we present these 5 tips:

Build a solid business model and internal analysis of your business

Before you start growing abroad, it is usually necessary for you to have consolidated your position in the local market. Do you have enough resources internally? Will your team be able to adapt to an international clientele?

Do you have sufficient financial resources? Is your team motivated and enterprising? These points put you in a strong position to take advantage of global growth with the web.

Even if you have a solid foundation, will your business succeed internationally? An internal audit will allow you to identify your specific resources, your capabilities, your core competencies and your unique value proposition.

Analyze target markets with the right tools

During this stage, you will need to obtain detailed and strategic information for an adaptation of your online presence abroad. This includes defining the potential of the targeted market (s) for your products and services:

– Analysis of the potential demand with a keyword search. What are your potential customers looking for in the target market?

– Analysis of trends in demand (trends)

– Listening to social networks with specific tools. The conversations and mentions concerning your activity are a source of information to be taken into account. Social networks will also help you discover aspects of your target market that can guide your marketing strategy internationally

– Analysis of statistics on your website: thanks to your Analytics solution, you can see if you already receive visitors from certain countries

Competition analysis

It’s about identifying your most important competitors, their strategies and the actions they have implemented in the target markets: content, linking, adwords, social networks.

Local price analysis

The average price of a product or service can vary considerably from one country to another. Therefore, it is important to know what prices are possible for different markets. If prices are too low, it may be necessary to focus your efforts on another market.

Local market costs

The viability of entering a particular country market depends not only on the price of the products sold, but also on the costs of online marketing in the target market. This needs to be taken into account in order to offer realistic product prices for the local market. The cost of a local online campaign must be analyzed.

Perform a test on the targeted market (s)

A test campaign on Adwords or Facebook will validate your hypotheses, or not, before investing more significantly in locating your web presence on the target market or markets.

Similarly, if you have an ecommerce site, you can also test the response of a foreign market by being present in a marketplace like Amazon.

At the end of this analysis phase, you will know which markets to focus your efforts on.

Local adaptation

Each country has its own e-commerce guidelines and laws. It is necessary to learn about the legal situation, the expectations of customers and to evaluate the adaptations and changes that your online shop or website requires to offer a satisfactory experience to your customers. Localization (adaptation to norms and usage, to the local culture), more than translation is necessary to be able to generate enough confidence, and to give rise to conversions. Do you offer the right means of payment? Do you have customer reviews? The goal is to have a shop or website with a local “look & feel”.

A physical address and a phone number in the target country are also needed, to generate increased trust, as search engines return local content.

Quality certifications

Studies show that applying recognized trust and quality labels can generate more sales by generating greater trust for online customers. In addition to internationally known stamps, such as Trusted Shops, many countries have their own digital certificates. We know what certifications are important to you and what you need to do to get certified.

Legal compliance with local regulations

To be in legal compliance, various points such as general sales conditions, data confidentiality, legal data must sometimes be adapted. Compliance with these standards not only ensures security, but also increases customer confidence in your e-commerce.

Comply with local regulations

Any e-commerce that wants to operate in foreign markets must comply with the legal regulations of the country in which it operates. Through Salesupply’s Legal Advisory Service, our experts will advise you to ensure that your online store properly complies with all the parameters of local e-commerce laws.

Develop your brand

Brand awareness is one of the most important aspects of running a business. In fact, this has a direct impact on how much you can buy internationally.

The goal is for your target audience to recognize your brand and what it represents. Brand awareness is so important because consumers are much more likely to buy from trusted and trusted brands. When people know your brand, it also ensures your position in your industry.

Arrange for a fulfillment center

When setting up your business internationally, it is very important to have your goods in the country you are setting up shop to avoid logistic issues if that is not the challenge then consider saving money on shipping. Thankfully, there are a lot of fulfillment centers around the globe in major business countries. So, you could easily sign up for the services of a fulfillment center after researching their fees.

In any case, you find fulfillment centers too expensive, you can also research local storehouses that can do the job. Leveraging the service of temporary storage service providers such as Luggagehero can be an option in cases where you are sending goods to a client who is not comfortable with providing their home address or work address (you must think, what kind of buyer is that? Well, there are products that some individuals want to purchase discreetly).

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