Ten tips to globalise your e-commerce site

How to globalise your e-commerce and how to adopt cross-border strategies could be the foolproof formulas to guarantee the success of SMEs. Nearly all businesses will have to adapt to the new global customer trends, including Internet sales where borders don’t exist.

The beauty of running an online store is that customers and orders can come from literally anywhere in the world. Overcoming any geographical limitations linked with traditional business, e-commerce allows us to reach a greater and much more varied number of customers.

Many business owners are willing to make the initial effort to open their virtual stores. Once you’ve decided to create one, what is the best way to globalise your e-commerce and introduce it to new markets?

Here are a few tips to get you started on the globalisation of your e-commerce:

 

Learn from your competitors

Visiting your competitor’s website should give you some clues about where to focus your efforts. Find out what your competitors don’t do well and focus on that to improve.

Once the overall analysis of your best-established competitor has been done, for an optimal globalisation of your online store you should focus on some details such as:

Whether they offer a local website in such countries, if they have different websites for each language, if in fact their entire website has been translated and if they include a localised customer service…

 

Conduct a market analysis

Carrying out market analysis is key to globalising your business and succeeding in certain countries. Find out whether the product or products you want to market will be successful, taking into account the current competition and market prices. Collaborate with experts in design thinking and trend analysis to get a head start on what is going to be on trend.

Once you have carried out your research and chosen a target country or countries suitable for expansion, it’s time to take the necessary technical steps to localise your website. Are you going to use a local domain? Or are you going to create subdirectories or subdomains?

Don’t take this decision lightly. The results will depend on your overall digital marketing strategy and could cost you dearly. Trust in professionals who will guide you in which is the best option according to your needs.

 

Localise your website using professional translators

Having your online store accessible in different languages will attract extra customers and provide additional benefits. And you know it! Just as you know that using Google Translate to translate your website into another language won’t get you anywhere.

More so, if you do it, you will convey a very poor image of your business and scare those customers you intended to attract. Therefore, for your cross-border strategies, what you need is the help of professional translators.

At Ontranslation translation agency, we are experts in online store translation and we consider both the linguistic and cultural aspects when localising an e-commerce site. Make your business 100% profitable.

 

Provide the best customer service

Any client who wishes to submit a query or a complaint would prefer to deal with a person who speaks to them in their native language. Investing in customer service is key to globalising your e-commerce and it can be extremely beneficial to you.

Therefore, whatever channel you open (email, telephone, chat, videoconference) it’s important that there is someone capable of communicating with your customers and reassuring them.

At Ontranslation we can provide you with the fastest translation service for social media content or customer service channels in the market.

 

Personalise the buyer experience

One of the main advantages of e-commerce is personalization: the ability to treat clients as individuals is now more than ever, essential in the online business world.

For example, being able to return a product, reward the best customers or send a prize voucher (in the customer’s native language). Or the ability to track unfinished shopping carts is a virtually essential feature in the world of e-commerce.

Personalise the buyer experience according to the culture of your potential customers, and they’ll appreciate you much more.

 

Take care of your products

How many times have we visited online stores that have tiny product images, bad quality photos or never even load fully? Whoever takes care of their products images, takes care of their clients.

What’s for sure is that no one will buy a product without seeing all the details. Therefore, it’s vital that your online store has good images of the products you offer (taken from different angles) and that these are supported by a text explaining the technical characteristics, dimensions and other useful information for customers.

Oh, and don’t forget the culture of your target market when globalising your e-commerce site. The perfect photo in the UK might not fit other cultures.

 

Pay attention to the colours

For the Chinese, yellow is a colour reserved for royalty. Whereas for the Japanese, it transmits strength, force and courage. However, for the Egyptians, it’s the colour of mourning.

It would be a huge mistake trying to internationalise your company through an online store without taking the time to do a little cultural research. Design is also culture-specific. It transmits what you want to convey with your brand and above all, transmits reliability and trust.

If you fancy finding out more about the symbolism of colours in the world, click here! Remember that the message you convey will depend entirely on the colour you choose! Therefore, get advice on cultural and communication aspects from experts like us.

 

Don’t stop monitoring your results

It’s important you establish KPIs that evaluate everything that happens in your online store. Learning from mistakes and improving your weak points will be your most valuable training, especially when you have just entered a market previously unknown to you.

Discover the most viewed products, the bestsellers, which campaigns have been the most profitable, which pages have higher churned rates, and all thanks to metrics.

But be careful: study where you’re going before you internationalise. What sells best in Spain, may not in France or Italy.

 

Use social media

Channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube will allow you to gain visibility amongst your current and potential clients. Social media enables you to get to know your client’s profiles (what they do and don’t like, the channels they use to keep up to date, etc.). You will also be able to interact directly with them using through direct and personalised communication.

However, the characteristics of social media and culture once again cannot be overlooked. If you need a hand with this, don’t think twice. At Ontranslation, we’ll be delighted to help you.

 

Interested in how to globalise your e-commerce? Don’t miss this out.

It’s in every e-shop DNA: many online businesses need to expand to new international markets. To correctly design an online store and be able to sell cross-border.

We hope you have enjoyed our tips on how to globalise your e-commerce.

Have some more? Please leave a comment below!