Yes, it’s a bit early to mention Christmas, I know, but savvy online retailers are already in the midst of preparing for the festive period.
Success stories such as Amazon and ASOS have shown that international sales can have a huge impact on an ecommerce business, so it’s hardly surprising that more retailers are jumping on this bandwagon and localising their websites to open up shop to international customers.
Before jumping in with both feet, however, there are a few things you can do to ensure your international online sales go smoothly ahead of the festive season:
Market Research and Testing
Good intelligence is invaluable. Don’t just choose to target overseas markets because your competitors are – you can test a number of key markets to gauge interest, then decide where to focus your attention, effort and resources.
Simplify and Focus your offering
Offer a limited, targeted product range when launching in new markets – you’ll do best if you include the products that are unique, exclusive or hard to find outside the UK.
Localise your website
This isn’t just about the language of your content: currency, product range, and design all need to be right for the site to be a success. Don’t simply copy your primary site and translate the text.
SEO activity
Make sure your multilingual website ranks well in the most popular search engines in the target country. This will not necessarily be Google!
Payments
Overseas customers are used to a range of payment options beyond credit cards and online payment portals (such as Paypal or Moneybookers). Make sure your payment provider offers an appropriate selection of payment methods for the country you are targeting.
Customer Service
You already know that good customer service makes all the difference between a bad experience and someone becoming a repeat customer. If you don’t have multilingual staff to provide customer service support, you can use an email translation system, or inbound call centre to handle requests. Social Media can also be set up as a channel for customer service comments, enquiries and complaints.
We can advise you on all these points, and help to make your website an international success! Contact us on sales[at]web-translations.co.uk or call 44 (0) 113 8150460 to find out more…
10 August 2011 11:19