Few e-commerce companies launch with the intention of growing a multinational retail business. However, when their website begins to receive inquiries and sales from abroad, many companies start considering the opportunities available for online export.
Recently, we at Smoke & Croak published an interactive infographic on search engine optimization for an international website. It's a step-by-step guide on how to conduct SEO to grow visibility on international search engines. And although it provides useful insight from sources around the Web on how to promote your business to international browsers, it doesn't go beyond promotion.
If you've spent valuable resources in gaining visibility on international search engines, you should also spend time considering how to optimize the conversion rate on your site for the new audience.
Many view localization as an end-of-project task, purely intended to allow the new audience to browse the site in their own language. That misconception would have a detrimental effect on the conversion rate optimization (CRO) of your international website. Though localization includes elements of translation, when done well it can serve to reduce barriers in the buying process and convert visitors into customers.
I'm a firm believer that the "marginal gains" philosophy behind the recent success of the British cycling team can be applied to most business scenarios. With localization or CRO, we're not looking for one major website element that can make or break your transaction model. We're looking for marginal gains across all the sections of the website—no matter how seemingly insignificant—that will remove a possible barrier from purchase.
On their own, those marginal gains don't look like much, but as you begin to put them together you create a successful international online sale model with a healthy conversion rate.
Here are seven elements of localization ghag can have an impact on your international business objectives.
1. Localizing Currency
Localizing currency seems like an obvious task for an international e-commerce site. Users want to see the price in their currency, and the majority of e-commerce sites provide this for their customers.
However, consider a finer detail: How would you display currency? If your business is looking to sell into the EU zone, do you display prices as €1 or EUR 1? Does it matter? Some e-commerce consumers are used to seeing the € symbol, others the EUR label. Picking the right one for your market contributes to a marginal win.
You want to display the currency the way that consumers are used to seeing it so that they feel comfortable browsing the site and making a potential purchase.
Run the research and find out how currency is displayed by competitors in your international market.
2. Setting Prices
Pricing is crucial. Are you going to simply apply an exchange rate to prices from your domestic market? A better method is to research the target marketplace and discover what the competition is charging. You may have to reduce rates to keep competitive. Alternatively, you may be able to increase rates if the market price is higher abroad than at home.
You also need to decide whether you're going to set international prices with an annual price list. That could be risky, because exchange rates fluctuate and you could lose margins as a consequence. A better option would be to use an exchange rate API like Open Exchange Rates or Exchange Rate API. Those tools display pricing in various currencies and track exchange rate fluctuations every hour.
As the exchange rate changes, the API reflects the change in the displayed price of your product, ensuring that your margin and price is fixed in line with the price that you want to charge in the base currency.
3. Payment Methods
You run an e-commerce site in the US or UK and customers have the option of paying with credit and debit cards. Do you offer the same payment methods for international markets? You need to run some research and understand whether customers in your target international market are happy to pay with a credit card. Maybe they prefer another method.
For example, German e-commerce customers are used to paying by bank transfer or cash on delivery. Can you accommodate either option? If not, you're adding a barrier to purchase.