We have helped business of all sizes develop and grow their e-commerce including taking one customer from 100 orders a month through to over 1600 orders a day with multiple currencies, regional businesses, and distribution centers. We have developed unique expertise and a flexible platform to help with the unique challenges of taking your operations international.
To help guide our clients and to provide a roadmap, we have developed an E-Commerce Maturity Model so they can see the road ahead.
The starting point for most businesses is a single currency/single language site serving a national market. This is simple, relatively low risk, and there are dozens of inexpensive systems that will let any business owner dabble in e-commerce and test the concept.
With some success a merchant will grow to a continental strategy fairly rapidly. Generally this starts with a single currency but brings in added complexity to their shipping operations.
Once comfortable shipping to regional markets close to home merchants can experiment shipping to other continents. We call this experimental because the only effort they make to service international markets is to ship to them.
A company is truly international when it begins selling in multiple currencies. There are many different models for how this can be done but using a shoppers local currency has proven to increase conversion rates. The merchant absorbs some foreign exchange risk and not only is logistics more complex, but so is accounting.
Merchants start to push the envelope when they localize their content for their various markets by running a multi-lingual site and adjusting marketing around local holidays. This can be as simple as using variants of English (UK vs US spelling & vocabulary) to fully translated content, and customer service details. Logistics can be handled by a freight forwarder that takes care of duties & taxes.
A truly global e-commerce organization will have in-market distribution and logistics to reduce shipping costs and times as well as process returns. A global e-commerce business will take on competitors in the local market on a level playing field.
We created this handy infographic to illustrate the model. Where do you fit? Where do you want to be?
If you need help and a reliable partner with the experience to help your business grow, contact us.
Tags: infographic, ecommerce, multicurrency, multlingual, growth