Now is a great time to take your eCommerce business global. If you’re just starting out or have a well established local eCommerce business, it can feel like a daunting task. But it has never been easier to sell your products and services internationally.
We’re now in a day and age where there are worldwide distribution centres and eCommerce technology that’s designed to allow your business to expand internationally. So, within this article, we’ll dive deeper into just that so we can help your company to go global.
Why sell to a global audience?
Selling to a domestic audience is obviously great for any business. It’s easier to know your audience, what is on trend in the current climate and it’s unlikely to have language barriers to entry. However, with that comes limitations.
Once you’ve exhausted all of your target audience in your local area or country, you’re restricted to the same number of customers and sticking to their preferences can cause you to get stuck in a rut, damaging your creativity and product development. After all, if it’s not broken, why try and fix it?
But, imagine if you expanded into international territories. You’ll be opening the floodgates to millions of brand new consumers and the potential to generate much more revenue.
To go global, technically, all that you need to do is to transfer those local learnings onto the global stage through clever application.
Advances in mobile
Every day, people around the world are downloading and using their mobile devices to make an online purchase. They’re not only buying from within their own country but also from overseas.
International customers are happy to buy from businesses abroad if it means getting a product that they want as they can trust that they’ll get the product in a timely manner, due to the recent shipping advancements in eCommerce. For them, that often means buying from businesses like yours.
Plus, as mobile technology evolves and advances in mobile apps increase, the process continues to become more frictionless. It has never been quicker, easier or more convenient to make a purchase from anywhere at any time.
By 2021, eCommerce sales will equal $4.479 trillion – Emarketeer.com
Benefits of selling globally
There are a number of benefits to expanding your business into more countries. Some of these are as follows:
- To grow your business – Growing your business can create a sturdier foundation in tough economic times.
- Help strengthen your business cash flow – More potential customers means more revenue to reinvest into your business.
- Find new revenue streams – There will be customer bases out there that you never even knew existed before.
- Exposure to foreign investment opportunities – Going global can spark up new conversations and partnerships with investors that you didn’t have access to before.
- Boost your companies reputation – A larger audience means that you have the opportunity to increase your brand awareness and create a great reputation for business.
- You can help to diversify company markets – By introducing your business into a market where there are other competitors you allow customers another place to buy from. On the other hand, there may not be currently a business like yours available to consumers.
Now that you know some of the benefits, it’s important to consider the marketing channels you’ll need to adopt (if you don’t use them already), to ensure you can promote your new global takeover.
How do you know which marketing channels to choose?
With an ever-growing number of routes into the international markets now available for businesses like yours, the decision over which one to use can be quite thought-provoking.
The most trusted digital sales channels, such as Amazon Global Selling and eBay Global Shipping. We’ll take a closer look into both channels further down the article. However, both will handle many aspects including:
- Currency conversions
- Listing language translations
- Duty and tax calculations
- Customer service and returns
- International fulfilment
These processes can be quite challenging and resourceful, dragging their own problems that you’ll need to deal with. Robust channels will implement these tasks for you allowing resources to be freed up to be allocated elsewhere, such as the marketing of the products or services.
Over the past 15-20 years, some big players have emerged providing strong global marketplace offerings. These include the likes of Amazon Global Selling and eBay Global Shipping.
#1: Amazon Global Selling
Online retail giant Amazon, has the international logistics infrastructure in place ready to sell to hundreds of millions of customers around the world – and that’s just what they do.
Whether you knew this already or not, Amazon allows local businesses, big or small, to sell their products online with them. This means that you don’t have to worry about logistical groundwork as it’s already in place and ready to go.
Though you might think the costs to selling on Amazon are too great to derive a benefit from, your decision has probably been clouded by incorrect information. There are lots of benefits of selling globally through Amazon:
Benefits of Amazon Global Selling
The main benefits of using Amazon Global Selling as your chosen platform include:
- Decide which markets you want to sell into and what to sell
- Register your business and quickly and easily list your products
- Choose which fulfilment services you’d prefer to handle the shipping of your goods
- Manage customer support and returns
And what’s more, it works! Take a look at some of the statistics surrounding Amazon and their global selling.
Positive Statistics From Amazon
180+ – No. of countries with loyal Amazon customers. (Source)
175+ – No. of fulfilment centres around the world. (Source)
14 – No. of available marketplaces. (Source)
30+ – No. of established product categories. (Source)
1.1 Million – No. of home improvement product sold through Amazon. (Source)
5 Billion – No. of items shipped through Amazon in 2017. (Source)
Platform Support
With a channel as large as Amazon Global Selling, as you would expect, you get there help and support resources at your disposal. They provide businesses with a selection of tools and guides to help them along. These include items such as a 1-page checklist, detailed guides for selling, for example, in North America, Seller Forums, webinars and more.
Of course, if you can’t find the answer you’re looking for then there’s always the option to contact Amazon directly.
#2: eBay Global Shipping Programme
Another giant in the retail arena is eBay with its Global Shipping Programme. The international shipping programme makes it as easy selling globally as it is to sell to someone in a nearby town or city or even to someone down the road.
All you have to pay is the cost of the postage to the UK Shipping centre and the rest is then do for you. This includes the nitty-gritty aspects with customs clearance and tracking.
Benefits of eBay Global Shipping
The main benefits of using eBay Global Shipping as your chosen platform include:
- Reduced time and complexity of shipping overseas
- Easily start selling internationally
- Shipping is simple and efficient
- Sellers are protected by eBay for lost or damaged items on the international part of their journey
- Shipping and customs clearance is fast and easy as duties are paid for and declared in advance
Positive Statistics From eBay
Some informative statistics for the eBay Global Shipping program include:
180 Million – No. of active users worldwide. (Source)
25 Million – No. of sellers on eBay. (Source)
190 – Number of markets eBay has buyers in. (Source)
370 Million – No. of times the eBay app has been downloaded. (Source)
Platform Support
As with Amazon Global Selling, eBay also provides you with a variety of support options. Sadly, the programme doesn’t offer the same amount of helpful resources like the Amazon Global Selling programme, nonetheless, they do offer a Global Shipping Program tip sheet, Frequently Asked Questions help pages, webinars and a Sellers Hub.
You can also contact eBay via the Customer Services page.
Summary
If you’re looking to expand your business into global markets then there are many (easier than you’d think) ways to make this dream a reality.
Yet, with retail giants such as Amazon and eBay already established in this area, it would be wise to choose one of these channels.
As expected, they’ll be constantly investing in the platforms to improve them and make it even easier to branch out onto the global stage. Get onboard now before you become stuck from expanding overseas!
Get in touch
We know commerce, let us help you improve customer experience, increase conversion rates, and make that digital change.
- hello@iweb.co.uk