Before we give you the 3 steps to sell your stuff internationally here's how your user shops on your eCommerce store.
“Hmm.... this store looks cool. Hey! It has what I need”.
“I'm gonna get this.” And probably that as well”.
“Okay then. I'll just buy these and I'll be done”.
“Uh..oh! Wait I've got to pay in Pounds? But I'd prefer Euros. I'm from France for God's sake! And I'm not even sure what these payment methods are.”
“Mon Dieu! I'll buy this elsewhere.”
And that's how you lost an international customer.
E-commerce opens up avenues for customers to explore merchandise around the globe. And as a store owner you have access to a large global market to sell your products. But selling to international customers is a little tricky because not many customers are willing to trust new eCommerce websites that don't operate from their geographical region.
So as a store owner, you need to create a certain special user experience that is localized to where your international customers come from. And we are going to teach you how to do that.
#1 Give your customer a chance to tailor his experience
So you just saw that your French customer definitely did not want to shop on your UK store. Why? Because the most sensitive step of the purchase process (payments) was alien to him. He did not want to pay in pounds. He wanted to pay in Euros.
So here's how you keep this particular French customer and not lose his sale.
- Figure out where your international audience is coming from. Is the major percentage from France? Sweden? Then offer them options to pay in Euros or Krona. You may no be able to offer every currency in the world, but you can give a major portion of your audience a currency they're used to.
- Allow your customers to choose the currency they'd like to pay in. You can also allow them to choose a language they're comfortable with while navigating through your shop. This is a great way to remove limitations and make the customer feel more at home.
#2 Provide a payment method your customer is comfortable with
Okay just as customers love paying simply in their own currency they also like paying you through local payment services they're familiar with. Your Swedish customer prefers Klarna and your customers from Finland prefers Checkout.fi to pay through.
- Identify which payment methods are ideal for a large segment of your customer base. And go purchase those popular payment gateways. It goes without saying, Paypal is pretty standard for any website. But if you have a lot of Dutch customers then the Mollie iDeal payment plugin offered by your shopping cart solution is something you just have to invest in.
#3 Make your store adaptable to global changes
If you've got an international audience already following you, or if you're looking capture a global target market, your store needs to adapt to economic and geographical changes taking place frequently.
- Let's say you were a French store that is visited by hundreds of British customers every day. Now the recent Brexit that took place alters the way your English customers shop. They'll want to pay in Pounds, not euros. So your store needs to adapt to accommodate these economic changes.
You can't afford to not give your customers the ultimate shopping experience in your store.
The one solution to help you with this ( Yeah no kidding... it HELPS in BIG way!)
Now if you're wondering “How in the world do I do all of this for my store”? Don't worry. With J2Store you're pretty much covered well to handle any customer from anywhere.
You have a whole array of popular global and local payment gateways you can get for your store. Yeah, we are serious! Check it out.
J2Store also has every currency under the sun listed on it. You can set these up easily.
So you can choose which currencies you want to accept in your store. You can also set a default country for your store, according to where the majority of your audience is coming from.
You can also display special EU Vat rules and set it up for your store if you have a lot of European customers. Check out how you can do this.
And if you want to restrict selling your products in certain countries.
See we told you. We've got you covered. If this is the first time you're trying out j2store you can download it right now.
