When it comes to going global with your business, retailers will find that there are several “moving parts” to the entire process as it relates to delivering international orders. This is why retailers may want to consider working with a service partner to make the global transition an easy one.
Martin Tully, chief operating officer for eShopworld, spoke during a session at Multichannel Merchant’s Growing Global conference about the challenges and the best global solutions for retailers.
Tully said retailer concerns with cross-border e-tailing included having a limited knowledge of resources, constrained resources, a domestic-focused agenda and the perceived difficulty and risk. Problems that can constrain global ecommerce include the possibility of fraudulent orders, limited marketing budget, logistical issues and resources.
So where do you begin?
Tully said retailers will want to start with a phased approach to an international strategy that includes an expansion roadmap:
- Allow international shoppers to buy from your domestic website. Ship overseas with little regard for customer experience.
- Improve the user experience – Have a tactical focus on tools to assist the international customer. Begin with early-stage marketing and merchandising to improve the customer experience.
- Target markets – Have an enterprise strategy and regional operations. Aspire to duplicate the domestic customer experience. Your site should be translated and flexible enough the offers and pricing should be localized. You should also have local inventory.
Tully said having a service partner provides the retailer with speed to market, helps manage the complexities, leverages scalable infrastructure and provides subject matter expertise.
Other aspects of a successful global ecommerce solution:
Proven solutions help you go to market quickly: The solution should be optimized for destination markets and be configurable to meet your specific requirements. You should also be able to deploy it quickly without a large operational expense.
Manage Complexity: Service partners can help retailers focus on their core business by managing complexities around international inventory and fulfillment, user experience localization, payment methods and currencies, fraud and currency risk, cross-border delivery, customer care, global returns and duties.
Scalable Infrastructure: Service partners can give retailers the ability to scale the solution as the business grows regarding IT capacity, new products, market expansion and seasonal peak periods.
Subject Matter Experts: Service partners provide local market knowledge and insight, risk management as it relates to fraud and regulatory requirements, logistics and fulfillment strategy, trade compliance and user experience localization.
But is it worth it?
Tully said the cross-border opportunity is massive for retailers, growing at double-digit rates across the globe
In Europe, he said, cross-border sales are expected to grow twice as fast as domestic sales.
“There is lots of opportunity for U.S. retailers,” said Tully.