How to Market Your Website to Other Countries

Of course, you know that the Internet is available around the world, and you want to start offering your products to a different country, but you don’t know where to start. Below are some helpful tools to make your Website competitive in the global market.

Look Local to Your Global Customer

• Get a Website domain name that is appropriate for that country (e.g. France uses the “.fr” extension instead of our .com)

• Use that country’s date/currency format

• Sort search results alphabetically in that country’s language

• Localize your content – make sure you don’t offend your global customer by using language that means something entirely different in their country.

• Use a local translator when changing your content into a different language

• Make sure your policies are legal and can be supported for international shipping

• Remember, any changes to your site must be updated in for all the major languages in the countries you ship to

• Handle customer service for that country in that country

• List on country specific search engines

Accept Multiple Currencies

Pros

• Worldwide market access
• Easy for customer to pay for product

Cons

• Difficult shipping and price conversion on backend
• Increased fraud potential

Procedure

1. Check with your merchant bank and with your credit card processing software provider about getting real-time currency feeds
2. Ask customer early in the ordering process, what country they are in
3. Show all shipping and tariffs at checkout (reduces charge backs)
4. Use companies in the customer’s country to handle returns (customers do not want to pay for returns to the U.S.)

Provide Billing and Shipping Information

Pros

• If you don’t ship globally, you run the risk of being left behind in a global market.

Cons

• On the operations side, you need to have systems in place to handle shipping overseas, collecting and paying for tariffs, handling customer service, handling returns, and fraud checking and resolution.

Procedure

1. Find out how much traffic to your site is coming from other countries (usually 30-40%)
2. Publish your shipping policies in an easy to find location on your site
3. Make sure your billing/shipping form on site can handle international info (e.g. zip codes, countries, unusual addresses)
4. Make customer service accessible globally (use “Click to Voice” on your website or a “Real Time Chat” option), email does not substitute a real voice for customer service.