How technology can help you grow international sales

When you think of exporting, it’s often the ‘red tape’ that comes to mind – the customs, logistics and taxes.

But besides the legalities, what about the experience of your international customers when they are buying products and services from you? Are you doing everything you can to streamline and improve these interactions?

When it comes to improving your customer journey, progress trumps perfection. The more barriers you remove and the easier you make the process, the more likely you are to get the sale.

Don’t imagine you have to tackle everything at once. Assuming you have your legal requirements in place, start from the end of the customer journey and work backwards, thinking about what you could improve along the way.

For example, some people in other countries will be happy to buy from you if you could display prices in their local currency and offer familiar payment options. Others might need you to offer more support in their preferred language before they will consider you.

Much of what prompts a customer to start their journey to buying your product or service is likely to be out of your hands. It might be a situation, a feeling, a thought, or a comment someone makes that triggers the problem recognition phase.

Once the seed is planted and your potential customer starts researching for solutions, you want to be there for them. But how can you do that in another country?

Well, thinking about your customer funnel and intentionally getting people in your target market to your website is going to be your first challenge.

Search engine optimisation

For organic search engine optimisation (SEO), using a website translation tool such as Weglot on your existing website will not only allow website visitors to see your content in their language, but your search engine results will also appear in the user’s local language.

This can take a lot of the time-consuming manual work out and smooth workflows, leaving your team or translation service to focus on reviewing and refining the translated content.

Pay-per-click advertising

Likewise, for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Google or other search engines and on social media, technology can help, but it will only do part of the work.

You could use a translation tool such as Google Translate or DeepL to translate your existing ads and then target them at the relevant country.

For a better experience, ensure your ads are more tailored for the target market. This is known as localisation.

The main risk of not localising your ads and content is to your reputation if things are lost in translation. You will also waste money getting people to your site that aren’t going to buy. 

Other marketing communications

The same points apply to all your other marketing vehicles that you might use to deliver your message to potential customers and get them to your website.

Think about:

• Organic social media content
• Brochures
• Flyers
• Events banners
• Adverts for print, radio or TV
• Emails
• Press releases

Localise where you place content

Alongside the message changing, where you place it may also need tweaking for different markets.

While Google is clearly the world’s dominant search engine, in some countries, it isn’t. So, make sure you also consider local search engines, such as Baidu for China and Naver for South Korea to help you reach customers where they are.

In many countries, Facebook dominates social media usage, but it might not in your target country, so it’s worth checking.  

For more in-depth advice on this, check out Semrush’s article on why you should consider localisation of content and its placement rather than just translation.

You can find UK agencies that have completed Google’s International Growth programme for support with managing this work.

If you are competing with local suppliers, ideally you want to match or exceed the ease of shopping with them. Your aim is to get your customer to a ‘yes’ with them feeling as confident as possible in choosing your business.

Answer questions

For all businesses, being able to answer customers’ questions in the moment will improve your conversion rates online.

Translating and localising frequently asked questions is a good first step.

You can take this a stage further by adding a multilingual chatbot such as Lokalise to your website to empower your team to provide customer service in a local language without speaking it themselves.

Product-based business considerations

If you offer products, once an international customer reaches your website, how easy will it be for them to:

• Understand what products you sell?
• See what’s in stock?
• See your prices in their local currency?
• Calculate taxes and delivery charges?
• Arrange delivery?
• Understand your returns policy?

If you need a lie down just thinking about it, you’ll be pleased to hear there are some great tech developments happening in this area.

Ecommerce platforms to the rescue

Some of the best-known ecommerce platforms that can help you with this kind of localisation are:

• Shopify Markets - allows you to localise your storefront for different markets, including language translation, local currencies, localised domains, geolocation recommendations and payment methods – see Shopify’s guide on how to do this.
• WooCommerce – allows you to set up available locations, shipping and currency exchange rates, plus use a translation plugin – see GoDaddy’s guide for how to do this.
• Squarespace – allows you to set up available locations and set shipping zones – see Weglot’s guide on how to do this.

Service-based business considerations

If you’re looking to sell services rather than products in export markets, then you need to be able to anticipate what information they will want to know about working with your business before they arrange an introductory call with you.

Think about providing localised information on:

• Terms of service
• Payment options
• Availability of your team for ongoing support

Appointment scheduling

Also consider how a customer in a different time zone is going to arrange an introductory call or regular client updates with you. Do you want to email back and forth while you each manually work out your time zones to find a convenient appointment?

Consider integrating a meeting scheduling tool such as Calendly into your website and other communications channels. This will allow customers in your target market to select a meeting time shown in their local time.

The final stages of the customer journey are high stakes when it comes to making international sales. If you impress with the ease of the experience, you might gain a loyal customer. If there’s friction, your efforts so far are wasted.

Consider merchant of record services

Integration of a service such as Global-e, Zonos or Reach can handle many of the complexities of selling cross-border by acting as the merchant of record (MoR) in the transaction.

This is an increasingly popular option for businesses because it removes a lot of the administrative, legal and financial burden, and reduces risk.

These organisations take on the financial and legal responsibility of the transaction with your customer by acting as a reseller of your product or service.

They can help improve conversion and sales retention by:

• Showing your customer prices in their preferred currency with all the taxes included – known as landed cost
• Offering payment options that international customers are familiar with
• Handling all the taxes and payment card industry (PCI) compliance
• Issuing confirmation emails and receipts
• Dealing with currency exchange rates
• Issuing refunds and dealing with chargebacks

Most will also either arrange shipping for you or partner closely with providers to help you with this.

If you’re already using one of the well-known ecommerce platforms, you should be able to use a plug-in or API to integrate this kind of service. If you have another kind of website, they will be able to give you support for getting set up.

Payment providers, DIY legal and admin

If you choose to handle all the separate elements yourself and use a payment service provider, you will need to know which payment options to offer for your market and contract with a provider.

You will also need to research and comply with all of the regulations for the market. Some companies use global trade management (GTM) software such as Thomson Reuters, Oracle or SAP to help with this.

You will also need to comply with PCI regulations and provide any customer service in relation to the transaction.

Finally, if it’s a physical product, you will need to arrange delivery through a carrier such as DHL or UPS.

Advocacy and repeat custom

To help you build trust signals to help future international customers shop with confidence, remember to ask your customer to provide a review or testimonial about your product or service. This may be on Google or a review site that is popular in your target market.

If you can display these reviews on your website, be sure to include these in your content localisation.

You may also want to keep in touch with your customer to offer them content to help them get the best out of their purchase, offer cross-sells and discounts for future purchases. Again – include these communications in your content localisation.

There is huge potential for your business if you trade internationally – especially online. In fact, Shopify has started to say that going global is a necessity.

It can significantly boost your sales by reaching more customers, as well as smoothing seasonal and market fluctuations your business might experience domestically.

The possibilities are exciting, yet the complexities are still daunting for many businesses.

Take heart that there are a lot of developments in TradeTech going on. The technological advancements in ecommerce, international payments, artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT in recent years are making digital trade accessible to more businesses.

If you haven’t yet started trading internationally, working with an international trade adviser and professional support services will help guide you on your way to success.

Once you have the fundamentals worked out, using technologies can help take some of the hard work out for you and your team to optimise the international customer journey and make more sales.