Guest blog by Emil Stickland from Thrive Digital
Entering a new international market, especially online, can be a daunting proposition. For good reason, there are plenty of areas that are cause for consideration. The top areas that deserve proper investigation are logistics, trust, preferred payments and speed. (Note that I have left off language because it provides very little sales uplift).
Testing a new international market
When entering a new international ecommerce market, why not test it? It is much less expensive, and you can use Amazon to help.
1. Logistics
Amazon is famed for its phenomenal logistics, and this is no different cross-border. You may not be using FBA (Fulfilment By Amazon) for domestic ecommerce, but when going overseas, consider using it. It is likely going to be better than using your existing distribution for international sales, and it will cost you a fraction of setting up warehouses and logistics overseas.
2. Trust
Amazon’s international reputation for ecommerce is outstanding. Consumer opinion of Amazon is very high. In the short term, this is something that is exceedingly difficult to replicate (or even come close to). Building a reputation with customers can take years, and is not something that you want to invest in for a test. You can take advantage of Amazon’s reputation easily, through selling on their site.
3. Preferred payments
How many people do you know who don’t have an Amazon account? In fact, so many consumers are happy to give Amazon their credit card details, that many websites now offer “Pay with Amazon” as a check-out option.
4. Speed
Amazon is fast, there is not denying it. Consumers like shopping on fast websites. Slow load speeds lead to high bounce rates. Rather than worrying about foreign CDNs and international load times, just let Amazon do it.
“An international ecommerce market ready to be tapped.”
One of the most important reasons to be present on Amazon, however, is that there is a ready market for your product. More than taking advantage of Amazon’s infrastructure, you can take advantage of Amazon’s customers. This is an incredibly cost-effective and efficient way of testing the market for your products.
If you can sell on Amazon in your target market, there is an international market for your products.
The importance of automation and product feeds
It is key when you are doing any type of international ecommerce, especially on e-marketplaces, that you look to minimise that amount of time that human beings are spending doing tasks that can be automated.
Assume that you have only 100 SKUs on your website, and then you want to test these SKUs on Amazon in Europe only (which is five marketplaces). This means that you will need to manage 600 SKUs. 100 SKUs on your website, and 5 x 100 SKUs on Amazon. Every time you want to make an edit, the work must be replicated five additional times. This is not an effective use of time.
Now imagine that you have 100,000 SKUs and want a global strategy on all relevant marketplace. The number of hours spent uploading products quickly becomes unfeasible.
Having a single system to manage all websites and e-marketplaces massively lowers the marginal cost of each SKU with the same upside. Not to mention is can provide a single interface for stock management, marketing, logistics, finance and other key systems.
Make sure you are automating product feeds, or you are wasting time.
It’s a big piece, but not the whole puzzle
It is important to remember that marketplaces fit into a strategy, and are NOT the only piece of the ecommerce puzzle.
Marketplaces provide a ready market for products that people are searching for. So, use this to create your low cost, low margin option. This way, you can access a market relatively easily. Keep in mind, that you are always trying to lead them to a higher priced, higher margin product on your own ecommerce site.
Interested in writing a guest post for the RepricerExpress blog? Email chris@repricerexpress.com
RepricerExpress works across eight Amazon marketplaces. Get your free 15-day trial and start repricing today!
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