A Nation of Shopkeepers?

A Nation of Shopkeepers?
INTERNATIONAL AND CROSS-BORDER ECOMMERCE
compiled by Chris Jones
In association with
Sponsored by
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1
Contents
Foreword
By Borderfree
It’s no secret that international ecommerce is hot, representing a potential
£28 billion overseas opportunity to UK retailers. But selling globally can be
unnerving for retailers of any size. There’s much to think about – market sizing,
localisation, legal and compliance issues, payment processing, logistics and
perhaps most importantly, the customer experience.
This means retailers face some daunting challenges.
What if you develop your roadmap, spend your budget,
launch a new localised website and new customers
don’t come? Or what if you deprioritize your international
efforts and miss out on a big opportunity for growth?
These aren’t easy tasks for retailers, but at this stage,
it’s critical for retailers to expand internationally and
stay ahead of – or at least in line with – competitors,
both locally and globally. It’s not a choice; it’s the only
way to survive in a growing, global economy.
As broadband expands and the number of digital
devices in use soars, global customers in cities and
rural locales become increasingly accessible to retailers.
But with that accessibility comes high expectations:
today’s global consumers want to buy the brands they
love at the best price from any retailer, no matter where
in the world they are located. And they demand an
exceptional shopping experience that is tailored to
their preferences.
This report is designed to give it to you straight;
what you need to consider when entering the world
of cross-border ecommerce, the nuances of
in-country requirements, the legal steps required
to make it work, and project planning checklists to
help solidify your plans.
So go forth and conquer – and remember, “A ship in port is safe,
but that’s not what ships are built for.” – Grace Hopper
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List of figures............................................................................................................................... 4
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................. 5
1.1 Is it worth considering?�� 5
1.2 What comes next?..........................................................................................................8
2. Products, content and translation............................................................................................ 9
2.1 Introduction: translation is not localisation�� 9
2.2 The customer perspective�� 9
2.3 The search perspective�� 12
2.4 The process and cost of translation in money and time................................................ 12
2.5 Navigation and other awkward issues�� 14
3. Market entry...........................................................................................................................15
3.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................15
3.2 Marketplaces & platforms��15
3.3 Domain names and hosting�� 18
3.4 Getting found............................................................................................................... 19
3.5 Getting loved................................................................................................................ 20
4. Legal, payment & finance....................................................................................................... 21
4.1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 21
4.2 Legal issues.................................................................................................................. 21
4.3 Payment....................................................................................................................... 23
4.4 Finance........................................................................................................................ 25
5. Logistics and shipping............................................................................................................ 27
5.1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 27
5.2 Shipping to the EU....................................................................................................... 27
5.3 Shipping beyond the EU: the call of duties�� 29
5.4 Returns........................................................................................................................ 31
5.5 Overseas fulfilment...................................................................................................... 33
6. Strategic issues...................................................................................................................... 34
6.1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 34
6.2 Finding the positives�� 34
6.3 Issues for brands......................................................................................................... 35
7. Making a roadmap.................................................................................................................. 37
7.1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 37
7.2 Estimating the opportunity�� 37
7.3 Matching opportunity to difficulty�� 39
7.4 In conclusion...............................................................................................................40
8. Project planning checklists.................................................................................................... 42
8.1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 42
8.2 Language..................................................................................................................... 42
8.3 Market entry................................................................................................................ 43
8.4 Legal, payment & finance�� 43
8.5 Logistics & shipping..................................................................................................... 44
8.6 Planning & research�� 45
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4
List of figures
1. Introduction
Fig. 1 - Millions of customers buying from UK retailer websites from various countries.........................................5
2 - ASOS global sales 2004-2014....................................................................................................................... 6
3 - percentage of international sales at ASOS.................................................................................................... 6
4 - % of IMRG members shipping to various overseas destinations..................................................................7
5 - EU web-users willing to use a language other than their own online.......................................................... 9
6 - Second languages used by EU internet users..............................................................................................10
7 - Would you browse, buy or bank online in a 2nd language?........................................................................10
8 – What to translate?....................................................................................................................................... 11
9 – Two sides of the apple.................................................................................................................................12
10 - Soft, long and solid.....................................................................................................................................12
11 - New process, new critical path?..................................................................................................................13
12 - Italians never wish......................................................................................................................................14
13 - Inconsistent shoe sizes...............................................................................................................................14
14 - Marketplaces & platforms as a % of online retail....................................................................................... 15
15 - Clarins TMall flagship store, and Chrome Translate icon (yellow arrow at top right).............................. 16
16 - SEO on TMall..............................................................................................................................................16
17 – Three domain structure options................................................................................................................18
18 – Search engine share by country.................................................................................................................19
19 - Where Facebook is not the dominant social network............................................................................... 20
20 - Some legal issues....................................................................................................................................... 22
21 – Preferred payment methods in various countries.................................................................................... 23
22 – Transaction flow in payment on delivery models.................................................................................... 24
23 - IKEA Billy Bookcase.................................................................................................................................. 25
24 - IMRG Members international logistics.....................................................................................................27
25 – Average 1-man non-food order values for UK retailers........................................................................... 28
26 – Overseas phone numbers not welcome................................................................................................... 28
27 – Turning Japanese..................................................................................................................................... 30
28 - DDP opt-in rates for shipments to selected non-EU countries................................................................ 30
29 – Reasons for not shopping from overseas sites.......................................................................................... 31
30 – International returns: expert opinions.................................................................................................... 32
31 – Emergency laptop power cable delivered 3 hrs after placing the order in Shanghai.............................. 33
32 - P.R.I.C.E. differentiation applied to international ecommerce............................................................... 34
33 – Growth at Burberry.................................................................................................................................. 36
34 – Some top ranked ecommerce countries....................................................................................................37
35 – Drilling down to country size of prize...................................................................................................... 38
36 – Evaluating the options............................................................................................................................. 39
It was all so much simpler in the days before digital:
37 – Implementation paths towards internationalisation................................................................... 40
38 - Growth of Amazon international ecommerce sales, 2000-2014.................................................... 41
39 – Translation checklist....................................................................................................................42
40 – Language-related tasks checklist..................................................................................................42
41 – Domains & related issue checklist.................................................................................................43
42 – Other marketing activities setup checklist....................................................................................43
“ To found a great empire for the sole
purpose of raising up a people of customers
may at first sight appear a project fit only
for a nation of shopkeepers” 1
Need to conquer new markets for your brand? Send in the navy, by George!
Of course even in those days things weren’t really quite that easy: that famous quotation was penned the same
year the US declared independence. In fact, a reasonable argument could be made that the rise of ecommerce
means its never been so easy, or so cost-effective, to reach overseas customers. Its certainly cheaper to build a
website than a gunboat2!
Nevertheless, if you plan to go beyond the very basics of simply shipping from a UK site to an EU destination,
then going cross-border could be a significant undertaking, potentially requiring extensive planning and change
management within your organisation. There’s an obvious first question to ask, then: is it worth even taking the
time and effort to consider it?
1.1 Is it worth considering?
The UK remains (just...China will almost certainly overtake pretty soon) the country with the most
ecommerce-enthusiastic population in the world: 74% of adults bought something online in 20143.
But… there are only 49 million adults in the UK. Take a look at Figure 1:
Millions of customers already
buying from UK websites
UK Internal - 36.6
Germany - 6.5
China - 7.7
Australia - 3.0
United States - 16.7
Brazil - 0.9
Figure 1 - Millions of customers buying from UK retailer websites from various countries4
43 – Legal issues checklist...................................................................................................................43
44 – Payment checklist........................................................................................................................44
45 – Other finance issues checklist.......................................................................................................44
46 – Ship-to checklist...........................................................................................................................44
1
47 – Other logistics issues checklist.....................................................................................................45
2
48 – Country research checklist...........................................................................................................45
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49 – Strategy planning checklist..........................................................................................................45
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
Although the difference isn’t quite as big as you’d expect! Marks & Spencer’s new website is
reported to have cost £150m (e.g. Telegraph, Feb 2014) and its Castle Donington fulfilment centre
another £200m. The Royal Navy’s new type 45 destroyers cost £1080m each (House of Commons
public accounts committee, 2009).
3
Office of National Statistics: “Internet Access, Households & Individuals, 2014
4
Paypal: Modern Spice Routes, July 2014
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5
Even considering just these five interesting countries highlighted on the chart, the number of overseas customers
already actively purchasing online from UK retailers is the same as the total reachable customer-base in the UK
(of course there’s a corollary: UK customers are forecast to spend £18bn on overseas websites by 20185).
So missing out on selling to all these potential customers is missing out on an awful lot of potential sales.
By way of illustration, we can consider a very well-known example – that of ASOS (Figure 2).
In actual fact they seem to have got ‘stuck’ at around 60% of total sales in recent years, a number that is surprisingly
consistent with the data from Figure 1 earlier. So is it worth it? Well this still means that for every £2 they take from
UK customers, they are taking £3 from international ones, equivalent to growth of 150%.
Clearly it is worth it. IMRG members seem to share this view too. When we surveyed them, a majority were already
shipping overseas (Figure 4):
ASOS Global Sales 2004 - 2014
Do you ship to the following territories?
700
100%
600
90
RoW
80
EU
500
400
£MM
US
70
International
60
UK
50
300
40
30
200
20
10
0
10
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
0
2014
USA / Canada
Figure 2 - ASOS global sales 2004-20146
EU
Australia
Latin America
Russia
China
Others
Figure 4 - % of IMRG members shipping to various overseas destinations7
Even in their fairly early days in 2004-6, international sales represented a fairly steady ‘background level’ of 6%
of total sales. The real step changes started to happen when ASOS decided to go-for-it in a serious way, steadily
adding the capabilities that the rest of this paper will discuss in depth, such as localised sites, returns and operations.
Even if they’d remained UK-focussed, ASOS would still be an impressive success story. But by taking the international
opportunity seriously and building the capability, an impressive story has been transformed into a remarkable one:
£583m of international online sales in FY 2014.
In some ways just as interesting as the sales numbers is the percentage of sales that ASOS generates from their
international customers (Figure 3):
Is it sufficient then, to just ship overseas? ASOS figures suggest not – their phase of spectacular international
growth really got going when they began focussing fully on international in 2009-10. And IMRG members seem
to think not too: the average incremental growth experienced from members’ international customers from truly
localised experiences, as distinct from mere shipping, was 91%8.
The answer to the question “is it worth considering”
seems to be a resounding “yes!”
% of international sales at ASOS
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
2016
Figure 3 - percentage of international sales at ASOS
5
6
6
ibid
Source: asosplc.com annual reports 2004-2014
Sponsored by
7
8
IMRG retailer member survey, August 2014
ibid
Sponsored by
7
1.2 What comes next?
Many, if not most, UK retailers are already simply shipping overseas. This kind of ‘fire-and-forget’ operation is
relatively easy to implement, and generates some incremental sales: around 18% seems to be an average for
larger brands and retailers9. Going beyond that, however, and seeking to capture some of the 60% increment
that ASOS has seen, requires a lot more planning.
The remainder of this document is a discussion of the issues that need to be considered. In the first section,
we look at the building blocks of international ecommerce. This section is divided into the following chapters:
Chapter 2: looks at the issues associated with translating your offer. Products, content, emails,
T&Cs etc all need to be addressed. There could be significant changes to your business processes
and annual operating cycle as a consequence
Chapter 3: considers building your online presence in an overseas market. It’s no good just being available,
you have to be wanted!
Chapter 4: considers finance and legal issues, as well as covering the challenging topic of payment methods.
Chapter 5: reviews the challenges, possibilities and options for logistics and shipping. Somehow you’ve
got to get your stuff to the consumer. And probably they’ve got to be able to send it back if there’s an issue
The second section brings all these elements together:
Chapter 6: considers some strategic issues that need to be thought through before taking any serious steps
towards international ecommerce, especially for brands
2. Products, content and translation
2.1 Introduction: translation is not localisation
Maybe this is obvious? But in doing the research for this paper, I’ve already come across more than one website
translation agency using the data point quoted above – IMRG members saw 91% uplift from localising for overseas
customers – to try to justify their services.
Full localisation is all the things in scope for this paper – shipping, payment, returns, festivals and events, language,
customer service etc – everything that makes an overseas customer feel fully at home. Translation is just one part –
and probably not the most important part – of taking your ecommerce international. The uplift IMRG members saw
didn’t just come from translating their sites.
2.2 The customer perspective
So who needs translation?
The obvious answer is “your customers”, and the obvious answer is partially correct. As so often, however, the real
answer is “it depends” – not all customers are equal, and just because the British are no good with foreign languages
doesn’t mean that holds true for everybody (Figure 5):
Chapter 7: looks at choosing countries, making a roadmap, and planning for implementation
Chapter 8: provides a set of basic planning checklists which can form the skeleton outline of an
implementation plan
Do you use another language online?
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0
Others too
g
av
EU
/IE
UK
ia
an
di
n
av
ux
Sc
Be
ne
l
ly
Ita
l
/P
or
tu
ga
d
in
ce
Fr
an
Po
la
n
Sp
a
Ge
rm
an
y/
Au
st
ria
My own
Figure 5 - EU web-users willing to use a language other than their own online10
The IMRG Metapack UK Delivery Index Report, August 2015, shows between 20% and
26% of orders being shipped overseas. However it notes that “this figure may be influenced
[upwards] by a number of major retailers with proactive international strategies” and therefore
IMRG gives a guidance figure of 18%
9
8
Sponsored by
Data Source: European Commission Flash Eurobarometer, May 2011. Interestingly the
research was conducted from Hungary, but unsurprisingly Hungarian isn’t the language
the results are publicised in!
10 Sponsored by
9
Across the EU, more than half of internet users are willing (and able) to use a second language online,
compared with only 15% of British users. Which second language will they use?
One final statistic helps to complete the picture:
74% of people would buy again from the
same brand if the aftersales care is in their
local language13
The answer is unsurprising (Figure 6): English of course!
Second languages used online in EU
Sometimes
90%
Often
80%
Combined
70%
Bringing this all together, where should translation start from the perspective of the customer? The answer is in the
areas that the consumer is least comfortable. Happily this tends to be those areas that are lowest cost to translate
(Figure 8):
60%
50%
Highest priority
The checkout and its prompts/help
This does NOT (necessarily) mean fully localised payment methods, a topic we cover later.
But it does mean making it clear what to do for a customer unfamiliar with UK conventions.
40%
30%
Address formats is a good example. To create alternative forms for different countries is
technically moderately complex and probably not a top priority. Just showing customers from
your preferred overseas markets how to format their address to fit onto an English style
template, in their native tongue on a pop-up help prompt, is a simple quick-win.
20%
10%
0
English
French
German
Spanish
Italian
P.S. and do make sure that phone number fields accept characters like +()- , not just digits.
‘Anti-UK localisation’ of your site also matters!
Others
Figure 6 - Second languages used by EU internet users11
Delivery and returns information (“rights as a consumer”)
Many retailers tend to treat the ‘help’ areas of the website as a bit of a tiresome afterthought.
The result tends to be pages heavy on text, low on easy-to-understand pictures.
(Incidentally this behaviour tends to be even more pronounced in markets outside the EU. ‘Good’ customers – those
in high income groups able and willing to consider purchasing from overseas sites – tend to be those who are better
educated. In many interesting areas of the world, China or Brazil for example, ‘better-educated’ tends to be strongly
correlated to ‘good skills in English’.)
For an overseas buyer, this is probably the most important page on the site. There isn’t much of
it. It isn’t going to be expensive to translate into your key target languages.
It’s worth pausing to consider the implications of these figures. What they tell us is that even if you are targeting a
country that might be considered ‘difficult’ for English, for example France, then over half your target customers
might be comfortable with English. Does this extend to shopping online (Figure 7)?
Website prompts and error messages
It’s easy to overlook this. All those messages such as ‘this promo code is not valid’ need to be
translated (author’s note: there were over 1,200 of these the last time I was involved in such an
exercise, just on a fairly standard site).
Will you do this in a second language online?
Customer service
100%
We’ll come back to this point in a later section of this paper.
Never
90%
Occasionally
80%
Often
Marketing and merchandising communications
By definition these need to have rapid, high impact. Second-language communication simply
does not “catch the eye” in the same way.
70%
60%
Lowest priority
50%
Your products
Before taking this rather counterintuitive proposal at face value it’s worth reading the next
section: the customer perspective isn’t the only one that matters here. But products tend to have
pictures, unambiguous titles, clear descriptions that are either easy to understand or simple to
attack with Google Translate; second language customers can have the most confidence here.
40%
30%
20%
They are also by far the highest volume part of your site, by implication the most expensive to
translate, and (see next page) their translation will have the biggest impact on your existing
internal business processes.
10%
0
browse/read/watch
buy products/services
learn rights as a consumer
bank online
Figure 8 – What to translate?
Figure 7 - Would you browse, buy or bank online in a 2nd language?
12
11
12
10
ibid
ibid
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13
Can’t read, won’t buy: The Common Sense Advisory, 2014
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11
2.3 The search perspective
Before any of the above is relevant, prospective customers need to find you. The importance of translation diverges
very strongly here between ‘brands’ and ‘others’.
Typically a brand site will see the majority of its traffic being driven in some way by the brand term – direct entry to the
brand-named site, search-terms including the brand-name. In this situation, translation may well have lower value –
translated terms simply aren’t how the customer arrives at your site. As a simple illustration, here are the google.de
search results for “Apple” and “Apfel” (Figure 9):
To avoid your offer appearing soft, long and solid to a potential new customer, translation is first of all going to cost
some money. How much money is a how-long-is-a-piece of string question: on the one hand professional translation
is a very competitive market which keeps costs down. On the other hand it’s going to depend on how complex your
products are to explain. (I remember hearing lovehoney.co.uk mention a figure ten times higher than what I would
consider a norm… but then their products need a lot of explaining). Don’t forget that this is going to be a (partially)
recurring cost. Most sites have significant product churn: new seasons, new ranges, new technologies.
Secondly, and maybe more importantly, translation is going to cost some time, in two different ways.
When you begin to translate your site, the translator will need to build a dictionary, and you will need to work through
it. Surely that’s what you are paying them for? Well, unfortunately, almost all sites include:
• specialist terms whose translation needs to be validated
• phrases, especially about things like style and colour, where awkward decisions need to be
made about how to translate them. Some random examples from just a single page of M&S’s
site include “sweetheart necklines”, “staycation”, “lulu kennedy for indigo collection”
• brand words. Again picking a couple of phrases from a page on M&S: “Fitbit Charge” – the word “Charge”
probably shouldn’t be translated; “Autograph swimwear” – we certainly don’t want “Autograph” translated
Once through that initial set-up process, there is a much more important elapsed time requirement to deal with.
This sounds harmless until you consider the impact on your product launch critical path. Most brands prefer to launch
new product near-simultaneously in all countries. I’ve yet to work with a brand or retailer that creates its new-product
copy and content comfortably ahead of time. And now the translation process will demand several additional weeks
be squeezed in between the final English copy and the proof-read translated copy. This can have a profound impact
on your whole organisation and the change needs planning well ahead (Figure 11). Remember that just because you
created a new language version of your website, that doesn’t stop your customers still browsing the UK site.
MANUFACTURE
Figure 9 – Two sides of the apple
BEFORE
By contrast, if a significant percentage of your traffic arrives via generic terms – “men’s jacket”, “cheap laptops”,
“ethnic carvings” – then translation of your products, and even more critically your categories, page titles, and other
landing pages, becomes a much more urgent priority.
Similarly, of course, if you plan to target a country via a marketplace (see later) rather than an own-website, then you
will need to translate your products, otherwise they’ll literally get lost in translation.
Rule number one is: do NOT use Google Translate! Here are a few examples, just to illustrate the point, where I’ve put
well-known slogans via Google Translate into Chinese and then back into English (Figure 10):
BEFORE
AFTER
We are never knowingly undersold
We never sell intentionally
Live well for less
Live less well
Vorsprung durch Technik
Technology by-product
Soft, strong, and very long
Soft, long and solid
NEW RANGE
LAUNCH
CONTENT
MERCHANDISING
MANUFACTURE
STOCK BUILD
AFTER
NEW RANGE
LAUNCH
CONTENT
2.4 The process and cost of translation in money… and time
STOCK BUILD
MERCHANDISING
TRANSLATION!
Figure 11 - New process, new critical path?
The same considerations apply at a smaller scale to content and merchandising. Typically this is a very responsive
process, often on a daily or weekly cycle. There’s a much bigger issue to consider – should it be consistent for
different locations – but leaving that aside for now (it’s covered later in this paper), there will be a need to put in
place a strict process of production, translation, validation, publishing for every shared piece.
Figure 10 - Soft, long and solid
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12
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13
2.5 Navigation and other awkward issues
To kick-off, we’ll highlight a notorious gotcha – different languages need more or less space to say the same thing
(Figure 12)14. Typically the most awkward spot is website top-navigation. Reducing your top-level categories is not an
easy challenge to tackle.
3. Market entry
3.1 Introduction
If your ecommerce exposure has mainly been to the UK, US, Western Europe or Australia, then your instinctive picture
of an online presence is probably ‘your’ website (www.mysite.co.uk). Logically enough, your first picture of your
presence in a new overseas market is probably the same – www.mysite.overthere. If so, you’re probably picturing a
translated version of your UK site as a starting point. As we established in the previous section, deciding to produce
a translated version of your website can be a major undertaking, potentially requiring some pretty big changes to
overall business processes.
However ecommerce is most definitely NOT the same everywhere in the world, and this isn’t just a question of
dealing with some of the more difficult localisation challenges such as payment methods (see below). Rather, it’s a
bigger question – the structure of online retailing.
3.2 Marketplaces & platforms
One of the bigger differences is the relative importance of marketplaces and platforms. In the UK, eBay is often used
only as a clearance channel, or dismissed as ‘not for serious retailers’. Elsewhere in the world, including some very
interesting countries for UK retailers, marketplaces and platforms are where the main action happens (Figure 14):
Figure 12 - Italians never wish15
% of retail eCommerce via marketplace sites
A different issue, but one which also affects site navigation, is that of sizes. UK size-schemes don’t necessarily
translate naturally into size-schemes for other countries. For example there isn’t a one-to-one match between
UK and European shoe-sizes (Figure 13):
UK
eBay, Amazon
Spain
eBay, Amazon
Poland
Allegro
Japan
Rakuren, Amazon
India
Flipkart, Snapdeal
Alibaba,
Tencent/JD
China
Cnova, Submarino/
Americanas, Mercado Libre
Brazil
0%
Figure 13 - Inconsistent shoe sizes16
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
Figure 14 - Marketplaces & platforms as a % of online retail17
In fact this raises another challenge – it isn’t just translation, there’s also a potential (big!) data maintenance challenge.
Do you, for example, quote measurements in metric, US or UK imperial? If so, you might need multiple different
versions of the product specification: American consumers tend not to love millimetres for example.
As a final point, maybe you aren’t going to list your whole product range, for various reasons (logistics, cultural,
licenses…). Does this have navigational and taxonomy implications? Is there any danger of a site with empty branches
or dead ends on it?
In the UK, many big retailers mostly saw ecommerce coming early, got started with it in good time, and so managed
to hold on to their share of consumers. Not so elsewhere in the world, where marketplace and platform sites are
where serious shoppers go to do serious shopping, not just to hunt around for bargains. And therefore they’re also
where serious brands want to be.
Even if you do list most of your products: do you need to translate them all to start with? You probably need to translate
their navigational features, otherwise your site navigation will end up with a linguistic mess – colour-filters in two
languages for example. But most product ranges follow the 80/20 rule when it comes to sales. Why not take
the same approach to translation?
or example various sources suggest that Spanish typically needs 25% more space
F
than English on average. An estimate for German is left as an exercise for the reader
15
Example by Nomensa, illustrating Amazon tackling the language-length challenge by
omitting key functionality
16
Men’s shoe-size filters from clarks.co.uk and clarks.fr websites
14
14
Sponsored by
17
Data source (except UK): Nyenrode Business University et al, 2015.
Sponsored by
15
Nowhere is this more true than China. Alibaba has recognised that it wants to follow two potentially incompatible
strategies – maintain a stranglehold on online retail; and be a comfortable place for top brands and retailers.
Its solution is to split its offer into C2C TaoBao and B2C TMall. TMall is almost certainly where you want to be seen,
and the recognised way to be seen is to create a Flagship Store, which showcases your products and brands.
Try entering the URL brandname.tmall.com for any reasonably well-known brand, and you’ll soon get the idea.
(A hint, just in case you haven’t already come across this trick – if you want to look easily at foreign-language
websites, use Google Chrome. In the top RH corner of the URL area, there’s a translate icon which lets you flip
between original source and “English”). For example here’s the Clarins flagship store page (Figure 15):
The second is vertical integration. Right now we’re seeing the ongoing divorce of PayPal from eBay. The opposite is
true elsewhere. For example Alibaba’s great rival in China, Tencent, owns WeChat, which is the local mobile/social
network combined equivalent of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, any other social platforms you like using for
any reason… and claims 700m active users accessing it at least four times per day. Tencent also has a major stake
in JD.com, Alibaba’s upcoming rival, 58.com the top classified ads site, dianping.com the top local info site, etc etc.
Meanwhile Alibaba owns Alipay, the top online/mobile payment method, and many more. By entering via a platform
you’re likely to get access to a lot more local services and support.
In summary, a marketplace/platform approach might be a great way to dip your toe in the water in many countries.
In some countries, such as China, it might be the best way to proceed to scale too. Not that this has to be an either/or
decision, and in fact a contrary approach can bring its own rewards and, just as important, insights.
First of all, from Australia, primarily a “non-marketplace” country:
“In Australia specifically, we have seen
success working with brands to create
highly localised ecommerce websites that
are tailored to the local market, but also
have seen success supplementing that with
marketplaces. We ran a pilot program with
a large global marketplace in Australia
and discovered that 90% of customers that
shopped with our retail partners were first
time buyers who were new to a brand”
Figure 15 – Clarins TMall flagship store, and Chrome Translate icon (yellow arrow at top right)18
There are some other less obvious advantages of choosing this route to market in such countries. The first is SEO/
SEM. In the UK we’re used to spending a lot of time, effort (and money!) worrying about Google. In China or Japan,
for example, the local search engines Baidu and Yahoo respectively, are simply not where shoppers begin their
search. They start from within the platform itself. There are still SEO/SEM considerations inside the marketplace,
which might seem very unfamiliar and are focussed more on your profitability to the marketplace than things such
as relevance (Figure 16), but because you are already inside a retail-centric space, they can be easier to manage.
- Kris Green, Borderfree20
1. Type of TMall Stire
8. Positive Feedback
15. Views of top products
2. Feedback score and star level
9. Delivery speed
16.Feedback Ratio
3. Cheating (negative)
10.Relevance
17. Keyword usage
4. Refund rate
11. Usage of Alipay
18.Etc etc
5. Conversion Rate
12. Service Quality
6. Complaint rate
13. Product popularity
7. Time on instant messenger
14.Returning Buyers
And secondly, from China, which as we have just been seeing is definitely a market-place dominated country:
“Chinese customers may have more trust
in buying overseas products from overseas
retailers’ websites: we see an average
conversion rate of 5-6% compared to
1-1.5% on Tmall” – Don Zhao, Azoya
21
Figure 16 - SEO on TMall19
Flexibility, a willingness to adapt to local conditions and maybe give a few brand guidelines a temporary timeout
while you test-and-learn, and a long term approach to customer lifetime value, are essential.
18
19
16
Screenshot taken on 25th June 2015
Web2Asia, November 2013
Sponsored by
Kris Green, Borderfree, a Pitney Bowes Company. In conversation
with the author, July 2015
21
Don Zhao, Co-founder & Executive Director, Azoya International: statement to
the author August 2015
20 Sponsored by
17
3.3 Domain names and hosting
3.4 Getting found
Suppose the marketplace route doesn’t appeal to you. This is quite likely to be the case if your plan is to enter
countries such as Germany, Netherlands, USA or Sweden. Obviously the first thing you can do is just permit
international shipping from your UK site (see below). To go beyond that, you’re going to want a local online
presence, and that means a website. This raises an interesting question – what should you call it?
It’s not just about Google.
A few years ago, this question would have had one sensible answer: separate domains e.g. www.mysite.de,
www.mysite.com.au, etc. The obvious benchmarks for this approach are Amazon and especially Google, who you
might expect to know what they are doing with this issue. However as sites have increasingly sought a global
presence, alternative approaches are more prominent, which are now much better supported, especially by Google.
The three options are (Figure 17):
OPTION
Multiple Domains
Subdomains
Folders
STRUCTURE
www.mysite.co.uk
www.mysite.de etc
fr.mysite.com
de.mysite.com
www.mysite.com/de
www.mysite.com/fr-be
EXAMPLES
Amazon, Google
Wikipedia
Apple, IKEA
Figure 17 – Three domain structure options
Google around the topic, and you’ll find a great deal of confusing and conflicting advice in this area, mostly focussed
on the potential impact on SEO. Unless you are very large organisation, however, the reality is that SEO is probably not
your primary consideration here (even if maybe it should be) – manageability will tend to trump other considerations
every time.
There are two key questions to ask.
“How structurally similar are my different country sites
(apart from language), and how much resource do I have
to manage the differences?”
If your sites are essentially clones, and are going to be managed by a single central team, take the folders option.
On the other hand, if your sites will be quite different, with significant de-centralised/local site administration and
content, and maybe structural differences in critical areas such as taxonomy, then take the different domains option.
“Where are we (or who is) hosting my different country sites?”
OK, just kidding, it is mostly about Google, almost everywhere (Figure 18).
Search Engine share by county
US
UK
South Korea
Russia
Poland
Mexico
Japan
India
Germany
France
Czech
China
Canada
Brazil
Australia
Google
Bing
Baidu
Yanex
Yahoo JP
Naver
Daum
360search
Seznam
Others
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Figure 18 – Search engine share by country22
Moreover, the general trend for many countries – with the exception of China – is that Google’s market share is
increasing, in some cases (e.g. South Korea) quite strongly23. An interesting related statistic – sorry Microsoft
- is that both Baidu and Yandex have a greater share of global search than Bing.
Just for a change, then, something to make your life easier when planning international ecommerce – the techniques
you’ve mastered for SEO and SEM are likely to be the same techniques that will work in other countries. You might
decide to use a local agency – probably recommended, optimisation relies to a significant extent on local knowledge
– but the reports and proposals they produce should look familiar and you’ll largely be able to evaluate their
effectiveness using your existing ‘home’ experience.
In some ways, with the possible exception of Japan, the outliers are very clear cut – China, Russia, South Korea.
You’ll need specialist support for these, otherwise Google is the obvious starting place. Do remember the
observation from the previous section however – in marketplace-dominated countries, not all retail search
starts from a search engine.
There may be specific legal or technical reasons to host sites locally in certain countries (see below). If not, then this
is once again a question of manageability – are you comfortable working with multiple partners in different countries?
One consideration to remove from this decision-frame early is that of performance. As soon as you leave your home
shores, the digital media on your site belongs on a content distribution network. This is especially true if you are
targeting another continent; simple intercontinental latency issues can make an otherwise good site feel clunky
and slow.
If you want central control, or a single partner, then once again folders is probably your best option.
Sponsored by
22
Webcertain Global Search Report, 2013
See for example extradigital, which suggests Google is gaining significant
share at the expense of Naver
Sponsored by
23 18
19
3.5 Getting loved
Another trend which makes life easier for marketeers planning the entry into new countries is the consolidation
of social networking. At home it might seem that there’s always another channel popping up (before it gets acquired
by one of the big players anxious to protect its position…). Globally the macro-trend, once again with the exceptions of
China and Russia - oh yes and Iran – is towards Facebook dominance, with Twitter generally the runner-up (Figure 19).
4.1 Introduction
Possibly not a chapter title to set the pulse racing, but if you can’t trade legally and get paid, you’re not in business.
If you are entering a country via a marketplace or platform, then the rules of engagement with the platform will pretty
much ensure that you are fully compliant in all these areas. Don’t assume that they are the same rules as eBay or
Amazon in the UK – take the time to wade through all the small print (this is another major factor in favour of using
marketplaces as an entry-strategy.)
COUNTRIES
NON-FACEBOOK DOMINANT SOCIAL NETWORKS
Russia, Kazakhstan
1: VKontakt; 2: Facebook; 3: Odnoklassniki
China
QZone / Wechat
And definitely not Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn which are all
blocked by the Great Firewall!
Japan
1: Twitter; 2: Facebook
There are a lot of myths and rumours surrounding the legal issues involved in international ecommerce. Legal issues
are not a good area for myths, so here are three starting pointers.
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan
1: Odnoklassniki; 2: VKontakt; 3: Facebook
4.2.1 If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is a duck
Iran
Facenama
If you’re not going through the tightly controlled environment of a marketplace, then you should assume that legal,
finance and most especially payment issues are going to be your project’s critical path, at least until proven otherwise.
4.2 Legal issues
If international customers believe they are shopping from a UK site that just happens to ship overseas, then you
can reasonably apply UK law/consumer protection etc to the site and the transaction. Within the EU this principle is
(partially) endorsed by EU law.
Figure 19 - Where Facebook is not the dominant social network24
What is also helpful here is that a lot of dying or mythical social networks can be reduced in priority, especially Orkut,
which used to be dominant in countries such as India and Brazil, but has now been eclipsed25 (remember MySpace?).
This makes it very easy to make a recommendation for this guide: apart from China and maybe Russia, start with
Facebook and worry about the others later, maybe beginning with Twitter.
There’s quite a high probability that this is what you’re already doing! Where the catch comes is similar to the issues
with domain naming – are you going to be doing it with your existing team, or will you be devolving the responsibility?
With this comes an important question – one Facebook page or many?
Localising to multiple pages, especially if this involves multiple languages, is almost certainly the better option,
if you can afford the time to do it, otherwise your page risks ending up a confusing Tower of Babel, potentially limiting
interaction. Before you opt for the multi-page direction, however, evaluate the effort that currently goes into your
(single) current page – do you have the resources to do this many times over?
If, on the other hand, the site ‘looks like’ a local site – local language, currency etc – then you should assume that
local law applies to the transaction. This is true even if the reality behind the scenes is that you host in Bolton, ship
from Brighton, book the transaction in Bristol, and run customer services in Birmingham or Bangalore. Neither is
putting small print in the T&Cs on the site about English law going to help. You must assume that localisation means
local law unless explicitly professionally advised otherwise.
4.2.2 When in Rome, do as the Romans do
Take a look at what the top local players put in their policies. Every website has T&Cs, returns policies, and so forth.
It’s easy to find out who the top sites are in any country (ignore Amazon and any marketplaces and concentrate on
local pure-players). With the exception of free delivery, it’s rare for any of these policies to be there as marketing ploys
– they are almost certainly in place for local compliance reasons.
A last point to conclude this chapter – key opinion leaders are almost invariably local. If microsites, blogs,
endorsements etc are part of your marketing mix, you are probably going to need to do that locally. That may in turn
mean following the example set by ASOS, Lovehoney, and many others, and setting up a small local marketing team
as your first baby step towards full internationalisation.
4.2.3 Never take legal advice from the internet, or from guides such as this one
Data source: wearesocial.net plus www.vincos.it mentioned in the next note
25 The apparently meticulously researched blog, vincos.it, contains some beautiful maps
showing the consolidation of social networking globally over the last 5 years.
Goodbye Orkut, Friendster, Zing, Wretch, Maktoob, and many more…
26
24
20
4. Legal, payment & finance
Sponsored by
Include a provision in your budget for some
local, professional advice. Spend that budget.26
or avoidance of doubt, this is a disclaimer. IMRG are not legal professionals
F
and neither is your author!
Sponsored by
21
4.2.4 A starter-for-ten checklist
4.3 Payment
Taking careful note of the previous point, here is a suggested checklist of areas you may need to consider for
compliance purposes. It’s a starting point, not a comprehensive list (Figure 20):
UK ecommerce retailers are very spoiled when it comes to payment methods. Almost all ecommerce transactions
are paid for by methods that have one thing in common – you know you’re going to get the money before you start
shipping the goods. Not so elsewhere in the world. Germans pay later, on invoice. Many other nationalities, especially
in Eastern Europe and Africa, prefer to pay cash. There are some surprisingly outliers too – cash and post-payment
methods are also popular in Japan, normally thought of as a very digital country. China, as always, is distinct
(Figure 21). Looking at this data it also becomes clear why so many UK retailers who start shipping to the EU see a
surprising skew towards places such as Denmark – the way the Danes prefer to pay online is rather like the UK.
Be warned that even countries that appear sympathetic to Visa/Mastercard in theory may not be so in
practice – Brazilian cards, for example, often don’t support international transactions.
KEY AREA
COMMENTS
T&Cs
Self-explanatory. You’ll need local language T&Cs. Pay particular attention to any
policies around site usage by under-18s
Distance selling
Especially cooling off periods (e.g. 7-days to change your mind) and permitted
exceptions (like earrings)
Consumer protection
Especially the reasons and the length of time permitted to return goods
(90 days is NOT standard worldwide)
Preferred online payment methods by country
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0
Others
Cash
Invoice
Bank
Wallet
Returns
In some countries, it is not accepted, or permitted, to charge postage for returns.
Germany is a particularly well known example; the effect is higher returns rates
and costs
Cookies
Some countries require the customer to explicitly opt-in, unlike the UK where
the opt-out warning is standard practice
Data protection
An area with more than its share of myths. The main issues are typically around
retaining information (not capturing it for transient use such as in checkout or
shipping). All likely target countries have applicable law, and some are more
stringent than the UK
Promotion & sales
In many countries, retailers are not free to promote as they fancy. France,
for example, restricts clearance sale periods, and Boxing Day is not one of the
permitted ones. Other countries restrict items being sold for less than cost-price
other than via approved clearance processes
In practice, payment method support can be broken down into a fairly straightforward hierarchy of
difficulty versus reward.
Price display
Check rules on displaying values such as MRP, inc/ex-VAT etc
First, you’re almost certainly supporting Visa and MasterCard. Extending such support to international
transactions is usually simply a matter of configuration. What isn’t quite so easy is tuning your fraud-screening:
Distribution rights
If you’re not the brand or manufacturer, check you have the rights to sell their
range into the country you are targeting
Permitted imports
Some countries have bizarre restrictions: no umbrellas to Brazil, sewing machines to
China, or leather to Sri Lanka, for example 27
A
US
UK
ke
y
ia
Tu
r
ss
an
d
Ru
Po
l
la
nd
s
an
er
ly
Ne
th
Ja
p
Ita
y
a
di
In
an
ce
Ge
rm
t
Fr
an
yp
k
ar
nm
De
Eg
a
in
il
Ch
Br
az
lia
tra
Au
s
Figure 21 – Preferred payment methods in various countries28
“Without taking special measures, retailers
may find cross-border fraud rates increasing
to 4-5 times that of domestic rates. The ideal
scenario for retailers is to achieve a low
fraud rate that is roughly around domestic
levels, while keeping the order acceptance
rate high. This is part of the value our
solutions help deliver.” – Kris Green, Borderfree
We’re starting to get beyond ecommerce here…
Labelling
Card
Once you are selling locally, your product labelling needs to be locally compliant.
Some of this is regulatory; other areas are good presentation practice. For example
US consumers like to know country-of-origin even if this is not legally mandated
Figure 20 - Some legal issues
29
Source: Craig Reed, Global Ecommerce, Pitney Bowes and part of the leadership
team who oversees the recent acquisition of Borderfree: Retail Touchpoints,
Global E-Commerce Roadmap
27 22
Sponsored by
28
29
Data source (mainly):Worldpay Alternative Payments 2nd Edition, 2014
Kris Green, Borderfree, a Pitney Bowes company. Conversation with the author, July 2015
Sponsored by
23
Second, in countries where e-wallets have significant share, it’s most likely to be Paypal (except China where it’s
Alipay). If you aren’t already offering it in the UK, do so in advance to get used to working with it. Many companies
find the additional transaction costs offset by additional sales, often significantly:
“Some of our clients saw tenfold sales
growth from Chinese customers when they
participated in a Borderfree promotion
partnering with Alipay’s ePass program,
designed to introduce Chinese consumers
to Black Friday promotions.” – Kris Green, Borderfree
Eastern Europe, especially within the EU, is a big opportunity for many UK retailers and brands, but if you want to
address it, then you have to consider cash-on-delivery. In some countries it’s more-or-less the only payment method
most customers will use (e.g. Romania 90%, Ukraine 85%31). And if you offer it, you’re going to have to ensure your
delivery and refund/returns tracking is extremely robust indeed, rewrite all your customer service SOPs, and then
be very, very polite to your finance department every month-end.
4.4 Finance
Some key issues are easy to demonstrate, by using IKEA’s ubiquitous Billy Bookcase (Figure 23).
30
Third, check if there are local card schemes which operate in a transaction flow more-or-less consistent with Visa/
MasterCard. JCB-card in Japan is a reasonable example. Implementation can require a lot of elapsed time, due to
registration and certification requirements, but technically it isn’t particularly difficult, and more importantly won’t
impact on the normal transaction and accounting flow on your site. (Unipay in China is an exception).
Fourth, there are some countries where specialist local methods have to be tackled. iDeal in the Netherlands
(59% share) is an obvious example. There aren’t actually so many of these as rumour would have it, it’s just that they’re
surprisingly close to home in otherwise rather attractive markets (especially Netherlands and Germany). As with the
previous point, allow plenty of time in your project plan.
Fifth, take a very deep breath before tackling any methods which don’t involve you receiving payment prior to
(or simultaneous with) the despatch of the goods. Cash-on-delivery isn’t actually very hard to do on the ground
– the main parcel-delivery companies in such countries offer doorstep payment handling and settlement as a
standard add-on service. Where it really messes you up is in transaction flow and accounting policy (Figure 22).
PAY ON DESPATCH
The following are one
simultaneous transaction:
PAYMENT TAKEN
ORDER
DISPATCHED
STOCK BOOKED
OUT OF WMS
SALE BOOKED
IN GL
PAY ON DELIVERY
Now a multi-step journey requiring many changes
to accounting policies, customer service process etc:
Figure 23 - IKEA Billy Bookcase32
Any company trading internationally is exposed to exchange-rate risks. How much risk obviously depends on your
chosen operating model, especially logistics – if you decide to send significant quantities of stock into another country
to have local availability then clearly you’re exposed to it changing in local value. Similarly, technical issues such as
transfer pricing need to be checked out. The Russian headlines quoted in Figure 23 are obviously an extreme case, but
even more “normal” markets can be exposed to quite big variations:
“Rest of the world growth was also impacted
by adverse currency movements in the
first half, when revenues declined by 11%,
but recovered in the second half after
implementation of a re-pricing strategy in
Australia” [subsequently indicated as being
reductions in the 15%-20% range].33
STOCK BOOKED
OUT OF WMS
ORDER
DISPATCHED
PAYMENT TAKEN
SALE BOOKED
IN GL
Figure 22 – Transaction flow in payment on delivery models
30
ibid
Sponsored by
Personal information given to the author during assignments in these countries
Pricing from IKEA’s global website. The quotation is from CNN on 18th Dec 2014
33
Boohoo.com, FY15 annual report and subsequent Q1 update
31
Sponsored by
32
24
25
5.1 Introduction
The behaviour of IMRG’s retailer members provides a very good way to gauge the difficulty, or if you prefer, to make
a roadmap, to international shipping (Figure 24). It’s also worth noting the IMRG members are somewhat ahead of UK
ecommerce as a whole – IMRG estimates that around 18% of eligible UK online sales went to destinations outside the
UK in Q1 201534.
IMRG retailer members who...
se
el
UK
re
id
id
an
to
ip
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lm
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ia
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7
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100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0
How serious this is may in turn depend on an issue we cover later – is your international ecommerce competing with
local distributors of the same products?
ip
And then there’s the customer perception issue. How happy are you that a French customer can buy the same
IKEA book-case 16% cheaper than you can in the UK? Just because you might redirect your customers based on
IP-address geo-location doesn’t stop them being able to look at the sites for other countries (IKEA is a case in
point – I’ve easily been able to check their pricing globally to make that graphic) and compare prices… and complain,
and write unpleasant posts about the difference on social media. You can’t realistically flex prices up-and-down as
the exchange rate varies day-to-day, some stability is required for customers, and therefore discrepancies will occur.
5. Logistics and shipping
Sh
IKEA is trading via localised websites, and so is obliged to include local VAT or sales tax in its prices. This is another
area to take professional advice about, but a reasonable starting assumption for planning purposes is similar to the
legal one above – if your website purports to be local, then so is its sales tax. If you are planning to localise for the US,
then this is a horribly complex area that will require connecting your checkout to a sales-tax and/or DDP (see later)
calculating service. These in turn require you to classify every product on your site with an extra product-type code,
adding to the burden of product master data maintenance and translation; US sales tax rates vary by state and
product type.
Figure 24 - IMRG Members international logistics35
Adopting a wisdom-of-crowds philosophy, and of course taking it as read that IMRG members are very wise indeed,
we’ll use this analysis to structure our walk through the issues involved in this area.
5.2 Shipping to the EU
Pretty obviously the first thing you need is a shipping partner who will take parcels outside the UK. Most of the usual
suspects do so, but don’t just assume you should use your current UK partners, for several reasons.
The most basic reason is cost. The most cost-effective partner for delivering your particular products overseas may
not be the partner you use for within the UK. Incidentally cross-border orders tend to be higher value and for more
articles per order, because customers want to consolidate the (presumably) higher delivery charges, which may in
turn affect the delivery-cost-profile of your orders (Figure 25):
The IMRG Metapack UK Delivery Index shows between 20% and 26% of volume shipping
overseas depending on the month. However it should be noted that this excludes 2-man
articles and groceries and certain types of click-and-collect order, and while the underlying
sample size is a huge 5m+ parcels per month, there is some skew towards larger retailers.
For guidance, IMRG suggests a lower underlying figure of 18%
35
IMRG member survey, August 2014: sample includes only those who responded to the survey
34 Sponsored by
26
Sponsored by
27
International phone numbers routinely include the characters ‘+()-.’ and so a checkout that rejects non-digits just
lost you a conversion and a new customers. Similarly postcode checkers need to relax when dealing with foreign
addresses. Or not. The second stage is to add international address-checking, which many existing solutions will
support in theory. It has to be said that this varies in effectiveness, especially for Asia or parts of Latin America,
so you may still be forced to adopt a more laid-back approach than would be appropriate for UK addresses
(this in turn of course has an impact on fraud-screening).
Average order values by destination
70
60
to UK
to EU
50
to non-EU
Set realistic expectations around delivery times and the process, and display these clearly in the help pages of your
website. What delivery times and process you can expect to be displaying ultimately depends on how you decide to
solve all these challenges. Fundamentally you have three possible approaches:
40
£
Postal
30
Pretty much as it sounds: you give it to the parcel company in the UK,
and they send it on
Essentially ‘unmanaged’ and therefore cheapest, although increasing
numbers of destinations have services offering some tracking
20
Express point-to-point
10
The big global carriers will undoubtedly get it there, quickly, and you’ll
be able to track it the whole way through
Premium cost for premium service
0
1Q15
2Q15
Managed direct access
36
Figure 25 – Average 1-man non-food order values for UK retailers
(Delivery fees on the order themselves only really become an issue if you localise the site. Customers then have a
reasonable expectation of receiving local delivery pricing. Since even domestic delivery is often subsidised by retailers
to help conversion, competing with the offer from local players could be quite expensive.)
Of course introducing another delivery partner increases the complexity in your fulfilment centre. If you already work
with several or use a management solution such as MetaPack, it’s probably not such a big deal, but moving from one
to two is something of a step-change. On the other hand, you are unlikely to be flooded with overseas orders on the
day you launch, and so babysitting such a change is practical; how many of you remember the happy days when you
launched your first transactional site in the UK and watched the orders start to trickle in?
Next up on the list is track-and-trace ‘beyond Calais’. Your delivery company may be using a partner network for
some or all countries on your list. For any countries to which you hope to ship significant volumes, you need to be sure
you can trace the parcels with the same confidence and granularity you are used to in the UK…or possibly even more
confidence if cash-on-delivery is involved. Preferably your international customers should be able to track themselves
– experience suggests that international customers are even more neurotic than domestic ones if the delivery looks to
them like it might have fallen behind schedule.
An emerging mid-tier class of solution, which uses local partners at both
ends of the process, manages the hand-off between the two and the
associated issues which arise at this hand-off, especially duties
(see below) and connecting up track-and-trace
Local consumer preferences for receiving the goods should also be considered. The rise and rise of click-and-collect
in the UK is a well-documented phenomenon38 which takes different forms elsewhere: collect-in-store is dominant
in the UK, while in France parcel store is by far the preferred approach, and in Germany this is run a close second
by parcel lockers. Not forgetting more unusual solutions of course: delivery to your car-boot (remotely and securely
enabled for delivery-agent access) is being trialled in Scandinavia, and in Germany by Amazon/DHL.39
5.3 Shipping beyond the EU: the call of duties
The movement of goods within the EU is essentially free. Once you step outside, this is no longer true, and the
complexities are fairly bewildering. Every country has different rules applying to different categories of products.
One extra reason, apart from the obvious compatibility of language and culture, for Australia featuring quite highly
on IMRG members’ preferences is that it has a relatively high “duty free” threshold – A$1,000. Other countries are
rather less generous.
As we all know from experience, track-and-trace is less necessary if you can be sure you have the right address in
the first place. There are two stages to this. The first is simple – ensure your checkout doesn’t actually reject address
details from overseas customers (Figure 26).
Figure 26 – Overseas phone numbers not welcome37
36
37
28
IMRG Metapack UK Delivery Index Report July 2015
The screen-clip is from a UK retailer’s website in 2012, on a day when
they were running an international delivery promo event.
Sponsored by
38
39
Not least in IMRG’s comprehensive study: UK Click & Collect Review 2015
ibid
Sponsored by
29
Best practice is to offer the customer to pre-pay the import duty where this is possible, known as DDP (delivery and
duty paid) (Figure 27). Online footwear retailer Planet Shoes saw international conversions rates almost double when
this option was introduced.40
Depending on the country, these rules can be prone to sudden changes:
“When legislative changes were made
abruptly in 2014 in Russia, it made it
incredibly difficult for retailers to be able
to send deliveries there. At the time of the
changes we were the only carrier that was
already complying with the new customs
clearance requirements for ID capture and,
therefore, the only carrier that was able to
process and clear Russia customs” – Stuart Hill, wnDirect
43
5.4 Returns
When IMRG asked UK consumers what might put them off buying from an overseas website, here are the
answers we got (Figure 29). There’s no reason to suspect overseas customer buying from the UK have
particularly different perceptions.
Figure 27 – Turning Japanese41
Some customers might prefer to have the option of taking their chances by not paying the duty, but in practice most
do so, and you might find it simpler – and less likely to lose you a customer later – to simply make it mandatory.
Some sample opt-in rates for shipments to non-EU countries (Figure 28):
Perceived barriers to purchase from an overseas retailer
Language
DDP opt-in rates for selected countries
Payment security/Fraud/Convenience
India
Delivery Lead Times/Tracking
Returns Practicality
Mexico
Customer Service Challenges
Saudi Arabia
Shipping/Returns Costs
Others
Brazil
0%
Japan
20%
40%
60%
80%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
100%
What is perhaps surprising about these answers is how many of them are fairly easily avoidable in ways we have
already discussed above, often by absolute basics such as clearly setting expectations, displaying quality marks
(local ones, not UK ones), offering duty-paid shipping etc.
Sponsored by
43
Figure 28 - DDP opt-in rates for shipments to selected non-EU countries42
Craig Reed, Global Ecommerce, Pitney Bowes and part of the leadership team who
oversees the recent acquisition of Borderfree: conversation with author, July 2015
41
Collage from Harrods checkout
42
Source: Borderfree experience when shipping from US to country X
30
20%
Figure 29 – Reasons for not shopping from overseas sites44
0%
40 10%
44
Stuart Hill, CEO of wnDirect. Stated to the author in August 2015
IMRG Blackbay UK Consumer Home Delivery Review, 2015
Sponsored by
31
Perhaps a little more operationally challenging is the top flagged issue, that of returns and associated customer
service. Here’s a view from a couple of experts (Figure 30):
“What I found was that ASOS has an Australian returns
address, meaning I didn’t have to pay for international
shipping to send the clothes back. Bonus!
What the opinion former blogged
What the retailer said in its annual
accounts
I was in big trouble. The clothes were my kind of style,
they offered free international shipping, and refunds were
allowed; a lethal combination, in short, I said farewell to
$1,000 that day.”
Whatever you finally decide to do, spell the process out very clearly to customers, both on the site and preferably in
the package documentation too. This is an area where the payback on the costs of translation such as documentation
and instructions, at least into the languages of your top handful of target countries, may well be rapid. While doing so,
check your packaging complies with local law and customs – it’s no good using a wine-bottle pictogram to represent
“fragile” when shipping to Islamic destinations.
5.5 Overseas fulfilment
A fully-fledged overseas fulfilment centre is likely to be the last link in the chain, although it is worth noting that
several IMRG survey respondents already had one. Do be very aware of the local competition and benchmarks before
you attempt this – the “delivery 3 hours after your order is placed” offer from JD.com in China, for example, is not one
you are going to be competing with easily (Figure 31).
“A key part of retaining customers is ensuring that the
returns process is as smooth as possible. We process returns
locally in the USA and Australia (our biggest markets outside
the UK): this ensures that customers receive their refund as
quickly as possible and the service is as cheap as possible”
Figure 30 – International returns: expert opinions45
Notice the emphasis on customer retention in the ASOS quote. It could be argued that this is even more important
– if that’s possible – than when serving domestic customers. An international customer who already justified the
perceived risk of making an overseas purchase may be more likely to stay hooked, and equally more likely to depart
for good if exposed to a very long delay before getting credited.
As always, there are some potential steps-up in complexity available. Providing an overseas returns address,
but then consolidating returns periodically into a single shipment back home, is one way to start. Of course
outsourcing such complexities is an obvious way to reduce the implementation pain, but in any case regarding
it as a pain is the wrong attitude:
“74% of purchase decisions, before buying,
are influenced by what your returns policy
will be after buying. Robust, cost effective,
cross-border returns should not be regarded
as a necessary evil for cross-border
e-commerce, but instead seen as a sales
driver.” – Gary Tervit, P2P eSolutions
Figure 31 – Emergency laptop power cable delivered 3 hours after placing the order in Shanghai
However, this is not necessarily an all-or-nothing type decision. Every retailer and brand typically has a strong
80/20 element to their range. The business-case for locating that 20% of top-sellers nearer to its customers in a
local mini-fulfilment centre can look compelling. Be aware, however, that the IT, finance and order management
challenges in managing split fulfilment orders (products shipped from different fulfilment centres for a single order)
are fairly formidable even domestically; getting this all to work cross-border may leave the logistics elements of the
project looking like the easy part.
One other possibility to explore for brands is that of using their local distributor to fulfil orders from the centrally
managed website. This question – a classic channel conflict problem - leads us nicely on to some of the thornier
strategic challenges to be faced in becoming international.
46
The same step-by-step-up approach applies to customer service activities. A full multilingual 24x7 telephone
support line is a major step for all except the most committed, but intermediate options are available, and email
is likely to be an easier option anyway – non-English speaking customers are probably just as scared of calling
as you are of answering!
Corporate quote from ASOS annual accounts 2012. Blog written by someone
who describes herself as “I’m Nikki and I’m hooked on online shopping”
46 Gary Tervit, International Serves Director, P2P Mailing Ltd: interview with the
author August 2015. The data point is from UPS/Comscore Pulse of the Online Shopper, 2012
45 32
Sponsored by
Sponsored by
33
6. Strategic issues
6.1 Introduction
Most of the previous sections of this paper have a common theme – they are a lengthy liturgy of systematically
overcoming negatives, about lowering the barriers to international shoppers purchasing from what, to them,
is a foreign retailer.
It’s surprising how often the other side of the coin gets overlooked47. Even if you have overcome all possible negatives,
there still needs to be some positive reasons for international consumers to purchase from your site. Once you’ve
identified what these might be, it becomes practical to start to estimate the size of the prize and hence to decide
where to focus your energies.
6.2 Finding the positives
We can use a P.R.I.C.E.48 (price, range, information, convenience, experience) formula to structure and explore the
plausible available options here (Figure 32).49 50
Price
More than a third of Russia’s online
consumers had made a purchase
from a foreign online store.
Realistically speaking, it’s pretty difficult for a UK retailer to sustain a price advantage when
trading internationally, at least without making the major step-change investments needed
to effectively operate fully from another country (as, for example, AO.com are presently doing
for Germany49)
Exchange rates, duties, shipping costs etc all make a price-based strategy generally challenging
to execute. In many countries this is exacerbated by the presence of local pure-players
interested only in (tiny) cash margins or with access to thriving grey-markets
In summary, four main strategic options seem to have proven track-records:
1. Be the brand or manufacturer
2. Be a strongly defined niche player in particular categories
The top reason UK customers give for shopping from an overseas site is that they couldn’t buy
what they wanted in the UK50
Range
Having something unique to sell is by far the most compelling proposition to a prospective
overseas customer. Typically this means being the brand or manufacturer, or just possibly
owning the regional rights
Conversely being a generic seller is likely to be tough going, although let’s not forget Amazon,
ASOS, AO.com and Zalando
Information
Convenience
Experience
3. Target niche countries and try to stay ahead
4. Have a successful proposition at home, and really go for replicating it big time abroad
6.3 Issues for brands
Brands are well-placed to take advantage of positive opportunities in international ecommerce:
“In 2013 the top 25 brands searched for
on Yandex (the top Russian search engine)
were all overseas brands. The same research
also showed that more than a third of
Russia’s online consumers had made a
purchase from a foreign online store with
international brands occupying more than
40% of the market.” – Stuart Hill, CEO wnDirect
It’s always tough to use this as a sustainable differentiator, especially if you have to
translate it all too
Niche players, however, stand a better chance. Examples include Lovehoney and
(a personal favourite) Bluenile.com
Obviously this is very difficult to do, given the logistics challenges involved. On the other
hand it has evidently been a fundamental pillar of the success of ASOS for example.
An interesting one. Online retail in the UK is still more developed than in most countries, and
so the opportunity for UK retailers to offer a superior experience to less well-treated overseas
customers does indeed exist (although definitely don’t try this in China, nor generally in the US).
There’s also a question about whether any such advantage is sustainable in the long-term,
as local players ‘catch up’.
51
Figure 32 - P.R.I.C.E. differentiation applied to international ecommerce
T he author recalls a number of discussions with retailers who had fixed a few basic
hygiene factors on their site (e.g. checkout), and then spent PPC money bringing
international customers to it. Conversion was non-existent. On closer inspection,
there was simply no reason for a customer to buy there.
48 For more information about P.R.I.C.E., see The Multichannel Retail Handbook,
ISBN 978-1-300-65266-3
49
AO World plc announcement, 30 Sep 2014. And of course see www.ao.de
50
eDigital Research survey for IMRG, July 2014
47
34
Sponsored by
Sponsored by
51
Stuart Hill, CEO of wnDirect. Stated to the author, August 2014
35
However it does present them with another set of potential issues. Two charts depicting the growth of Burberry
help to illustrate these (Figure 33):
7. Making a roadmap
7.1 Introduction
For most UK retailers or brands contemplating the wider world, the most sensible way to start is simply adding
shipping to the EU to the existing website. On the assumption that the UK will remain part of some sort of European
free trade zone, then this represents by far the lowest risk, and simplest, way to enter the international marketplace
(although a reasonable alternative case could be made for starting instead with the English-speaking US or Australia).
Even doing this well entails certain complications, as we’ve already discussed: it makes sense to focus efforts on
some of the easier countries such as Scandinavia, France or possibly Italy. Nevertheless the learnings and insights
gained can be even more valuable than the orders themselves, and unless there are particular reasons for excluding
this option – such as territory rights or licensing issues – this is the obvious place to start.
Beyond that basic step, a planning roadmap is required. In it’s most simplistic form, this consists of comparing the
opportunity with the difficulty of various markets, and then also forming a view on how ‘deep’ to proceed into the
chosen countries. We’ll consider such an approach step-by-step in the remainder of this section.
7.2 Estimating the opportunity
There are two stages to this. The first is to look at the generic opportunity a country represents. This used to be
rather difficult to do, due to the paucity of helpful statistics. This in turn was partly due to the need to estimate the
future potential of a country, based on underlying factors such as broadband penetration, payment card penetration,
parcel-shipping infrastructure, and general internet take-up. By far the most important of these, by the way,
is broadband penetration – online purchasing is a relatively complex transaction and needs reasonable network
speed as a general enabler; the difference in 2015 is that this could be either landline or, in many countries such
as India or China, mobile.
Such an approach is increasingly obsolete. Internet retailing is maturing in most interesting markets, to the point
where it becomes more realistic to look at now, not the speculative future. Lots of detailed studies, based on
experience, are available to help with this, such as IMRG’s passports and Borderfree’s country profiles.
Figure 33 – Growth at Burberry52
Going international and selling direct to consumer are exactly what an international ecommerce strategy implies for a
brand. The challenge lies in the lower graph: many brands already have an international presence, executed via local
wholesalers or distributors. Where do they fit into the story? Are you simply going to create a channel conflict situation
where sales from a (centrally-managed) ecommerce site compete with your own local distribution channels?
There are also various published indices which attempt to rank the ecommerce attractiveness of potential countries
in various ways. A bit of common-sense needs to be applied when reading them (unless you plan to really go hard
for that niche market strategy proposed above) – the top 20 fastest growing markets include Albania, Azerbaijan,
Macedonia, and Ecuador, while the fourth highest penetration of online retail is in Suriname – and then they generally
tell you what you would expect. Here are some ranking highlights from the same study (Figure 34):
There are two reasonable answers. Option one – yes and it’s tough, the world is changing.
Option two – no, let’s partner with them to overcome a whole host of the negative issues identified previously.
Examples (in rough order of helpfulness) include:
• Acting as the local returns address
• UAT Testing the localised website
• Becoming the local marketing office
• Fulfilling the core 20% of the range locally
1. UK
2. USA
12. Canada
26. Russia
3. Germany
4. France
14. Australia
27. Turkey
5. NL
6. S. Korea
18. China
28. Poland
7. Japan
8. Switzerland
21. Brazil
29. Spain
9. Finland
10. Sweden
22. Italy
35. Mexico
Figure 34 – Some top ranked ecommerce countries53
• Performing local customer service
Of course there are complexity, and skills/knowledge, issue to cope with if you choose the partnership option,
but it does provide a potential way to continue to nurture what may already be a long-term relationship without
going down the road of allowing a local website, which may not reflect well against your brand guidelines or
preferred customer experience.
52
36
Source: Burberry plc annual results 2005-2013
Sponsored by
53
Cushman & Wakefield, Global Perspective on Online Retail, 2013
Sponsored by
37
These generic overviews provide the essential starting inputs to the second stage of the process – drilling down to
the much more critical question “what opportunity does this country represent for us?” We can consider a 4-stage
approach to evaluating the answer to this (Figure 35):
7.2.3 Reach: can you get their attention?
Many brands will be familiar with the experience that the majority of their visits are in some way based on brand-terms.
In turn the activity on brand-terms is driven by the profile of the brand itself – there’s usually a straightforward
correlation. This isn’t going to be any different elsewhere. If your brand has no profile, your international presence
will get no traffic.
Various inputs can help you get colour on this including (obviously) visitor numbers to your UK site from overseas,
and Google Trends (or Baidu Index for China, which needs registration), or relevant marketplace searches.
POTENTIAL
ARE “YOUR”
CUSTOMERS HERE?
ACCESS
ARE THEY
ONLINE HERE?
GENERIC
REACH
CAN YOU GET THEIR
ATTENTION?
CONVERSION
WILL THEY CONVERT
IF YOU DO SO?
Ultimately you are going to have to invest in building brand awareness. Even harnessing all the power of
social media, this is still potentially expensive, which in turn helps with focus: there’s little point in spreading
too thinly or else nobody will notice you!
If you are selling generic products, there’s typically a lot more data to go on, but then there’s typically a lot more
competition too.
7.2.4 Conversion: will they actually buy?
“Yes”, is the short answer, but the trouble is that in many countries this can be enlarged to “yes, but only if you
are on promotion.” There is a perception that stores are where you buy at normal prices, and the internet is
where you get deals.
SPECIFIC
Figure 35 – Drilling down to country size of prize
7.2.1 Potential: are “your” customers here?
This is largely a sense check. If you are selling deer-stalker hats, does anybody in this country stalk deer?
If so, how many of them? Can they afford your hats?
Similarly, the generic inputs and reports about ecommerce activity and potential in this country can be applied
– is this a realistic country to target right now?
One other obvious point: you’ll be used to the competitor landscape in the UK. It might be rather different elsewhere,
with local category killers.
7.2.2 Access: are they online here?
Nowhere is this more so than China, where a proliferation of artificial “festivals” with numerological names such
as 11.11, 6.18 and so forth, is fuelled almost entirely by promotions, and the success of a brand for a year can be
determined by a single day event. Even guidance from JD.com, Alibaba’s big competitor, and which has a vested
interested in trying to reduce the intensity of price war, is – 10% of a range should be top-sellers (or unique) and
priced around 10% under the normal store price, another 20% should be on promotion in some way, and 70%
should be at standard prices; the expected rate of sale on that long-tail is left to your imagination.
In short, consider your margins. Remembering too that you might be paying overseas shipping rates,
consider your delivered-margins even more carefully.
7.3 Matching opportunity to difficulty
Bringing all of the previous topics together, we arrive at the 64 million dollar (OK, that would be nice wouldn’t it)
question – where and how? A good way to visualise the answer to that question is to plot prospective target markets
into quadrants, considering size of prize versus all the operational difficulties (Figure 36):
Secondly, some consumer segments, especially older demographics, have not (yet) seen internet take-up to
the same extent as in the UK. Only 4% of Russian internet users are retired55, for example, although 15% of the
population are over 6556.
So if your target consumer is an affluent pensioner who retired to the countryside, it’s probably best to
forget about Russia!
high
low
Firstly, access, and especially the broadband access that is a necessary enabler for online retail, is heavily
concentrated in big cities in many countries. 60% of online retail in Russia, for example, takes place in the
Moscow and St Petersburg regions54 despite only 15% of the population living there.
Potential size of prize
In the UK, internet access and usage is very broad-based. If your products target a particular consumer segment,
you can reasonably assume they are online shoppers. This is emphatically not the case in other countries,
even quite developed ones.
LOCALISE
SHIP TO
(maybe add local
marketing)
low
MARKETPLACE
and/or
OUTSOURCING
FORGET IT
high
Operational Difficulty
Figure 36 – Evaluating the options
Morgan Stanley, Russian eCommerce, January 2013
TNS Web Index
56
CIA World Factbook
54
Sponsored by
Sponsored by
55
38
39
Having taken the basic decision about which approach to adopt, there’s no need to try and swallow the whole
elephant in one gulp. A good approach, adopted by many retailers57 is to gradually step-up the depth and complexity
of international integration. This isn’t a single-track road either – one might operate at different levels for different
competencies, gradually moving more successful or interesting countries up the curve (Figure 37).
LOGISTICS
LOCALISATION
As a way to illustrate both the potential opportunity and the potential threat, here’s a reminder of the growth of
Amazon’s international ecommerce business (Figure 38):
Amazon International eCommerce sales
MARKETING
40000
35000
LOCAL RETURNS
LOCAL CUSTOMER SERVICE
LOCAL PAYMENT METHODS
LOCAL TRADING
LOCAL CONTENT
LOCAL MARKETING TEAM WITH
LOCAL CALENDAR & EVENTS
PRODUCTS TRANSLATED
LOCAL FACEBOOK
LOCAL SEM/PPC
30000
US$Mn
LOCAL FULFILMENT CENTRE
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
KEY PAGES TRANSLATED
LOCALISED COMMUNICATION
AND DATABASE
SHIP TO
ENGLISH ONLY
SINGLE MARKETING
0
20
00
20
01
20
02
20
03
20
04
20
05
20
06
20
07
20
08
20
09
20
10
20
11
20
12
20
13
20
14
INTEGRATED DDP SHIPPING
Figure 38 - Growth of Amazon international ecommerce sales, 2000-201459
Amazon has been part of the local landscape for long enough that we sometimes forget it is in fact a foreign retailer
doing an outstanding job of travelling beyond the borders of its home country.
Figure 37 – Implementation paths towards internationalisation
7.4 In conclusion
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how new ecommerce is. It’s only 21 years since the first order was placed over the
internet (for a pepperoni pizza with extra cheese and mushrooms) in 1994. In that short time it’s become a mature
part of retail, with well-established best-practices, vast numbers of suppliers and services, and millions of customers.
But once upon a very short time ago, none of that existed, and selling something online was
considered exotic.
Have you travelled abroad yourself at some point in the last few years, on holiday or for business? Pretty easy isn’t it.
This paper started with a quotation, so let’s end it with another from the same source:
“it appears evidently from
experience, that man is,
of all sorts of luggage,
the most difficult to
be transported.”60
International ecommerce is already well on the way along a similar maturity curve. While still not something to be
entered into unadvisedly or lightly, there is now a great deal of knowledge and experience to draw on, backed up by
effective suppliers of relevant services. An implementation project today can be embarked on with a much higher
certainty of success and relatively lower project risk than might have been the case only a few years ago.
We’ve already seen that international ecommerce represents a huge potential opportunity. Let’s not forget too, that it
also represents a big potential threat to those retailers that confine themselves to their domestic market alone - 15.9
million UK consumers spent £8.5bn on online purchases from outside the UK in 201358. Even if you decide that it’s not
for you, or not for you right now, make sure this is a conscious choice, not just letting something go by default.
e.g. Wiggle presentation at the IMRG event in Autumn 2014
58
Paypal: Modern Spice Routes, July 2014 (all sectors, not just retail).
57
40
Sponsored by
If you can travel abroad so easily these days,
then so can your products!
59
60
Source: Amazon annual SEC 10K filings, 2002-2014
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
Sponsored by
41
8. Project planning checklists
8.3 Market entry
8.3.1 Domains & related issues
TASK
8.1 Introduction
This final section provides some basic skeleton outline checklists for planning an internationalisation project,
structured consistently with rest of this document.
Each table lists tasks you may want to consider, compares the requirements for a ship-to,
marketplace, and localisation approach, and suggests the scale of the task.
Domain name structure
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
Yes
Medium
Maybe
Yes
Non-Google SEO
Yes
Maybe
Medium
Maybe
Yes
Medium
Yes
Large
Yes
Large
Yes
Medium
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
Non-Google PPC / local agency
Site hosting
8.2 Language
Site structure (e.g. hreflang tags)
Content distribution network
Large
Maybe
Maybe
Figure 41 – Domains & related issue checklist
8.2.1 Translation checklist
8.3.2 Other marketing
SHIP-TO
MARKETPLACE
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
Help screens
Yes
Yes
Small
Checkout prompts
Yes
Yes
Emails
Yes
Marketing & merchandising Comms
TASK
Yes
Medium
Small
Local language PPC / local agency
Maybe
Maybe
Small
Yes
Small
Customer database segmentation
Maybe
Yes
Maybe
Medium
Yes
Medium
Facebook page structure
Maybe
Maybe
Yes
Small
Some
Yes
Medium & ongoing
Social conversation management /
agency
Maybe
Maybe
Maybe
Large
Maybe
Maybe
Large
Maybe
Maybe
Medium
Some
Maybe
Yes
Yes
Medium & ongoing
Local marketing team decision
Base dictionary
Maybe
Yes
Yes
Medium
Brand dictionary
Maybe
Maybe
Yes
Medium
Engage local opinion formers/
bloggers etc
Navigation & taxonomy
Maybe
Yes
Complex
Yes
Large & ongoing
Maybe
Figure 39 – Translation checklist
Figure 42 – Other marketing activities setup checklist
8.4 Legal, payment & finance
TASK
MARKETPLACE
Maybe
8.4.1 Legal
8.2.2 Language-related tasks
SHIP-TO
MARKETPLACE
Maybe
Top-seller products
Long tail products
SHIP-TO
Local language SEO
Website error messages
TASK
MARKETPLACE
Marketplace flagship store
Obviously in a document of this kind such lists can only be generic outlines, but hopefully they will be
useful as starting point for making your own plans.
TASK
SHIP-TO
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
SHIP-TO
MARKETPLACE
Terms & conditions
Distance selling regulations
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
Yes
Small
Maybe
Yes
Small
Navigation & taxonomy
Maybe
Yes
Complex
Consumer protection periods etc
Maybe
Maybe
Yes
Medium
Website layout adjustments
Maybe
Yes
Large
Returns policies
Maybe
Yes
Yes
Medium
Yes
Medium
Cookie policies
Yes
Mostly small
Yes
Yes
Small
Yes
Yes
Medium
Yes
Usually small
Yes
Yes
Medium
Yes
Yes
Could be huge
Homepage & geo-IP landing pages
Business seasonal cycle
Maybe
Yes
HUGE
Data protection
Product launch critical path
Maybe
Yes
Large
Promotion rules
Yes
Yes
Large
Sizes & measurements
Maybe
Figure 40 – Language-related tasks checklist
Yes
Price display
Distribution rights checking
Product labelling
Yes
Figure 43 – Legal issues checklist
Sponsored by
42
Sponsored by
43
8.4.2 Payment
TASK
8.5.2 Other logistics issues
SHIP-TO
MARKETPLACE
Research local payment methods
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
TASK
SHIP-TO
MARKETPLACE
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
Yes
Small
DDP
Maybe
Maybe
Maybe
Large or outsource
Yes
Large
Maybe
Maybe
Large or outsource
Add local pay-on-despatch methods
Maybe
Maybe
Large
Checkout integration
Yes
Add local pay-on-delivery methods
Maybe
Maybe
Huge
Local returns address
Maybe
Change order-flow phasing
Maybe
Maybe
Huge
Local fulfilment centre
Maybe
Maybe
Huge
Change customer services SOPs
Maybe
Maybe
Large
Additional financial reconciliations
Maybe
Maybe
Medium
Engaging local partners
(e.g. distributor)
Maybe
Maybe
Huge
New accounting processes
Maybe
Maybe
Large
Local customer services
Maybe
Maybe
Large
New fraud screening processes
Maybe
Maybe
Large
Yes
Large
Yes
Large
Local sales taxes
Checkout changes
Yes
8.6 Planning & research
8.6.1 Country research checklist
Figure 44 – Payment checklist
TASK
8.4.3 Other finance
TASK
Figure 47 – Other logistics issues checklist
SHIP-TO
MARKETPLACE
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
Yes
Yes
Medium
VAT
Maybe
Yes
Medium
Transfer pricing issues
Maybe
Maybe
Small
Exchange rate exposure
Maybe
Maybe
Medium
Local pricing policy
SHIP-TO
MARKETPLACE
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
P.R.I.C.E. differentiation research
Maybe
Yes
Yes
Medium
Brand channel conflict planning
Maybe
Maybe
Maybe
Large
Opportunity estimation
– demographics
Maybe
Yes
Small
Opportunity estimation - access
Maybe
Yes
Medium
Yes
Yes
Large
Yes
Yes
Medium
Opportunity estimation – attention
Opportunity estimation – conversion
Figure 45 – Other finance issues checklist
Figure 48 – Country research checklist
8.5 Logistics & shipping
8.6.2 Strategic planning checklist
8.5.1 Ship-to
TASK
Maybe
SHIP-TO
MARKETPLACE
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
Shipping partner selection
Yes
Yes
Yes
Medium
Secondary shipping partner
implement
Maybe
Maybe
Maybe
Medium
Delivery pricing to customers
Yes
Maybe
Yes
Small
Fulfilment centre SOPs
Yes
Yes
Yes
Large
Parcel labelling
Yes
Yes
Yes
Medium
Cross-border track-and-trace
Yes
Yes
Yes
Medium
Address capture format changes
Yes
Yes
Small
International address checking
Maybe
Maybe
Large
Address fraud screening
Maybe
Maybe
Medium
Delivery notes & invoices translation
Maybe
Yes
Small
Yes
Small
Yes
Site delivery pages
Yes
Cross-border returns policies
Yes
Maybe
Yes
Medium
Amended returns SOPs
Yes
Yes
Yes
Medium
TASK
SHIP-TO
MARKETPLACE
LOCALISED
SIZE OF TASK
Opportunity – difficulty quadrants
Yes
Yes
Yes
Small
Selecting approach to country
Yes
Yes
Yes
Medium
Yes
Yes
Large
Roadmap to maturity planning
Figure 49 – Strategy planning checklist
Figure 46 – Ship-to checklist
Sponsored by
44
Sponsored by
45
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operations or go global for the first time, Borderfree’s highly customizable
global ecommerce platform will deliver a world-class experience to your
customers. Clients include Macy’s, J.Crew, Dune London, Austin Reed
and Brooks Brothers.
For further information please visit:
www.borderfree.com
About the Author
Chris Jones is a leading freelance specialist in multichannel and
e-commerce, with extensive senior-level experience as both consultant
and hands-on interim.
His clients have included: the very big - 3 of the top 10 retailers in the world
at Tesco, Target and Metro; the very famous – Mars, and the global brand
Dr Martens where he was interim Global eCommerce Director; and the very
niche – a VC-backed start-up in India, a B2B website in Romania, and a
consumer electronics retailer in Belarus. He has worked extensively in both
B2B and B2C sectors, and has client engagement experience in 16 countries.
He is the author of “The Multichannel Retail Handbook – a guide to planning,
implementation, operation and enhancement” (ISBN 978-1- 300-65266-3).
You can find him at:
linkedin.com/in/redsock or at www.redsock.biz
Acknowledgement
Chris would like to thank Andrew Starkey of IMRG for his very
knowledgeable
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suggestions for improving the Logistics sections of this report.
46
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47
eCommerce Worldwide
2 Ching Court, 49-53 Monmouth Street,
Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9 EY.
T +44(0) 203 696 0980
E [email protected]
Published September 2015
ecommerceworldwide.com
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