For those of you reading this in the UK or California, you might be wondering why the question – What are the benefits of Ecommerce? – needs to be answered. However, there are emerging markets where the benefits of Ecommerce still need to be communicated to retailers who are still investing in bricks and mortar stores without any online shopping options for customers.
But the benefits of E-commerce are not just opening a new channel, there can be business model benefits and other benefits of an Omnichannel approach to retail.
This is the first in a series of posts from an Ecommerce 101 course that I created for a Middle East Audience. Subsequent posts will look at business models and how online stores can create a better offline customer experience.
Global Reach
This one is almost cliched – some of the earliest ads for ‘The internet’ featured Italian olive oil farmers selling to the world, but one of the reasons that online shops in the UK have done so well is because many of them have an international focus.
In recent years, Australia has been at times Asos’ largest market outside Britain. In 2012, the story goes that the fashion retailer was flying four jumbo jets of clothing to Australia each week. However, exchange rates rise and fall and the global price for items fluctuates. In 2014, 57 per cent of Asos’ total sales were from outside the UK.
While US counterparts might be looking at how to satisfy domestic demand, UK ecommerce stores have realised that British brands are popular outside of the UK and global customers are willing to pay to get it delivered.
For companies in the Middle East and other emerging markets, the concept or international or cross-border trade is not new. Most retailers who have built, or are building online capabilities consider the whole GCC as a market with multiple currencies supported as well as delivery between countries.
International Ecommerce Challenges.
To have the best results, local stores need to be in the local language. Even in the Arabic speaking world, there are nuances that can make the difference between success and low conversion figures.
Creating Right-t0-Left front end themes for Arabic can be challenging, but once done, building out new sites for different languages, currencies and local factors becomes easier and the marginal cost of each site reduces.
The next challenge is shipping. Cross-border ecommerce can become complicated and duties, taxes and other costs need to be considered. From a customer journey point of view, you also need to consider your returns policy and the time it will take for goods to be delivered.
As international Ecommerce becomes more sophisticated, there are solutions to manage the complexity of international shipping. Shipper HQ, for example, works with Magento and Shopify and Woo-Commerce and manages who to ship with and how to charge for delivery.
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