4 Tips for Selling to International Customers with WooCommerce
One of the benefits of selling online is the opportunity to sell your products anywhere and anytime. There’s really no limit to who you can sell to, and that presents a fantastic opportunity to anyone who wants to maximize their revenue.
More opportunities also mean more responsibilities. Selling to international customers requires that you do a bit more to ensure that your store is functional and successful.
WooCommerce is one of the best eCommerce platforms for international stores. This blog post will explain how you can tweak WooCommerce to be fully functional for international customers.
- Make Sure Your Store Is in the Language That You Speak
WooCommerce’s default language is English. If you’d rather have WooCommerce in another language, you’ll have to download the translated version. To download WooCommere in another language, go here.
The WooCommerce backend should be in a language that you’re most comfortable in. The front end should preferably be multilingual. The overall content on the front end should be able to be translated into all languages. To have this capability, download the Google Translator Plugin.
- Show Prices in Multiple Currencies
WooCommerce will only accept one main currency by default. However, you can automatically show prices in your customers’ native currencies by downloading the Currency Converter Widget. This is an important factor in making your world-friendly. There are international customers who may be willing to purchase your products, but they might be hesitant due to not being able to understand the prices in their native currency.
- Consider Your Accepted Payment Methods
Accepting payments is obviously important, but it can be a bit tricky, depending on where your online store is located. What you will want to do is ensure that you have as many payment methods available as possible. In North America, customers will want to primarily use a credit card or a PayPal; in China, 67% of online customers prefer to use AliPay, for example (their own version of PayPal). If there is a payment method that is popular in a certain country, but you just do not have the capability to accept that payment method, you should consider if it’s really worth the time and effort to sell in that country.
Also, consider your payment gateway. Ensure that the payment gateway is trusted by your customer base. A trusted name will go a long way, and it should also check all of your security boxes. For more on secure payment gateways check out this guideline on PCI compliance and security standards.
- Simplify Your Shipping Options
When you’re selling to multiple countries, the way that you’ll handle shipping can be a bit complex. At the end of the day, you want to ship your products in a timely manner, and you want to provide the cheapest options to your customers.
If you’re shipping products from one country to another, you will need to know your “landed cost”. When you ship internationally, there may be additional costs on top of the shipping fee (duty, taxes), so the “landed cost” will be the total amount of money that needs to be paid before the product arrives at your customer’s door. Any shipping fee should include all the various fees.
When presenting shipping costs to your international customers, it would be a good idea to break down the shipping costs in easy-to-understand terms.
Conclusion
WooCommerce is a powerful platform to run your store, whether you’re selling to domestic or international customers. Follow the tips in this blog post to take advantage of the potentially lucrative international market space.
Are you ready to discuss your next eCommerce website project with the leader in WooCommerce website development and digital marketing? If so, contact Zen Agency today! We are a group of WooCommerce experts.
