7 quick tips to localize your website
I thought I would drop these 7 tips to optimize your website to better engage with overseas customers. These are things you can do today without hiring a web dev team or investing a lot in localization.
Add an IP-address-triggered "Welcome mat" in a local language to welcome visitors and let them know you have them covered as they continue shopping. The rest of your website doesn't need to be in different languages on day one. But test your customer drop-off and start translating as you see what your traffic does. Just Uno is one service
Localize your currency - use a plug-in to enable your customer to see what the prices are in their local currency. Remember, if you are not actually "localizing your bank account" with services like WithReach or Payoneer then your currency-converted prices will still fluctuate depending on when a visitor comes to your site and when they actually purchase the product. But localizing the currency within your site is a start.
Check-out localization - ensure you have the proper fields for a given country in your check-out such as addresses (Provinces and States), phone numbers, postal codes, etc. ZONOS is one plug-in
Duties & taxes calculations - ensure your customer knows what the full price will be including the local duties and taxes at the point of check-out. Whether you charge the this amount up front, known as DDP - Delivery Duties Paid, or after the product arrives, DDU - Delivery Duties Unpaid - it is important to let them know the total and even give them the option. Avalara is worth checking out.
Better customer services engagement. To start, just change your phone number to include the country code such as +1. But if you are not going to have someone active during business hours in your target market, consider timing asynchronous customer services options such as email, text. And if you don't have someone who speaks the target language in your customer service team, consider email or chat to enable translation services to come into play.
Shipping - Priced accordingly - Volumes dictate shipping pricing but keep in mind that it's better to give free shipping and make less $ on your sales to build trust and loyalty. And make it easy to return the product since that is often a key concern among cross-border shoppers, yet return rates are low in cross-border sales.
Facilitate "Duty Drawback" - Don't put the responsibility to apply for a return of duties and taxes on the consumer. Provide full refunds for your consumer but recognize it can take up to 18 months for you to get that money back.
Translation services for a future step - Rapport International
Some deeper thoughts: (find this in video format along with more website localization tips on California International Trade Center’s education page.
Simplify Checkout and Payment
What is the biggest conversion killer on most ecommerce websites? The checkout process! Of all the things you should master, this is paramount. Yes, there are many sites that have poor layouts and limited translation that can hinder an international visitor’s experience, but after they spend 10 minutes picking out their new skincare regimen and head to the check-out counter, if they get turned off at that point, you can be sure they’re never coming back and they are telling their friend’s not to bother either. Your checkout process must be planned and designed for your audience, which means a simple translation of your local checkout page might not be sufficient. You need to find a balance between usability, building trust, and functionality. The good news is, there are a growing number of plug-ins for every platform that have already optimized this experience so you don’t need to build this yourself.
Here’s a list of things you should consider when designing your checkout or evaluating existing plug-ins. Again, not too dissimilar to what you want for your domestic check-out, but remember the cross-border shopper is already coming at this from a heightened sense of skepticism.
Checkout Design
Make sure the checkout button is easy to find and test your site to make sure the navigation is smooth, but fast. Compare it with layouts of sites in your target market. We all fear the checkout that ends on an empty page: did they take my money? Are they sending me something? Should I try to buy it again? If you haven’t gone to your own check-out counter in while, do so. Remember, set aside 10 minutes every week to attempt to buy something on your site. Once you get set up for global, buy a VPN and login from another country IP address and see what that experience is like.
Bad Surprises
Avoid bad surprises for your customers. When you start selling cross-border, establishing trust is going to be your first priority. Everything they experience is exaggerated, so remove the space for “interpretation”. Be explicit about what taxes, fees and shipping costs will be. Adding fees at checkout can make your customers feel tricked. This tactic is even illegal in some markets.
Editing
Make it easy to add or remove items from a shopping cart. It always helps if you show a picture of the item at check-out, and not just the SKU or an item name. Your customers shouldn’t have to go back and forth on your website to know what’s in their basket.
Payment
Once your customers are at checkout, ready to pay, now is the time to live up to their expectations. Make sure the form fields respect the requirement for the country you’re selling to, including taxes. First off, you always need to be clear on what taxes your customers will need to pay. In Brazil for example, people need to enter their CPF tax number. In other countries like Canada, companies that registered for a tax account need to indicate their tax identification numbers on all the invoices.
Your payment process should look and feel as natural as possible for your customer.
Shipping addresses
Yes, shipping again. A common mistake for ecommerce selling in multiple countries is to provide form fields that are not adapted to the type of addresses you find in a target market. The basics are enabling provinces vs States. And some countries like Canada have postal codes that are a lot longer and contain both numbers and letters. In Mexico and Italy, the house number comes after the street, and in Japan, street names are often non-existent and replaced by block numbers. The fact is, you should never go for a “one-size-fits-all” approach and always make sure the fields are ready to accommodate different mailing addresses, phone numbers, etc.
Security
Don’t hesitate to display any relevant security logo with links to their websites. People are becoming less worried about online payments but increasingly concerned about data privacy, so it is good to reassure them your site is secure and compliant.
Contact
Display your contact information prominently in case a customer needs to talk to you during checkout. Place phone numbers with country codes like +1 at the beginning of the number if you choose to allow customers to call you. But given time differences, it may not be the best option. Use live chat functions only if you really have someone to manage them. Otherwise, you can drive to a fill form to allow your team to work asynchronously and have time to translate questions into English.
Again, make sure the process is clean, easy to understand, and transparent. And always make sure the content, layout, languages, and measurements are relevant to the customers you’re trying to reach.
If you aren’t sure about any of this, remember, it isn’t a closed-book test and you get more points of cheating effectively. So use a VPN and go to a check-out of the number one online retailer on your target market and see what the layout and process looks and feels like.
Finally, I’ll say it again, this guidance is not unique to cross-border visitors but its importance is magnified when dealing with customers who might have struggled to get through your site.
Think about when you land in an overseas airport and are looking for local transportation. Sure, they may have some English signs and your goal is pretty common, find transport to your hotel. But you might have heightened anxiety, be more skeptical and miss key signs because they were placed in an unfamiliar location, leaving you wondering where to go next. By the time you get to your rideshare, any slight miscommunication can set you off and you start judging the entire country based on the first 20 minutes of navigating the airport.
Now imagine how pleasant airports might be if the airport authority could put a chip in the brain of the first million people who came through the airport to see where their eyes turn to find information and where they get stuck?
Luckily, for your website, that “chip” exists and is a combination of analytics and heat-mapping to understand where your customers are experiencing friction on the site and at which point in the check-out they run screaming.
So the great news is, there are companies that have spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars building out global check-out counters so you don’t have to.
