The Benefits of Being a Nordic Webshop

Written by Max Riis Christensen

Increased sales, profitability and low risk. That is something we all want to accomplish in our international business ventures. 

One way to increase your chances of success is to think regionally instead of locally.

Be a Nordic webshop, for example. Not a Danish, Swedish, Norwegian or Finnish webshop. A Nordic webshop.

A Nordic webshop has a home market of 25 million savvy online shoppers. Keeping your cost down is easier where your experience and competencies are useful. Localisation costs are lower and you can do more yourself.

If your webshop is able to support differing currencies and languages and you have an efficient warehouse you are able to tackle the Nordics.

This strategy is not applicable everywhere

Many e-tailors dream of launching in Germany, France or another big country. It is easy to understand why. In Germany alone, there are 80 million potential customers. If just 1% of the population visits their webshop, and 2% of the visitors decide to buy, the result is 16.000 orders.

Such a scenario is unlikely though. The big markets are dominated by big players - such as Zalando, Asos, Amazon and eBay. They have the resources to continuously invest in the growth and optimisation of their processes, forcing local competitors to do the same. This means that those markets are very professional and highly competitive. Marketing is expensive, returns are expected to be free, and prices are generally lower.

Entering these markets requires courage, unique products and lots of Euros.

Why not target all markets at the same time?

You may be tempted to consider launching an English language site instead, to appeal to as many people as possible. 

You just have to remember that it takes more than that to provide your customers with a great online shopping experience. You will need to make sure payment is easy for all customers and to meet varying expectations regarding delivery and return handling.

Targeting your neighbours or your region enables you to benefit from your existing knowledge about your target consumers, their culture and their habits.