Choosing the right market and selling channels for your international e-commerce success

Written by Max Riis Christensen

The decision phase, or choosing the countries and channels that are the best fit for your products, prices and selling points, is the first step of a successful international e-commerce rollout.  

Should you opt for marketplaces alone or is the right solution to localise your own webshop? Should you start selling in Norway, or might Germany be the right place for business?

To answer these questions, your thought process needs to go further than simply, “Well, 80 million people live in Germany and they all love Amazon — Amazon.de it is!”.

We recommend narrowing it down to one or two countries and then conducting a Market Scan.

Our Market Scan will tell you who the main online competitors are and benchmark them with regard to over 15 different business areas such as delivery terms, social media presence, product range etc. 

Once you have identified your competitors, you can proceed to the next phase. 

Creating a roadmap will provide you with a full overview of the tasks you will need to complete starting from now until your new sales channel is launched. A roadmap will help you realise how much investment will be required and whether you have the necessary resources available.

 

Once your decision has been made, you can move on to the localisation phase.

The localisation phase is all about making sure that your customers say yes to the following three questions when viewing your products on your website or at a marketplace:

1. Do I have enough information to decide what to buy (product information, price, shipping costs, delivery terms)?
2. Do I trust the webshop enough to place an order and go through with the payment?
3. What if I regret my purchase? Is the return process and return policy competitive - and am I confident that they will provide me a refund ?

If you need advice or just a quick chat to get our first take on a challenge, please don’t hesitate to contact us!