At our recent Focus on Fulfilment gathering, a group of members discussed best practice for cross-border fulfilment

Here are the key takeaways…

Do not assume that your .com site will work internationally. Market nuances, language and culture all need to be addressed by some localisation. Auto-translate doesn’t work and that’s exactly the message you will be giving to your international customers if you don’t invest properly in localisation.

Develop regional capabilities and teams with native language speakers within them. Use them to target your markets. We assume that we are going to go after every country but that doesn’t always work – less is more; make sure your proposition is perfect in one market before adding more.

Don’t be frightened to pull out of a market, but there are also new markets that are exciting. Iran is expanding. India and Mexico are growing and expanding their eCommerce capabilities all the time.

• There is a distinction between operating in a market and trading it
• Language first and localised for a country
• Look at main factors to grow cross-border sales – payment, delivery, photos, local language delivery options etc
• Do a low risk test first. Then build a longer-term solution.
• Every International market that you enter, you need to consider separate – returns policy – payment policy.
• Less is more – you don’t need to be in every country!
• More development and integration should make it easier to enter
  markets now than in the past.