12 Common Mistakes Done while Selling in Cross-border Markets

The rate at which technology is excelling knows no bounds. It is creating innovative ways to connect with the world every day. While technology continues to change the channels in the market, the connection between merchants and consumers keep growing stronger. With the advancement in technologies, still there are some common mistakes, merchants make while engaging in international markets.

Let us walk through each of these mistakes to overcome any pitfalls.

• Avoiding to calculate total landed costs

It is necessary that merchants and buyers maintain a transparent relation between them in the cross-border market. Merchants should inform their international buyers about duties and tariffs. You can also use the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) calculator.

It is mandatory to maintain trust and dignity amongst your international buyers. It can be evaluated in the following ways:

1. Provide product tracking details
2. Provide on-site shipping information details
3. Update on delays in international shipments

• Creating Big Technology Investments

Merchants while investing in the international markets should keep minimum technology investments. This holds true for the integration of third-party channels as well as international checkout providers.

We recommend you to focus on small investments first rather than the big ones such as:

• Market Insights
• Personnel
• Logistics

• Ignoring online frauds

There is always a risk of fraud when entering the cross-border markets. But you can always take help of the solutions to prevent such frauds and meet your business requirements.

You can prevent fraud during international checkout on-site with two methods:

1. Installing a fraud suite
2. Leverage 3rd Party Logistics to secure against fraud

There are several solutions Subuno, Riskified and Signifyd like that reduce such online frauds and provide secured payments internationally.

• Copy & Pasting

Repetitive content and media cause a mess across the localized and international markets. This is a common mistake international merchants often make. Thus, it is better to avoid any copy and pasting media and content on your site.

It is necessary to focus on the potential language when localizing the content. You need verifying the media as poor on-model product photography can create a bad image in the market. Also, it can affect the SEO rankings for the particular region.

• Dimensional and Physical Shipping Assumptions

Most of the merchants and eCommerce businesses fail to assume the dimension and physical shipments. If you fail to consider these, it can be a costly assumption.

• Dimensional Pricing – Shipping costs based on the size of a box
• Physical Pricing – Shipping costs based on the weight of the box

Thus, it is beneficial to include these pricings in the overall product cost to predict accurate marginal costs.

• Disregarding Localized Merchandising

When selling products globally, merchants must consider some factors so that they can merchandise their digital stores.

Consumer Demand & Trends and Climate are the factors that affect the local merchandising.

• Not Failing in Translation

It is critically significant to focus on how your website gets translated into different languages. It plays a crucial role in the localized and domestic markets. International sellers and merchants can consider using the translation providers like Smartling and VerbalizeIt.

These translation providers transform the way the content is created and consumed by the local and domestic markets.

• Government and Political Constraints

You must be aware of the government laws in accordance with the countries and political constraints. It is mandatory to follow the government norms and data alliance while taking a plunge in the international markets.

For instance, in Russia, it is mandatory all the customer data must be kept on server in-country.

• Disregarding Promotional Calendars

A mistake international merchants fail to notice. You have to prioritize the region of expansion and plan the marketing campaigns accordingly. Mark your calendars for the promotional events to be carried out.

In the Middle East during Eid, you can observe many sales events during shopping, entertainment, and traveling. Likewise, every region or country follows certain events and you have to keep that in prior notice to stand stronger in the international markets.

• Don’t Go Overboard

Merchants often go overboard while engaging in the cross-border market. You have to consider the right aspects when selling the products.

It is better to focus on a single market and its essentials first before plunging into various other markets. This will help you learn from the mistakes so that you can implement the solutions while expansions.

• Managing Efforts from a Distance

It is sometimes impossible to manage efforts from distances. While globalizing in the market, markets like India, China, and UAE, it is difficult to manage the resources. But markets like Western Europe and North America are more manageable. It is always recommended that you leverage the local resources in this case.

• Marketplaces are not for the premium products

The fact about the cross-border markets is that the international shoppers shop more from the local brands and markets.

Today, the premium brands are opening flagship stores on the various social commerce platforms and local markets.

Avoiding such pitfalls always helps but if you successfully aim to ace the global markets, launch an international site. This in all ways localizes the site, content, and products. Not necessarily, all the brands go by this rule and even if they do so, they still make commit these mistakes.